The Little Cottonwood Glacier lateral moraine is well preserved on the south edge of the mouth of Little Cottonwood Canyon. The terminal moraine was eroded away by waves from Lake Bonneville, a huge fresh water lake that filled the Salt Lake Valley after the ice melted. The Great Salt Lake is an evaporite, a small salty remnant of this lake. The lake is salty because heat evaporates water but not salt.
| Detail of glacial features at the mouth of Little Cottonwood Canyon, and Bells Canyon looking east. Little Cottonwood Canyon is at the left side of the picture. The narrow ridge of debris cut by the large road cut is the south lateral moraine of the Little Cottonwood Canyon glacier. The terminal moraine was eroded away by waves from Lake Bonneville, a lake sourced from glacial melt water that filled the Salt Lake Valley 12,000 years ago. The Bell Canyon terminal moraine is preserved just above the level of Lake Bonneville. A small reservoir occupies the area once filled with ice, behind the Bell Canyon terminal moraine. All of these glacial features are cut by the Wasatch Fault. |