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I STARTED off the morning of
July 11 on my memorable sled-trip to obtain general views of the main upper
part of the Muir Glacier, and its seven principal tributaries, feeling sure
that I would learn something and at the same time get rid of a severe
bronchial cough that followed an attack of the grippe and had troubled me
for three months. I intended to camp on the glacier every night, and did so,
and my throat grew better every day until it was well, for no lowland
microbe could stand such a trip. My sled was about three feet long and made
as light as possible. A sack of hardtack, a little tea and sugar, and a
sleeping-bag were firmly lashed on it so that nothing could drop off however
much it might be jarred and dangled in crossing crevasses.
Two Indians carried the
baggage over the rocky moraine to the clear glacier at the side of one of
the eastern Nunatak Islands. Mr. Loomis accompanied me to this first camp
and assisted in dragging the empty sled over the moraine. We arrived at the
middle Nunatak Island about nine o'clock. Here I sent back my Indian
carriers, and Mr. Loomis assisted me the first day in hauling the loaded
sled to my second camp at the foot of Hemlock Mountain, returning the next
morning.
July 13. I skirted the
mountain to eastward a few miles and was delighted to discover a group of
trees high up on its ragged rocky side, the first trees I had seen on the
shores of Glacier Bay or on those of any of its glaciers. I left my sled on
the ice and climbed the mountain to see what I might learn. I found that all
the trees were mountain hemlock (Tsuga mertensiana), and were evidently the
remnant of an old, well-established forest, standing on the only ground that
was stable, all the rest of the forest below it having been sloughed off
with the soil from the disintegrating slate bed rock. The lowest of the
trees stood at an elevation of about two thousand feet above the sea, the
highest at about three thousand feet or a little higher. Nothing could be
more striking than the contrast between the raw, crumbling, deforested
portions of the mountain, looking like a quarry that was being worked, and
the forested part with its rich, shaggy beds of cassiope and bryanthus in
full bloom, and its sumptuous cushions of flower-enameled mosses. These
garden-patches are full of gay colors of gentian, erigeron, anemone,
larkspur, and columbine, and are enlivened with happy birds and bees and
marmots. Climbing to an elevation of twenty-five hundred feet, which is
about fifteen hundred feet above the level of the glacier at this point, I
saw and heard a few marmots, and three ptarmigans that were as tame as
barnyard fowls. The sod is sloughing off on the edges, keeping it ragged.
The trees are storm-bent from the southeast. A few are standing at an
elevation of nearly three thousand feet; at twenty-five hundred feet, pyrola,
veratrum, vaccinium, fine grasses, sedges, willows, mountain-ash,
buttercups, and acres of the most luxuriant cassiope are in bloom.
A lake encumbered with
icebergs lies at the end of Divide Glacier. A spacious, level-floored valley
beyond it, eight or ten miles long, with forested mountains on its west
side, perhaps discharges to the southeastward into Lynn Canal. The divide of
the glacier is about opposite the third of the eastern tributaries. Another
berg-dotted lake into which the drainage of the Braided Glacier flows, lies
a few miles to the westward and is one and a half miles long. Berg Lake is
next the remarkable Girdled Glacier to the southeastward.
When the ice-period was in
its prime, much of the Muir Glacier that now flows northward into Howling
Valley flowed southward into Glacier Bay as a tributary of the Muir. All the
rock contours show this, and so do the medial moraines. Berg Lake is crowded
with bergs because they have no outlet and melt slowly. I heard none
discharged. I had a hard time crossing the Divide Glacier, on which I
camped. Half a mile back from the lake I gleaned a little fossil wood and
made a fire on moraine boulders for tea. I slept fairly well on the sled. I
heard the roar of four cascades on a shaggy green mountain on the west side
of Howling Valley and saw three wild goats fifteen hundred feet up in the
steep, grassy pastures.
