The word "kame" has been used for well over a hundred years to describe hills, usually those composed of gravel of various shapes and sizes. In fact, it has been used in a general sense for hills with so many different origins that the world has little specific meaning in itself. Associating it with the word "moulin", however, narrows its meaning. Moulins are vertical shafts through the glacier that often extend all the way back to the bed. They only occur where the ice is relatively thin and where the glacier is at the melting point, so water can coexist with ice. Where debris is present, it spills with meltwater down the moulin to the bottom. Most likely, the moulin filled with sediment to the present height of the kame, while the kame was still surrounded by ice.
Moulin Kame is derived from the French word for "mill" and the Scot word for "comb". Kames are similar in many ways to eskers. Like eskers, they consist largely of gravel and sand, but they are conical or irregularly shaped hills, rather than long ridges.
Eskers are long, winding ridges of stream sediment deposited in tunnels beneath the ice. They form in warm glaciers where flowing water can melt upward into the ice instead of downward into the bed as tunnel-channel rivers do. They often disappear when the ice melts away. Under some coniditions, however, the stream flowing through the tunnel fills the tunnel with sand and gravel. When the surrounding ice melts away, it leaves a long, sinuous ridge called an esker. Eskers range from a few feet to over 150 feet hight, from hundreds of feet to many miles long and up to as much as a half-mile wide. They have steep sides (a little over 30 degrees) caused by collapse.
Eskers are distributed throughout much of the glaciated area, but seem to be most abundant in areas where the glacier was slow moving or stagnant and where there was a supply of debris at or near the base of the glacier. Eskers are generally composed of fairly coarse sand and gravel. Often the gravel contains far-traveled erratics. People mine eskers for sand and gravel and in Wisconsin, many have been mined away entirely. Eskers are fairly common in the Kettle Moraine.
To log this earthcache, please submit answers to the following questions.
WP 1:
1. Is this land formation an esker or a moulin kame and why?
2. Estimate the height and length of this land formation.
Posted Coordinates:
3. At the posted coordinates there is another land formation. Is this an esker or moulin kame and why?
4. Estimate the height of this land formation.
Additional question:
5. Are eskers formed during a glacial advance or a glacial retreat and why do you think this?
WP2:
6. Please post a photo with a personal item in the photo. Your face does not need to be in the photo.