GLACIERS OF THE CANADIAN ROCKIES AND SELKIRKS. SS 



fact that the ice of the glacier is continually moving forward. Owing to the rock 

 veneer which completely covers the nose of Victoria, the amount of melting 

 even during midsummer is very small. The last episode here was one of advance, 

 the glacier having extended itself, some decades ago, into a forest of spruce and 

 fir and checked its own advance by mounting a heavy moraine of rock fragments 

 which it was incapable of pushing aside (plate v, figure i). The cut stumps and 

 broken trunks which lie about the nose, some of them entirely out of reach of 

 the present glacier, appear to have been produced by an avalanche from between 

 Mt. Aberdeen and Castle Crags, which encircled the nose when it stood some- 

 what farther back than at present. Trees now growing in the path of this 

 avalanche are 28.3 inches in circumference and by calculation should be 130 

 years old. In order to determine how the nose was behaving, three accurate 

 measurements were made with a steel tape between definite points upon coarse 

 blocks of the old moraine and upon others that seemed rather firmly embedded 

 in the frontal slope. Between July 9 and September 13, 1904, in all 66 days, 

 each of the latter blocks had settled back approximately an inch, presumably 

 owing to the wastage of the ice beneath from melting. Confirmatory evidence 

 that such melting was in progress was furnished by a small clear stream of water at 

 32°, which escaped through the rocks just west of the nose. Between September 

 13, 1904, and September 2, 1905, when measurements were again made, this 

 small recession was partially made up, but the blocks still lacked .36 in. to .72 

 in. of regaining their former position. With the front so delicately poised it is 

 evident that a very small additional impulse from behind would inaugurate an 

 advance. 



At a point 2,000 feet up from the real nose, at about the middle of the oblique 

 ice front already noted, there lies a large red quartzite boulder, which was used 

 by the Messrs. Vaux as a reference block. This is the largest of the three blocks 

 in the middle foreground of plate x, figure 3, as it appeared in August, 1903. 

 This boulder was observed protruding from the ice, a little over half-way up the 

 face, in the midsummer of 1898, by Prof. Charles E. Fay. In this position it was 

 photographed by him, and also a week later, when it had fallen. Plate x, figure 

 2, shows the boulder in position in the ice. In 1899, July 26, this boulder was 

 found by the Messrs Vaux to be 20 feet from the ice front. How much of this 

 20 feet was due to recession and how much to the rolling or bounding of the block 

 in falling, cannot now be determined. On July 24, 1900, the boulder was found 

 to be 26 feet from the ice, indicating a recession of 6 feet for the year. August 

 23, 1903, the block was found by the writer to be 76 feet from the ice foot, giving 

 an average recession since 1899 of 14 feet. The following July the block was 

 marked with bright red paint, so that it could be readily located by others: "A. 

 Ice foot 74.5 ft. 7/23/'o4. Sr." The elevation of a line upon the face, deter- 

 mined by spirit level from Lake Louise as a base, was recorded as 6,264 feet' 

 above sea-level. When compared with the distance noted above for the previous 



' This elevation was based upon 5,675 feet for the height of Lake Louise above sea-level. The corrected 

 elevation as now given bv the Canadian Topographic Survey is 5,670 feet, or five feet lower. 



