EXPLORING THE MOUNTAIN AND ITS GLACIERS, 1896 



of a few lanes of clear ice between the ill-defined medial 

 moraines, was completely concealed beneath a desolate 

 sheet of angular stones. On reaching the east side of 

 the glacier we were confronted with a wall of clay and 

 stones, the inner slope of a moraine similar in all re- 

 spects to the one we had descended to reach the west 

 border of the glacier. A little search revealed a locality 

 where a tongue of ice in a slight embayment projected 

 some distance up the wall of morainal material, and a 

 steep climb of 50 or 60 feet brought us to the summit. 

 The glacier has recently shrunk that is, its surface 

 has been lowered from 80 to 100 feet by melting. 



On the east side of the glacier we found several 

 steep, sharp-crested ridges, clothed with forest trees, 

 with narrow, grassy, and flower-strewn dells between, 

 in which banks of snow still lingered. The ridges are 

 composed of bowlders and angular stones of a great 

 variety of sizes and shapes, and are plainly lateral 

 moraines abandoned by the shrinking of the glacier. 

 Choosing a way up one of the narrow lanes, bordered 

 on each side by steep slopes densely covered with trees 

 and shrubs, we found secure footing in the hard gran- 

 ular snow, and soon reached a more open, parklike 

 area, covered with mossy bosses of turf, on which grew 

 a great profusion of brilliant flowers. Before us rose 

 the great cliffs which partially inclose the amphi- 

 theater in which Carbon Glacier has its source. These 

 precipices, as already stated, have a height of about 

 4,000 feet, and are so steep that the snow does not 

 cling to them, but descends in avalanches. Above the 

 cliffs, where the inclination is less precipitous, the snow 

 lies in thick layers, the edges of which are exposed in a 

 vertical precipice rising above the avalanche-swept 

 rock-slope below. Far above, and always the central 

 object in the wild scenery surrounding us, rose the 

 brilliant white Liberty Cap, one of the pinnacles on 

 the rim of the great summit crater. Our way then 

 turned eastward, following the side of the mountain, 



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