This is an end moraine, composed of loose material left behind when the last ice sheet melted about 12,000 years ago.
As you get higher, there are more and more outcrops of solid rock. These rocks are gneisses that have a striped appearance – a foliation. This foliation tilts gently to the east all the way to the summit. These gneisses were originally large granite that became squashed and stretched in the root zone of a mountain chain about 1,000 million years ago. This root zone extends for at least as far as you can see in all directions from the summit. 1,000 million years ago there were mountains here, similar to the Himalayas today. The gneisses were several tens of kilometres below the tops of the mountain. Gradual uplift and erosion have exposed what the roots of the Himalayas look like!
- Access: FV503.
- Parking Veen Camping.