July 14. I rose at four
o'clock this cloudy and dismal morning and looked for my goats, but saw only
one. I thought there must be wolves where there were goats, and in a few
minutes heard their low, dismal, far-reaching howling. One of them sounded
very near and came nearer until it seemed to be less than a quarter of a
mile away on the edge of the glacier. They had evidently seen me, and one or
more had come down to observe me, but I was unable to catch sight of any of
them. About half an hour later, while I was eating breakfast, they began
howling again, so near I began to fear they had a mind to attack me, and I
made haste to the shelter of a big square boulder, where, though I had no
gun, I might be able to defend myself from a front attack with my
alpenstock. After waiting half an hour or so to see what these wild dogs
meant to do, I ventured to proceed on my journey to the foot of Snow Dome,
where I camped for the night.
There are six tributaries on
the northwest side of Divide arm, counting to the Gray Glacier, next after
Granite Canon Glacier going northwest. Next is Dirt Glacier, which is dead.
I saw bergs on the edge of the main glacier a mile back from here which seem
to have been left by the draining of a pool in a sunken hollow. A circling
rim of driftwood, back twenty rods on the glacier, marks the edge of the
lake-let shore where the bergs lie scattered and stranded. It is now half
past ten o'clock and getting dusk as I sit by my little fossil-wood fire
writing these notes. A strange bird is calling and complaining. A stream is
rushing into a glacier well on the edge of which I am camped, back a few
yards from the base of the mountain for fear of falling stones. A few small
ones are rattling down the steep slope. I must go to bed.
July 15. I climbed the dome
to plan a way, scan the glacier, and take bearings, etc., in case of storms.
The main divide is about fifteen hundred feet; the second divide, about
fifteen hundred also, is about one and one half miles southeastward. The
flow of water on the glacier noticeably diminished last night though there
was no frost. It is now already increasing. Stones begin to roll into the
crevasses and into new positions, sliding against each other, half turning
over or falling on moraine ridges. Mud pellets with small pebbles slip and
roll slowly from ice-hummocks again and again. How often and by how many
ways are boulders finished and finally brought to anything like permanent
form and place in beds for farms and fields, forests and gardens. Into
crevasses and out again, into moraines, shifted and reinforced and re-formed
by avalanches, melting from pedestals, etc. Rain, frost, and dew help in the
work; they are swept in rills, caught and ground in pot-hole mills. Moraines
of washed pebbles, like those on glacier margins, are formed by snow
avalanches deposited in crevasses, then weathered out and projected on the
ice as shallow, raised moraines. There is one such at this camp.
A ptarmigan is on a rock
twenty yards distant, as if on show. It has red over the eye, a white line,
not conspicuous, over the red, belly white, white markings over the upper
parts on ground of brown and black wings, mostly white as seen when flying,
but the coverts the same as the rest of the body. Only about three inches of
the folded primaries show white. The breast seems to have golden iridescent
colors, white under the wings. It allowed me to approach within twenty feet.
It walked down a sixty degree slope of the rock, took flight with a few
whirring wing-beats, then sailed with wings perfectly motionless four
hundred yards down a gentle grade, and vanished over the brow of a cliff.
Ten days ago Loomis told me that he found a nest with nine eggs. On the way
down to my sled I saw four more ptarmigans. They utter harsh notes when
alarmed. "Crack, chuck, crack," with the r rolled and prolonged. I also saw
fresh and old goat-tracks and some bones that suggest wolves.
There is a pass through the
mountains at the head of the third glacier. Fine mountains stand at the head
on each side. The one on the northeast side is the higher and finer every
way. It has three glaciers, tributary to the third. The third glacier has
altogether ten tributaries, five on each side. The mountain on the left side
of White Glacier is about six thousand feet high. The moraines of Girdled
Glacier seem scarce to run anywhere. Only little material is carried to Berg
Lake. Most of it seems to be at rest as a terminal on the main
glacier-field, which here has little motion. The curves of these last as
seen from this mountain-top are very beautiful.
