THE GLACIERS OF MT. RAINIER 



655 



countless tiny rills which, uniting, form 

 swift rivulets and torrents, indeed 

 veritable river systems on a minature 

 scale that testify with eloquence to the 

 rapidity with which the sun consumes 

 the snow. 



COWLITZ GLACIER. 



Iinmediately adjoining the 

 the Paradise Glacier on the 

 northeast, and not separated 

 from it by any definite bar- 

 rier, lies the Cowlitz Glacier, 

 one of the stateliest ice 

 streams of Mount Rainier. 

 It flows in a southeasterly 

 direction, and burrows its 

 nose deeply into the forest- 

 covered hills at the mount- 

 ain's foot. Its upper course 

 consists of two parallel-flow- 

 ing ice streams, intrenched 

 in profound troughs, which 

 they have enlarged laterally 

 until now only a narrow, 

 ragged crest of rock remains 

 between them, resembling a 

 partition a thousand feet in 

 height. At the upper end of 

 this crest stands Gibraltar 

 Rock. 



At the point of confluence 

 of the two branches there 

 begins a long medial moraine 

 that stretches like a black 

 tape the whole length of the 

 lower course. To judge by 

 its position midway on the 

 glacier's back, the two tribu- 

 taries must be very nearly 

 equal in strength, yet, when 

 traced to their sources they 

 are found to originate in 

 widely different ways. The 

 north branch, named In- 

 graham Glacier (after Maj. 

 E. S. Ingraham, one of 

 Rainier's foremost pioneers) , 

 comes from the neves on the 

 summit; while the south branch heads 

 in a pocket immediately under Gibraltar. 

 No snow comes to it from the summit; 

 hence we can not escape the conclusion 

 that it receives through direct precipi- 

 tation and through wind drifting about 

 as much snow as its sister branch re- 



ceives from the summit regions. Like 

 the glacier troughs below, the pocket 

 appears to have widened laterally under 

 the influence of the ice, and is now 

 separated from the Nisqually ice fields 

 to the west by only a narrow rock 



Fhoto by Malthes. 



Cascades of Ingraham Glacier. 



in the backtlrount) little tahom.^ (11,117 feet), a remnant of the outer 



layers ok the volcano, now mostly stripped away by the ice. 



partition, the Cowlitz Cleaver, as it is 

 locally called. Up this narrow crest 

 the route to Gibraltar Rock ascends. 

 The name "cleaver," it may be said in 

 passing, is most apt for the designation 

 of a narrow rock crest of this sort, and 

 well deserves to be more generally used 



