The rock glacier Innere Ölgrube, located in a small side valley of the Kauner Valley (Ötztal Alps, Austria), consists of two separate, tongue-shaped rock glaciers lying next to each other. Investigations indicate that both rock glaciers contain a core of massive ice. During winter, the temperature at the base of the snow cover (BTS) is significantly lower at the active rock glacier than on permafrost-free ground adjacent to the rock glacier. Discharge is characterized by strong seasonal and diurnal variations, and is strongly controlled by the local weather conditions. Water temperature of the rock glacier springs remains constantly low, mostly below 1°C during the whole melt season. The morphology of the rock glaciers and the presence of meltwater lakes in their rooting zones as well as the high surface flow velocities of >1 m/yr point to a glacial origin. The northern rock glacier, which is bounded by lateral moraines, evolved from the debris-covered tongue of a small glacier of the Little Ice Age with its last highstand around A.D. 1850. Due to the global warming in the following decades, the upper parts of the steep and debris-free ice glacier melted, whereas the debris-covered glacier tongue transformed into an active rock glacier. Due to this evolution and due to the downslope movement, the northern rock glacier, although still active, at present is cut off from its ice and debris supply. The southern rock glacier has developed approximately during the same period from a debris-covered cirque glacier at the foot of the Wannetspitze massif.

Two cores were drilled on rock glacier Lazaun in the southern Ötztal Alps (N Italy). The average ice content of core Lazaun I is 43 vol.% and of core Lazaun II is 22 vol.%. Radiocarbon dating of plant macrofossil remains of core Lazaun I yielded ages ranging from 8960 cal yr BP at a depth of ca. 23.5 m to 2240 cal yr BP at a depth of 2.8 m, indicating that the ice near the base is approximately 10,300 yr old. The rock glacier was intact since that time and the ice persisted even during warm periods of the Holocene. An ice-free debris layer between 16.8 and 14.7 m separates the rock glacier into two frozen bodies. Inclinometer measurements indicate that both frozen bodies are active and that deformation occurs within a shear horizon at a depth of 20–25 m at the base of the lower frozen body and to a minor extent at a depth of approximately 14 m at the base of the upper frozen body. The ice-free debris layer in the middle of the Lazaun rock glacier indicates a more than five centennial long drought period, which dates to about 4300–3740 cal yr BP.