Backpacker Magazine – August 2008

Phenomenon: Glacial Relics

The Ice Age left its mark from Acadia to Yosemite. Here's scenic evidence.

by: Drew Pogge

Tags:
• Rocky Mountain National Park
|
• Colorado
|
• Glacier National Park
|
• Acadia National Park
|
• Maine
|
• Yosemite National Park
|
• California
|

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Glacial Erratic
Acadia National Park, Maine
Bubble Rock

Glacial erratics are displaced rocks, ranging in size from tiny pebbles to mammoth boulders, carried along by glacial ice flow. Some are moved hundreds of miles from their origin, and would not otherwise be found in their terminal resting place.

>>Bubble Rock
Composed of white granite instead of the pink granite found in the surrounding Bubble Mountains, this erratic traveled 19 miles south from mainland Maine to Mount Desert Island's South Bubble Mountain–carried by the mile-thick Wisconsin Ice Sheet. Some 10,000 years ago, receding glaciers dropped it on the southeast corner of the summit. Find it along the less busy, but steep, 0.6-mile Southern Bubble Trail, a spur off the Jordan Pond Loop Trail.

Bubble Rock
UTM 19T 0559539E 4909860N

Acadia National Park
(207-288-3338; nps.gov/acad)

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