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The glaciers of the eastern massifs of Cantabria, the Burgos Mountains and the Basque Country

Abstract:

The massifs of the eastern Cantabrian Mountain, namely the Pas Mountain and the Basque Mountain, are characterized by moderate altitudes, gentle reliefs on the summits, steep northern slopes, proximity to the sea, oceanic climate, and the barrier effect that these massifs produce against the humid winds from the north and northwest. The access of cold and humid winds during the Quaternary facilitated the overaccumulation of snow at moderate altitudes (1300-1700 m) and the development of ice fields and plateau glaciers that fed tongues descending in all directions, predominantly to the north. The glacier tongues on the northern slope were very short, but their fronts reached very low altitudes, such as up to 350 m in the Asón Valley, one of the lowest in the Iberian Peninsula. In contrast, the southern slope did not include glacier tongues, except in the Pas Mountains, where a 15-km-long and over 250-m-thick ice tongue developed in the Trueba Valley. At least two Quaternary glacial phases close to each other in space and time have been detected. However, after the Pleistocene glacial period, the glaciers disappeared, and the cooling detected in the Younger Dryas or the cold Holocene phases (such as the Little Ice Age) did not generate glaciers in these low-altitude Atlantic mountains.