Geog a Blog On Tour – Day 1

Hi Geog-a-Bloggies,


 This is day one of the Geog a Blog trip to Chamonix and Geneva! Today we spent the day in Chanonix valley and made our way up to the Aiguilles Rouge. We went by cable car and walked down 370 steps to see the ice caves of the Mer de Glace glacier; having to walk down so many steps was shocking, considering it took just three steps in 1988. This was a really impactful visual representation of the effects of global warming.

The Mer de Glace glacier is 5.5km long and 200m deep, and can be regarded as the longest and largest glacier in France, as well as the second longest in the Alps. The glacier moves at a rate of approximately 120m/annum in its upper part, and one of the most distinctive features of the Mer de Glace is its Forbes bands.

Despite the glacier’s complex topography making it difficult to study glacial retreat, it is very accessible and has a long history of monitoring, making it useful in showing the sensitivity of glaciers to climatic variability. We explored the ice caves within the Mer de Glace, which were beautiful, as well as helping to demonstrate the glacier’s ability to insulate itself. The ice caves also helped to show englacial transportation of sediment, as rocks could be seen entrained within the ice.


Once we returned to our accommodation and enjoyed a lovely meal (courtesy of Ella), we spent the remainder of the evening discussing the processes observed that day. We talked about erosion, entrainment, transportation and deposition of sediment in glaciers, as well as the differences between fluvio-glacial deposits and purely glacial deposits.

Afterwards, the Geog-a-Bloggers Millie and Akshaya led a debate on the practicalities of a borderless world, which sparked debate on what the social implications this would have, and how do we actually define borders. Whether we are simply considering national borders or also borders in a cognitive sense, which was a vastly interesting topic.

Overall, today was an incredibly insightful day on the formation and development of glaciers and the significance of them on global systems.

Love,
The Geog a Blog Team














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