Cosmogenic 10Be Exposure Age for the Cut Bank Creek terminal moraine, Glacier National Park, MT

Mountain glaciers are highly sensitive to temperature and precipitation with geologic records that are superb proxies of climate change. In the Rocky Mountains of the western United States, abundant records of Late Pleistocene glaciation provide an opportunity for understanding paleoclimate throughout this region, especially in places where the chronology of glaciation is precisely known. Cosmogenic ¹⁰Be exposure dating has been widely applied to glacial deposits in the Rocky Mountains, providing precise numerical ages and improving the understanding of glacial chronologies in this region. Despite these improvements, the chronology of the last Pleistocene glaciation of the northernmost Rocky Mountains is not completely understood. Cosmogenic 10Be exposure dating was applied to the Cut Bank Creek valley in the Lewis Range of the Northern Rocky Mountains, where a discrete mountain glacier deposited a broad terminal moraine during the last Pleistocene glaciation. Exposure ages of eight quartzite and sandstone boulders at the crest of the ice-distal sector of the terminal moraine indicate that abandonment occurred at 15.6 ± 0.8 ka. This age is consistent with age limits of several terminal moraines elsewhere in the Northern Rocky Mountains, suggesting that the last Pleistocene glaciation culminated in this region after the global Last Glacial Maximum.