It has been a glorious day,
all pure sunshine. An hour or more before sunset the distant mountains, a
vast host, seemed more softly ethereal than ever, pale blue, ineffably fine,
all angles and harshness melted off in the soft evening light. Even the snow
and the grinding, cascading glaciers became divinely tender and fine in this
celestial amethystine light. I got back to camp at 7.15, not tired. After my
hardtack supper I could have climbed the mountain again and got back before
sunrise, but dragging the sled tires me. I have been out on the glacier
examining a moraine-like mass about a third of a mile from camp. It is
perhaps a mile long, a hundred yards wide, and is thickly strewn with wood.
I think that it has been brought down the mountain by a heavy snow
avalanche, loaded on the ice, then carried away from the shore in the
direction of the flow of the glacier. This explains detached moraine-masses.
This one seems to have been derived from a big roomy cirque or amphitheater
on the northwest side of this Snow Dome Mountain.
To shorten the return journey
I was tempted to glissade down what appeared to be a snow-filled ravine,
which was very steep. All went well until I reached a bluish spot which
proved to be ice, on which I lost control of myself and rolled into a gravel
talus at the foot without a scratch. Just as I got up and was getting myself
orientated, I heard a loud fierce scream, uttered in an exulting, diabolical
tone of voice which startled me, as if an enemy, having seen me fall, was
glorying in my death. Then suddenly two ravens came swooping from the sky
and alighted on the jag of a rock within a few feet of me, evidently hoping
that I had been maimed and that they were going to have a feast. But as they
stared at me, studying my condition, impatiently waiting for bone-picking
time, I saw what they were up to and shouted, "Not yet, not yet!"
July 16. At 7 A.M. I left
camp to cross the main glacier. Six ravens came to the camp as soon as I
left. What wonderful eyes they must have! Nothing that moves in all this icy
wilderness escapes the eyes of these brave birds. This is one of the
loveliest mornings I ever saw in Alaska; not a cloud or faintest hint of one
in all the wide sky. - There is a yellowish haze in the east, white in the
west, mild and mellow as a Wisconsin Indian Summer, but finer, more
ethereal, God's holy light making all divine.
In an hour or so I came to
the confluence of the first of the seven grand tributaries of the main Muir
Glacier and had a glorious view of it as it comes sweeping down in wild
cascades from its magnificent, pure white, mountain-girt basin to join the
main crystal sea, its many fountain peaks, clustered and crowded, all
pouring forth their tribute to swell its grand current. I crossed its front
a little below its confluence, where its shattered current, about two or
three miles wide, is reunited, and many rills and good-sized brooks glide
gurgling and ringing in pure blue channels, giving delightful animation to
the icy solitude.
Most of the ice-surface
crossed to-day has been very uneven, and hauling the sled and finding a way
over hummocks has been fatiguing. At times I had to lift the sled bodily and
to cross many narrow, nerve-trying, ice-sliver bridges, balancing astride of
them, and cautiously shoving the sled ahead of me with tremendous chasms on
either side. I had made perhaps not more than six or eight miles in a
straight line by six o'clock this evening when I reached ice so hummocky and
tedious I concluded to camp and not try to take the sled any farther. I
intend to leave it here in the middle of the basin and carry my sleeping-bag
and provisions the rest of the way across to the west side. I am cozy and
comfortable here resting in the midst of glorious icy scenery, though very
tired. I made out to get a cup of tea by means of a few shavings and
splinters whittled from the bottom board of my sled, and made a fire in a
little can, a small camp-fire, the smallest I ever made or saw, yet it
answered well enough as far as tea was concerned. I crept into my sack
before eight o'clock as the wind was cold and my feet wet. One of my shoes
is about worn out. I may have to put on a wooden sole. This day has been
cloudless throughout, with lovely sunshine, a purple evening and morning.
