The Bluenose Lake Moraine, a moraine with a glacier ice core.

The Bluenose Lake Moraine, a moraine with a glacier ice core. South of Dolp hin and Union Strait, N.W.T., massive ridges of bouldery till, up to 100 m high, delimit an ice frontal position to the east and north of Bluenose Lak e. Major ridges are either massive or composite with linear longitudinal pa ttern on their crest. Up ice (east) from the ridges the most common landfor ms are boulder-covered hills, up to 60 m high, and hummocks interspersed wi th numerous lakes. In a well exposed section, sediment-rich ice is overlain by a bouldery till, more than 3 m thick, with a sandy to sandy silt matrix , columnar jointing and prismatic fissility. The icy sediments exhibit band ing, folding and complex deformations, and include numerous boulders, cobbl es, and pebbles. The upper contact of the icy sediments and the bouldery di amicton is sharp, subhorizontal and unconformable. These massive icy sedime nts are interpreted as basal glacier ice buried by the stacking of glacigen ic debris, mostly till, carried at the base of a thrust-sheet in an area of compressive flow. This occurred in the ice frontal zone of an active Late Wisconsinan ice mass. It is postulated that if the regional climate was to warm to the point of melting the icy sediments which form the bulk of the B luenose Lake Moraine the resulting landscape would be hummocky terrain simi lar to that which covers extensive regions in more southerly parts of Centr al Canada.