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The
Cathedral Range is a
mountain rangeA mountain range is a single, large mass consisting of a succession of mountains or narrowly spaced mountain ridges, with or without peaks, closely related in position, direction, formation, and age; a component part of a mountain system or of a mountain chain...
immediately to the South of
Tuolumne MeadowsTuolumne Meadows is a gentle, dome-studded sub-alpine meadowy section of the Tuolumne River, in the eastern section of Yosemite National Park. Its approximate location is . Its approximate elevation is 8619 feet .-Natural History:...
in
Yosemite National ParkYosemite National Park is a United States National Park spanning eastern portions of Tuolumne, Mariposa and Madera counties in east central California, United States. The park covers an area of and reaches across the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada mountain chain...
,
USAThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. It is a beautiful range, sculpted by
glacierA glacier is a large persistent body of ice that forms where the accumulation of snow exceeds its ablation over many years, often centuries. At least 0.1 km² in area and 50 m thick, but often much larger, a glacier slowly deforms and flows due to stresses induced by its weight...
s out of
graniteGranite is a common and widely occurring type of intrusive, felsic, igneous rock. Granite usually has a medium- to coarse-grained texture. Occasionally some individual crystals are larger than the groundmass, in which case the texture is known as porphyritic. A granitic rock with a porphyritic...
. The tops of the peaks in the range were above the level of the highest glaciation, and are therefore uneroded and spire-like. The range is named after
Cathedral PeakCathedral Peak is part of the Cathedral Range, a mountain range in the south-central portion of Yosemite National Park in eastern Mariposa and Tuolumne Counties. The range is an offshoot of the Sierra Nevada...
, which is shaped like a
cathedralA cathedral is a Christian church that contains the seat of a bishop...
, because of this differential
erosionErosion is when materials are removed from the surface and changed into something else. It only works by hydraulic actions and transport of solids in the natural environment, and leads to the deposition of these materials elsewhere...
.
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