Cirque de Gavarnie Orientation Panel (Pyrenees Mts., France)
N 42° 42.242 W 000° 00.482
30T E 745046 N 4732290
Close to the entrance to the magnificent Cirque de Gavarnie (Cirque is amphitheatre-like valley) in Pyrenees Mts. you can find the orientation panel depicting and describing the Cirque...
Waymark Code: WM76FV
Location: Occitanie, France
Date Posted: 09/09/2009
Views: 10
The Cirque de Gavarnie is a famous example of a cirque in the central Pyrenees, in the Pyrenees National Park. The cirque is 800 m wide (on the deepest point) and about 3000 m wide at the top.
The Cirque de Gavarnie is placed about 4 km south of the village Gavarnie. From its floor, glacially eroded limestone rock walls rise to about 1500 m. It has three conspicuous terraces in which precipitous faces are succeeded upward by steep slopes of ice and snow. The Grande Cascade waterfall, one from the largest waterfalls in Europe, plunges about 425 m from the eastern side. Above the amphitheatre are the high mountain summits of the Franco-Spanish frontier ridge, rising to nearly 3 350 m (the Large peak of Astazou, the Peak of Marboré, the Peak of the Eastern cascade, the Turn of Gavarnie, the Helmet of Gavarnie and the Peak of Taillon).
A cirque (French for "circus") is an amphitheatre-like valley, or valley head, formed at the head of a alpine glacier by erosion. A cirque is a landform found in the mountains as a result of alpine glaciers.