Glacial landscapes

Preparation and Planning

You will need ICT access to present the PowerPoint slides to the students. You will need to prepare enough Student Worksheets for each student.

About the MOD Topic

The Royal Air Force (RAF) is frequently tasked to rescue climbers and walkers from dangerous situations on the mountains of Snowdonia. Sea King helicopters are based at RAF Valley, near Holyhead (Caergybi) on the Isle of Anglesey (Ynys Mon), in North Wales. Their main work is to provide a Search and Rescue flight (SAR) to find and recover pilots from crashed aircraft. When not on operations they support the local emergency services – Police, Ambulance and Mountain Rescue Services. Their helicopters are powerful enough to deal with the difficult flying conditions in mountain areas.

Most of the mountain rescues are carried out on the North and East faces of mountain areas like Snowdon (Yr Wyddfa) and the Glyder ridge. This is where the slopes are steepest and conditions are most extreme for climbers and walkers.

RAF helicopter pilots have special training to fly in these mountains. That is why the Joint Helicopter Flying School has a base at RAF Valley to train new pilots. These pilots then progress to fly in mountain areas like Norway and Afghanistan on training exercises and operational sorties. Also based at RAF Valley is the school for RAF fast jet fighter pilots. They train on Hawk TMk1 aircraft of 19R and 208R Squadrons. They receive much of their initial low-level flying training in the mountains of North Wales, where they face challenges of flying through deep, narrow and winding valleys. These provide some of the best training for operational flying abroad. Pilots from other NATO. (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) countries sometimes train in Snowdonia because of its challenging flying environment.

Further Opportunities for Learning

More detailed study of the nature and formation of selected glaciated depositional landforms – moraines, drumlins, erratics, meltwater deposits.
More detailed study of peri-glacial and fluvio-glacial erosional and depositional landforms.

Student worksheet answers

Download the teachers notes PDF to access the answers for this lesson.