Glacial valley

A glacial valley is like a big smiley face that was made by an enormous monster called a glacier. You know when you make a sandcastle and then the waves come and wash it away? That's sort of what happened with the glacier - except on a much bigger scale.

A long, long time ago, there was a huge sheet of ice called a glacier. The glacier was so big that it covered entire mountains and valleys. As the glacier moved slowly downhill, it scraped away the rocks and dirt underneath it - kind of like when you use a crayon so much that the paper underneath starts to show through.

Over many, many years, the glacier carved a big U-shaped valley in the mountain. This means that the valley is wider at the bottom than it is at the top - just like the bottom of a U. The sides of the valley are very steep because the glacier scraped away so much of the rock.

Now, the glacier is long gone, but the valley it created is still there. Sometimes people like to hike or ski in glacial valleys because they are so beautiful and interesting. They can also be home to lots of animals and plants that are adapted to living in such a unique environment.