HIGH MOUNTAIN DISTRICT 



171 



vicinity of Mount Fairweather, and this character seems 

 naturally related to the gentler declivity of the mountain 

 front. The enhanced alimentation of Pleistocene glaciers 

 would tend everywhere to increase their thickness and 

 their rate of flow, but it is easy to understand that the 

 greater resistance to flow encountered on a gentle slope 

 would cause 

 the thicken- 

 ing there to 

 be more nota- 

 ble than on a 

 steep slope. 



So far as 

 may be judged 

 by the gradi- 

 ents of the 

 neighboring 

 Malas pi na 

 Glacier, the 

 ice flood as- 

 sociated with the hanging valleys and rounded crests of 

 the Yakutat region should have extended farther seaward 

 than the line of the present coast, and it is probable that 

 the outer morainic deposit is not visible. The submerged 

 moraine ridges within the bay and across its mouth (page 

 49) pertain to quite moderate expansions of the Malaspina 

 Glacier. 



The inference that the sea-level associated with the 

 moraine ramparts coincided with their highest summits 

 may be interpreted in terms of land change or sea change. 

 The local phenomena would be explained by assuming 

 that the land has risen about 1,500 feet since the building 

 of the moraines, or by assuming that the sea has subsided 

 that amount, and it is, of course, possible that there have 

 been changes of both land and sea, and that the discord- 



FIG. 8l. HANGING VALLEY ON THE SOUTH SIDE OF 

 NUNATAK FIORD. 



