A mountain icefield of Loch Lomond Stadial age, western Grampians, Scotland

The extent of a large mountain icefield that existed in the western Grampians during the Loch Lomond stade has been mapped. The main types of evidence used in establishing the limits comprise moraines, thick drift, fluvioglacial landforms, erratics, ice-smoothed bedrock, striae, friction cracks and relict periglacial forms. Trimlines on 198 spurs, and various forms of glacial and periglacial evidence on 73 cols and in c . 200 cirques, enable the upper limits and morphology of the icefield to be reconstructed. Abundant striae and friction cracks in many areas enable ice-flow directions and the surface form of the icefield to be inferred in some detail. The icefield had ice-shed altitudes of c . 750 m, a maximum width of 80 km and an area over 2,000 km². At least 60 nunataks stood above the icefield, and on its western side outlet glaciers reached the sea and flowed for as much as 28 km along major tidal water lochs.