Taylor Glacier is a small
cirque glacier
A cirque glacier is formed in a cirque, a bowl-shaped depression on the side of or near mountains. Snow and ice accumulation in corries often occurs as the result of avalanching from higher surrounding slopes.
If a cirque glacier advances far enou ...
in
Rocky Mountain National Park
Rocky Mountain National Park is an American national park located approximately northwest of Denver in north-central Colorado, within the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains. The park is situated between the towns of Estes Park to the east and ...
in the U.S. state of
Colorado
Colorado (, other variants) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It encompasses most of the Southern Rocky Mountains, as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of t ...
.
Taylor Glacier is on the east side of the
Continental Divide
A continental divide is a drainage divide on a continent such that the drainage basin on one side of the divide feeds into one ocean or sea, and the basin on the other side either feeds into a different ocean or sea, or else is endorheic, not ...
and adjacent to
Taylor Peak. Taylor Glacier is both an ice and a
rock glacier
Rock glaciers are distinctive geomorphological landforms, consisting either of angular rock debris frozen in interstitial ice, former "true" glaciers overlain by a layer of talus, or something in-between. Rock glaciers are normally found at high ...
, with the lower portions of the glacier being composed primarily of rock debris and a small portion of ice.
See also
*
List of glaciers in the United States
This is a list of glaciers existing in the United States, currently or in recent centuries. These glaciers are located in nine states, all in the Rocky Mountains or farther west. The southernmost named glacier among them is the Lilliput Glacier ...
References
Glaciers of Rocky Mountain National Park
Landforms of Larimer County, Colorado
{{US-glacier-stub