Modern glaciers
About a dozen small rapidly dwindling glaciers exist today in shaded reentrants high in the Teton Range. They are probably vestiges of ice masses built up since the climatic optimum, during the so-called “Little Ice Age.” These glaciers, while insignificant compared to those still present in many other mountain ranges, are fascinating working models of the great ice streams that shaped the Tetons during Pleistocene time.
The Teton Glacier ([fig. 6]) is one of the best known. It is an ice body about 3,500 feet long and 1,100 feet wide that lies at the head of Glacier Gulch, shaded by the encircling ridges of the Grand Teton, Mount Owen, and Mount Teewinot. Ice in the central part is moving at a rate of more than 30 feet a year.