Читать книгу Hike the Parks Sequoia-Kings Canyon National Parks - Scott Turner - Страница 14

The Sierra Nevada’s sculpted appearance is the result of extensive glacial activity during past ice ages. Slow-moving glaciers scoured rock out of preexisting depressions and canyons, sometimes peeling away huge volumes of land and leaving sheer cliff faces. Beneath the cliffs, U-shaped valleys, such as Kings Canyon and Kern Canyon, formed as the glaciers pushed through, clearing out massive quantities of rock and carrying it down canyon. Smaller glaciers in the high country gouged out basins and valleys and sculpted the sharp pinnacles of the range’s peaks. Many of these peaks still hold small, remnant glaciers and icefields on their northeast facing slopes, although that number continues to dwindle as the climate warms.

Small pockets of ancient metamorphic rock cap the much younger granite of Big Baldy Ridge (Route 28).