Most of the glaciers on Mount Rainier are known as valley glaciers. These glaciers are confined to a valley. Three good examples of this type of glacier are the Nisqually, Carbon, and Emmons glaciers. The smallest glaciers on Mount Rainier are cirque glaciers. These small glaciers occupy a bowl-shaped basin at the head of a mountain valley. Cirque glaciers are usually the remnants of much larger valley glaciers. Examples of this type of glacier are the South Tahoma and Inter glaciers. Another type of glacier, called a continental glacier, is a large ice sheet that covers thousands of square kilometers. Although there are no continental glaciers in the Mount Rainier area today, 15,000 years ago much of the Puget Sound west of Mount Rainier was covered with a continental glacier over 3,300 ft (1,000m) deep. At least one of the current glaciers on Mount Rainier may have been a tributary of this ice sheet. Glacier Features - Mount Rainier National Park (U.S. National Park Service)
3,300 ft 3,300 ft (1,000m) deep. 3,300
3,300 ft 3,300 ft (1,000m) deep. 3,300