Fountain Glacier ice-marginal areasGlacier recession has been rather less than for many nearby glaciers, and the Little Ice Age Limit is only a hundred metres or so from the current glacier margin. The contrast is sharp: heavily water-worked sediment with little vegetation close to the glacier contrasts strongly with a lush tundra surface of Arctic flowers and shrubs. | |||
 True left-hand margin and immediate proglacial area from the air, showing how the ice-marginal channel has migrated right as the glacier has receded. |  True right-hand margin looking upglacier from the air (not visited on the ground), showing side valley with old lake shorelines, the trim-line and the steep glacier margin. |  Frozen lake dammed by Fountain Glacier in the foreground and Aktineq Glacier in the background. Remnant glaciers with ice cliffs (two perched) on the hillside have lost their accumulation areas. |  Abandoned ice marginal channel, part rock, part sediment, at the true left-hand margin of Fountain Glacier, looking up valley. Vegetation (fireweed) is beginning to colonise the floor of the channel. |
 Receding left-hand ice margin showing contrast between well-established tundra vegetation and recently exposed vegetation-free debris. |  These ridges at the left margin are erosional remnants of a sheet of till, dissected by ice-marginal streams that migrate in keeping with glacier recession. |  Ice-marginal stream undercutting the glacier margin, resulting in cliff collapse (‘dry calving’). |  Discharge of the sediment-laden ice-marginal stream generally build up during the day, with peak flow mid-afternoon, or after heavy rain. |
 Abandoned ice-marginal drainage channel, cut into bedrock. Ice recession has been towards the left, and the new active channel is several tens of metres away. |  Example of a sheet of basal till, with subrounded and subangular stones embedded in a silt-sand matrix. |  Meltwater percolated through shattered bedrock absorbs minerals which locally are redeposited as a film. This example may be from iron-rich precipitation. |  Where the glacier has been in direct contact with the gneiss bedrock, glaciotectonic processes have held sway, and thrusts, high-angle faults and rock-shattering are all evident. |
| Photos Michael Hambrey, July 2014 | |||