On this flat surface, very humid and favorable to snowfall, a period of ice known as the Upper Plistocene (2 million to 20,000 years ago) developed between the Torre plateau and the Curral Matins area and Vale do Conde to the north. This cap, about 80 meters high, fed the various valley glaciers that developed around it. Most of the Planalto da Torre is constituted by an erosion area, without any superficial deposit, and the ice transported the materials resulting from the alterations previous to the Glacier period.

All this granite that was visible, in contact with the fluctuations in daily and seasonal temperatures, fractures in parallel, forming slabs.

The study of the Serra da Estrela glaciation started in 1884 by Vasconcelos Pereira Cabral, but it was the detail of the study by the German geographer Hermann Lautensach of 1932 that brought more knowledge to the Serra da Estrela Glaciation process. In 1971 Suzanne Daveau published the results of new investigations on the Serra da Estrela Glaciation. In 1997, the topic returned to interest the researchers, they are in a perliminary phase.

According to Lautensach, the distribution of the ice sheet at the top of Serra da Estrela would have an asymmetrical west-east profile, with more ice rising on the east side, due to the prevailing winds of that time coming from the west quadrant.

The relief of the nascent part of the Central Massif of Serra da Estrela has broader and deeper glacial erosion forms, formed either by circuits or glacial valleys.