Rock glaciers look very different from conventional glaciers. Instead of exposed ice, they resemble sprawling fields of loose rock, while potentially concealing large quantities of ice below the surface. These formations are widespread across Utah's Wasatch and Uinta ranges and can also be found on the Colorado Plateau in the La Sal Mountains near Moab.
University of Utah geologists have now taken a detailed look inside one of the state's largest examples, the Timpanogos Rock Glacier beneath the prominent summit of Mount Timpanogos near Salt Lake City and Provo. Two new studies examine how the glacier formed and reveal how much ice is buried inside it. By detecting extremely small differences in the gravitational pull of rock and ice, the researchers developed a new way to create a 3D image of the hidden ice within a large rock glacier.
The results show that Timpanogos Rock Glacier contains about 1.5 million cubic meters of frozen water, enough to fill roughly 600 Olympic swimming pools. Bronson Cvijanovich, a former graduate student in the Department of Geology & Geophysics, noted that this is also about the same volume as the largest pyramid at Giza in Egypt.
"Timpanogos Rock Glacier is surprisingly ice rich. It is 83% ice and 17% loose rock," said Cvijanovich, lead author of one of the two studies overseen by geophysics professor Michael Thorne and glaciology professor Leif Anderson.
