The Beartooth Mountains of Montana-Wyoming are principally composed of Archean-aged metamorphic rocks. The valley seen here is a depression along the edge of a high plateau having a subalpine to alpine tundra landscape. The depression was eroded by an alpine glacier during the Pleistocene Ice Age - such depressions are called cirques. Many cirques have one or more ponds or lakes - such bodies of water are called "tarns". A string of tarns in a cirque is referred to as "pater noster lakes".
Locality: unnamed lake south of Twin Lakes (view from Route 212 / Beartooth Highway), Beartooth Mountains, northwestern Wyoming, USA
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