The circumference of mountains beheld from the midst of this world of ice is
marvelous, the vast plain reposing in such soft, tender light, the fountain
mountains so clearly cut, holding themselves aloft with their loads of ice
in supreme strength and beauty of architecture. I found a skull and most of
the other bones of a goat on the glacier about two miles from the nearest
land. It had probably been chased out of its mountain home by wolves and
devoured here. I carried its horns with me. I saw many considerable
depressions in the glacial surface, also a pitlike hole, irregular, not like
the ordinary wells along the slope of the many small dirt-clad hillocks,
faced to the south. Now the sun is down and the sky is saffron yellow,
blending and fading into purple around to the south and north. It is a
curious experience to be lying in bed writing these notes, hummock waves
rising in every direction, their edges marking a multitude of crevasses and
pits, while all around the horizon rise peaks innumerable of most intricate
style of architecture. Solemnly growling and grinding moulins contrast with
the sweet, low-voiced whispering and warbling of a network of rills, singing
like water-ouzels, glinting, gliding with indescribable softness and
sweetness of voice. They are all around, one within a few feet of my hard
sled-bed.
July 17. Another glorious
cloudless day is dawning in yellow and purple and soon the sun over the
eastern peak will blot out the blue peak shadows and make all the vast white
ice prairie sparkle. I slept well last night in the middle of the icy sea.
The wind was cold but my sleeping-bag enabled me to lie neither warm nor
intolerably cold. My three-months cough is gone. Strange that with such work
and exposure one should know nothing of sore throats and of what are called
colds. My heavy, thick-soled shoes, resoled just before starting on the trip
six days ago, are about worn out and my feet have been wet every night. But
no harm comes of it, nothing but good. I succeeded in getting a warm
breakfast in bed. I reached over the edge of my sled, got hold of a small
cedar stick that I had been carrying, whittled a lot of thin shavings from
it, stored them on my breast, then set fire to a piece of paper in a shallow
tin can, added a pinch of shavings, held the cup of water that always stood
at my bedside over the tiny blaze with one hand, and fed the fire by adding
little pinches of shavings until the water boiled, then pulling my bread
sack within reach, made a good warm breakfast, cooked and eaten in bed. Thus
refreshed, I surveyed the wilderness of crevassed, hummocky ice and
concluded to try to drag my little sled a mile or two farther, then, finding
encouragement, persevered, getting it across innumerable crevasses and
streams and around several lakes and over and through the midst of hummocks,
and at length reached the western shore between five and six o'clock this
evening, extremely fatigued. This I consider a hard job well done, crossing
so wildly broken a glacier, fifteen miles of it from Snow Dome Mountain, in
two days with a sled weighing altogether not less than a hundred pounds. I
found innumerable crevasses, some of them brimful of water. I crossed in
most places just where the ice was close pressed and welded after descending
cascades and was being shoved over an upward slope, thus closing the
crevasses at the bottom, leaving only the upper sun-melted beveled portion
open for water to collect in.
Vast must be the drainage
from this great basin. The waste in sunshine must be enormous, while in dark
weather rains and winds also melt the ice and add to the volume produced by
the rain itself. The winds also, though in temperature they may be only a
degree or two above freezing-point, dissolve the ice as fast, or perhaps
faster, than clear sunshine. Much of the water caught in tight crevasses
doubtless freezes during the winter and gives rise to many of the irregular
veins seen in the structure of the glacier. Saturated snow also freezes at
times and is incorporated with the ice, as only from the lower part of the
glacier is the snow melted during the summer. I have noticed many traces of
this action. One of the most beautiful things to be seen on the glacier is
the myriads of minute and intensely brilliant radiant lights burning in rows
on the banks of streams and pools and lakelets from the tips of crystals
melting in the sun, making them look as if bordered with diamonds. These
gems are rayed like stars and twinkle; no diamond radiates keener or more
brilliant light. It was perfectly glorious to think of this divine light
burning over all this vast crystal sea in such ineffably fine effulgence,
and over how many other of icy Alaska's glaciers where nobody sees it. To
produce these effects I fancy the ice must be melting rapidly, as it was
being melted to-day. The ice in these pools does not melt with anything like
an even surface, but in long branches and leaves, making fairy forests of
points, while minute bubbles of air are constantly being set free. I am
camped to-night on what I call Quarry Mountain from its raw, loose,
plantless condition, seven or eight miles above the front of the glacier. I
found enough fossil wood for tea. Glorious is the view to the eastward from
this camp. The sun has set, a few clouds appear, and a torrent rushing down
a gully and under the edge of the glacier is making a solemn roaring. No
tinkling, whistling rills this night. Ever and anon I hear a falling
boulder. I have had a glorious and instructive day, but am excessively weary
and to bed I go.
