Alpine permafrost

In high mountain, like the Alps, The Pamir or the Himalaya, some frozen soil may blanket the terrain. This permanently frozen ground is a permafrost. In contrast to the northern latitudes permafrost the strong slope gradient allows the mixture of ice and rocky debris to creep. Depending on the local topography such creep, especially obvious in what one called rockglacier, may act as a conveyor belt. Indeed, stones are brought to even steeper slope turning into rockfall of debris flows.

Note that this notion of permanently frozen is a bit of a misnomer. In fact, over the course of the seasons, the ground can thaw at the surface (active layer), so displacement speeds change over time.

On the interpreted figure above, the purple and green lines depict respectively the rill and the ridge of the compression bulges. The blue line on the left is the abandoned moraine of a former glacier.