MOUNT RAINIER 



In utter contrast with the glacier's dying lower end 

 are the bright snow fields on the summit in which it 

 commences its career. Hard by the rock rim of the 

 east summit crater the snows begin, enwrapping in an 

 even, immaculate layer the smooth sides of the cinder 

 cone. Only a few feet deep at first, they thicken 

 downward by degrees, until, a thousand feet below the 

 crater, they possess sufficient depth and weight to 

 acquire movement. Occasional angular crevasses here 

 interrupt the slope and force the summit-bound trav- 

 eler to make wearying detours. 



Looking down into a gash of this sort one beholds 

 nothing but clean snow, piled in many layers. Only 

 a faint blue tinges the crevasse walls, darkening but 

 slowly with the depth, in contrast to the intense indigo 

 hue characteristic of the partings in the lower course 

 of the glacier. There the material is a dense ice, more 

 or less crystalline in texture ; here it is scarcely more 

 than snow, but slightly compacted and loosely granu- 

 lar what is generally designated by the Swiss term 



neve.' 3 



For several thousand feet down, as far as the 10,000- 

 foot level, in fact, does the snow retain this granular 

 consistency. One reason for the slowness with which 

 it compacts is found in the low temperatures that pre- 

 vail at high altitudes and preclude any considerable 

 melting. The air itself seldom rises above the freezing 

 point, even in the middle of the day, and as a conse- 

 quence the snow never becomes soft and mushy, as 

 it does at lower levels. 



When snow assumes the mushy, "wet-sugar" state, 

 it is melting internally as well as at its outer surface, 

 owing both to the water that soaks into it and to the 

 warming of the air inclosed within its innumerable 

 tiny pores (which tiny air spaces, by the way, give the 

 snow its brilliant whiteness). Snow in this condition 

 has, paradoxical though it may sound, a temperature 

 a few tenths of a degree higher than the melting point 