July 18. I felt tired this
morning and meant to rest to-day. But after breakfast at 8 A.M. I felt I
must be up and doing, climbing, sketching new views up the great tributaries
from the top of Quarry Mountain. Weariness vanished and I could have
climbed, I think, five thousand feet. Anything seems easy after
sled-dragging over hummocks and crevasses, and the constant nerve-strain in
jumping crevasses so as not to slip in making the spring. Quarry Mountain is
the barest I have seen, a raw quarry with infinite abundance of loose,
decaying granite all on the go. Its slopes are excessively steep. A few
patches of epilobium make gay purple spots of color. Its seeds fly
everywhere seeking homes. Quarry Mountain is cut across into a series of
parallel ridges by over-sweeping ice. It is still overswept in three places
by glacial flows a half to three quarters of a mile wide, finely arched at
the top of the divides. I have been sketching, though my eyes are much
inflamed and I can scarce see. All the lines I make appear double. I fear I
shall not be able to make the few more sketches I want to-morrow, but must
try. The day has been gloriously sunful, the glacier pale yellow toward five
o'clock. The hazy air, white with a yellow tinge, gives an Indian-summerish
effect. Now the blue evening shadows are creeping out over the icy plain,
some ten miles long, with sunny yellow belts between them. Boulders fall now
and again with dull, blunt booming, and the gravel pebbles rattle.
July 19. Nearly blind. The
light is intolerable and I fear I may be long unfitted for work. I have been
lying on my back all day with a snow poultice bound over my eyes. Every
object I try to look at seems double; even the distant mountain-ranges are
doubled, the upper an exact copy of the lower, though somewhat faint. This
is the first time in Alaska that I have had too much sunshine. About four
o'clock this afternoon, when I was waiting for the evening shadows to enable
me to get nearer the main camp, where I could be more easily found in case
my eyes should become still more inflamed and I should be unable to travel,
thin clouds cast a grateful shade over all the glowing landscape. I gladly
took advantage of these kindly clouds to make an effort to cross the few
miles of the glacier that lay between me and the shore of the inlet. I made
a pair of goggles but am afraid to wear them. Fortunately the ice here is
but little broken, therefore I pulled my cap well down and set off about
five o'clock. I got on pretty well and camped on the glacier in sight of the
main camp, which from here in a straight line is only five or six miles
away. I went ashore on Granite Island and gleaned a little fossil wood with
which I made tea on the ice.
July 20. I kept wet bandages
on my eyes last night as long as I could, and feel better this morning, but
all the mountains still seem to have double summits, giving a curiously
unreal aspect to the landscape. I packed everything on the sled and moved
three miles farther down the glacier, where I want to make measurements.
Twice to-day I was visited on the ice by a hummingbird, attracted by the red
lining of the bear-skin sleeping-bag.
