Dear Dominik Amschwand and co-authors,
Your manuscript received two very detailed and critical reviews that both highlighted the novelty of the research and the bringing together of a wide range of methods and data and they confirm that the manuscripts seems in general to be well within the scope of TC. Both reviews were in general positive but also indicated a few aspects that should be improved which in brief encompass a more consistent interpretation of the exposure ages, a better use/analysis of the velocity data and a better focused and condensed presentation.
Given the response of the authors, it seems that the authors seem to be able to address the raised points by the referees well and that the revised manuscript has a good chance to be accepted. I therefore ask the authors to undertake the planned revisions and submit the revised document.
Please address all the raised points by the referees and provide a point by point response and explain how you addressed these points (potentially a track change version may be helpful). Note that as the revisions will likely be rather substantial, the revised manuscript will likely be sent to review again.
I thank the authors for their considerate and detailed response of how to address the points raised by the referees.

Andreas Vieli, editor
5 Dec 2020

Dear Dominik Amschwand and co-authors,
Your manuscript received two very detailed and critical but overall positive reviews that both highlighted the novelty of the research and the bringing together of a wide range of methods and data. However, they also raised some critical and more substantial points which in brief encompass a more consistent interpretation of the exposure ages, a better use/analysis of the velocity data and a better focused and condensed presentation.

This lead to rather substantial revisions and hence the revised manuscript was sent out to review to one of the previous referees again and I also critically looked at it myself.
I agree with the re-review of the referee 2 that the revisions strongly improved the manuscript and satisfactorily addressed all the critical points. In particular the re-interpretation of the age-interpretation is now much more convincing and better supported by the data.
Overall the manuscript should now be accepted after addressing the few minor and rather technical corrections raised by the referee and myself (see list below, Note, all line below refer to the revised manuscript).
I congratulate the others for a very interesting and novel contribution to rockglacier research. At this stage I also would like to thank the authors for their cooperation and their handling of the reviewing phase and the careful documentation of the undertaken revisions in their response.
Andreas Vieli, handling editor, 25 Feb 2021

Review by referee 2 Leif Anderson
The authors done an admirable job improving the manuscript and addressed the reviewers' comments and suggestions in a comprehensive manner. I am happy to recommend this substantial contribution for publication after a few minor presentation issues are addressed.
The figures are very clear and communicate the results well. The manuscript will be even more well received if a bit more time is spent on the text. Below I suggest in some places splitting long paragraphs in two and synthesizing and simplifying text in some places. It was a pleasure reviewing your research. Well done!

List of minor suggestions
Line 32-50 consider breaking this into two paragraphs for easier reading and communication of the main points here.

Line 33. suggest a rewrite from "as diagnostic for" to "to be diagnostic of"

Line 37. consider 'in a delayed fashion' instead of 'attenduated and delayed'

Line 66 perhaps consider reword of 'Holocene-long development' to 'development through the entire Holocene'

Line 98 This sentence would be more effective if the list came second and the use of the methods came first.

Line 118-19. Very slick!

Line 196. Consider breaking this paragraph up into a couple.

Line 209. 'evidence' does not seem to be the right word here. Maybe 'to confirm the presence of a shear layer'? Also a citation to other work where a shear layers are present would be good here.

Figure 2. I think a figure title is needed here. Plus unbolded text I believe for figure captions.
Figure 3. Very nice figure.
Figure 4. the utm distances on the x and y are hard to read as are the contour labels. I would suggest removing the utm labels as there is a scale bar in the figure already. Photo views are really well donehere.

Line 359. 'looking at' is a bit casual, perhaps 'interpreting' ?

Table 1. If there is space adding a column for the unit number would be helpful. But not necessary.

Line 390. Consider a more technical term for 'matched' here

Table 4 is very helpful for the reader.

Line 548. All the info is good here but it I wonder if the take homes can be simplified a bit here. It is not totally clear after going through the paragraph.

Line 685. Need an 'a' between 'as' and 'stress'

Line 757. Anderson, L.S. should be inserted as the second author here


Minor comments by editor Andreas Vieli

Line 46-47: just a suggestion, liquid water input (besides temp and snow) seems also important for seasonal variations, maybe integrate this here (see Cicoira et al 2019, EPSL)


Line 99: you could use the abbreviation FE here as you already introduced it above on line 70.

Line 121: average error of 1-3m. is this the vertical or horizontal position error?

Line 195: '… in two dimensions along a central flowline with….'

Line 282: I would delete 'apparently'

Fig. 4 caption: add age unit of exposure ages: '…exposure ages in ka BP'

Fig. 6: similar add a sentence what the numbers are on the foto: exposure ages in ka BP

Fig. 7 caption: add age unit of exposure ages: '…exposure ages in ka BP' (yes it is on the right ages already, but the labels in the figures have no units!).

Line 523 etc…: relatively small wobble is also the case of relatively fast flowing rockglaciers in the mattertal (see Wirz et al 2016 Earth Surf. Dynam., 4, 103-123, 2016
www.earth-surf-dynam.net/4/103/2016/
(based on continuous inclinometer data and gps)

Line 569: 'most upstream'

Line 663: style, '…to earlier research…'

Acknowledgments: please also acknowledge the input by the two referees.