New Zealand Mountains 

Rob Roy Glacier, South Island, New Zealand

The Rob Roy glacier is in Mt Aspiring National Park. Here a Cold Front is coming over the alps from the west. This was the front which finally broke the 1999 draught in Central Otago, putting out a major grass fire in the process. This is the winter picture in the 2000 Schering calendar

A cirque is carved in the mountain by the glacier it contains. The cirque has a back wall against the peak which, is very steep. The floor is scooped out by glacial erosion and may be lower than the lip over which the glacier moves down the mountain face. Often, as here, the glacier falls as an avalanche over the cirque's lip to create a heap of avalanche snow which may itself consolidate to form the start of another glacier. This can also be seen on Mt Aspiring where the Bonar Glacier is formed by avalanche snow plus ordinary snowfall. Mt Aspiring shows what happens when several cirques carve back into the peak to leave it standing as a horn, with sharp ridges.

Eventually, after an ice age, even the cirque glaciers melt. The lip of the cirque then acts as a dam holding a cirque lake high in the mountains.