I have gained some light on
the formation of gravel-beds along the inlet. The material is mostly sifted
and sorted by successive rollings and washings along the margins of the
glacier-tributaries, where the supply is abundant beyond anything I ever saw
elsewhere. The lowering of the surface of a glacier when its walls are not
too steep leaves a part of the margin dead and buried and protected from the
wasting sunshine beneath the lateral moraines. Thus a marginal valley is
formed, clear ice on one side, or nearly so, buried ice on the other. As
melting goes on, the marginal trough, or valley, grows deeper and wider,
since both sides are being melted, the land side slower. The dead, protected
ice in melting first sheds off the large boulders, as they are not able to
lie on slopes where smaller ones can. Then the next larger ones are rolled
off, and pebbles and sand in succession. Meanwhile this material is
subjected to torrent-action, as if it were cast into a trough. When floods
come it is carried forward and stratified, according to the force of the
current, sand, mud, or larger material. This exposes fresh surfaces of ice
and melting goes on again, until enough material has been undermined to form
a veil in front; then follows another washing and carrying-away and
depositing where the current is allowed to spread. In melting, protected
margin terraces are oftentimes formed. Perhaps these terraces mark
successive heights of the glacial surface. From terrace to terrace the grist
of stone is rolled and sifted. Some, meeting only feeble streams, have only
the fine particles carried away and deposited in smooth beds; others,
coarser, from swifter streams, overspread the fine beds, while many of the
large boulders no doubt roll back upon the glacier to go on their travels
again.
It has been cloudy mostly
to-day, though sunny in the afternoon, and my eyes are getting better. The
steamer Queen is expected in a day or two, so I must try to get down to the
inlet to-morrow and make signal to have some of the Reid party ferry me
over. I must hear from home, write letters, get rest and more to eat.
Near the front of the glacier
the ice was perfectly free, apparently, of anything like a crevasse, and in
walking almost carelessly down it I stopped opposite the large granite
Nunatak Island, thinking that I would there be partly sheltered from the
wind. I had not gone a dozen steps toward the island when I suddenly dropped
into a concealed water-filled crevasse, which on the surface showed not the
slightest sign of its existence. This crevasse like many others was being
used as the channel of a stream, and at some narrow point the small cubical
masses of ice into which the glacier surface disintegrates were jammed and
extended back farther and farther till they completely covered and concealed
the water. Into this I suddenly plunged, after crossing thousands of really
dangerous crevasses, but never before had I encountered a danger so
completely concealed. Down I plunged over head and ears, but of course
bobbed up again, and after a hard struggle succeeded in dragging myself out
over the farther side. Then I pulled my sled over close to Nunatak cliff,
made haste to strip off my clothing, threw it in a sloppy heap and crept
into my sleeping-bag to shiver away the night as best I could.
July 21. Dressing this rainy
morning was a miserable job, but might have been worse. After wringing my
sloppy underclothing, getting it on was far from pleasant. My eyes are
better and I feel no bad effect from my icy bath. The last trace of my
three-months cough is gone. No lowland grippe microbe could survive such
experiences.
I have had a fine telling day
examining the ruins of the old forest of Sitka spruce that no great time ago
grew in a shallow, mud-filled basin near the southwest corner of the
glacier. The trees were protected by a spur of the mountain that puts out
here, and when the glacier advanced they were simply flooded with fine sand
and overborne. Stumps by the hundred, three to fifteen feet high, rooted in
a stream of fine blue mud on cobbles, still have their bark on. A stratum of
decomposed bark, leaves, cones, and old trunks is still in place. Some of
the stumps are on rocky ridges of gravelly soil about one hundred and
twenty-five feet above the sea. The valley has been washed out by the stream
now occupying it, one of the glacier's draining streams a mile long or more
and an eighth of a mile wide.
I got supper early and was
just going to bed, when I was startled by seeing a man coming across the
moraine, Professor Reid, who had seen me from the main camp and who came
with Mr. Loomis and the cook in their boat to ferry me over. I had not
intended making signals for them until to-morrow but was glad to go. I had
been seen also by Mr. Case and one of his companions, who were on the
western mountain-side above the fossil forest, shooting ptarmigans. I had a
good rest and sleep and leisure to find out how rich I was in new facts and
pictures and how tired and hungry I was. |
