Last summer, when I was out in Montana, I had a break of five days or so between classes, and so I headed out to Missoula to visit with my friend Noah. He and I went backpacking up to the Walton Lakes area, across the border in Idaho. We're walking across exposures of the Idaho Batholith here (Mesozoic felsic intrusive rocks, kind of like the Sierra Nevada Batholith in California). But probably the more striking thing is the topography, which has been beautifully sculpted by glaciation:

With a tarn in the background, here's Noah and his dog "Sanoma" (not the way I would spell it, but hey, it's not my dog...) walking along the ridge:


Sanoma with her doggy backpack:


Snowpack remains, even in July:


A nice view along the "knife edge" of an arete, the crisp slice of bedrock remaining between two glacially-carved valleys:


Noah and Sanoma standing on the arete:


Classic glacial topography: Note the arete (far right), cirque headwall (in shadow), tarn (lake in center), and end-moraine (light band at left).


We hiked down to that tarn and went swimming in it. Then we camped on the moraine that night, amid a great many mosquitoes. But the sunset was nice:

Labels: glacial landforms, granite