up all over it. From these, furiously hissing and incandescent 

 gases and glowing hot sand boiled up and covered everything to 

 a depth of more than a hundred feet, and spread for over fifteen 

 miles like the foam on a bowl of detergent. It has been estimated 

 that more than a cubic mile of this glowing sand appeared all 

 of a sudden. 



But no sooner had this phenomenon died down than 

 Mt. Katmai itself literally blew up in a series of world-shaking 

 explosions, causing some two cubic miles of molten rock and 

 lava to be projected into the upper atmosphere, where it broke 

 up into tiny particles, cooled, and then wandered all around the 



White or Dall's wild sheep. A flock of ewes and young, as 

 shown here, may leave the rams on other grazing grounds 

 for some weeks. 



earth, causing incredible sunsets for four years and appreciably 

 lowering the over-all world temperature. Hot ashes and pumice 

 stone fell all over an area of several hundred square miles, 

 completely blocking harbors and rivers as far away as Kodiak 

 Island, where fine ash piled up to almost a foot. 



The valley over which the masses of glowing sand were 

 extruded was later named the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes 

 because of the endless fumaroles that were left smoking about 

 its surface. These have now died down so that only a hundred 



or so are still reliably active, but among these are half a dozen 

 properly impressive ones that send up plumes about five hun- 

 dred feet tall. Although all wildlife was destroyed by these 

 volcanic excesses only half a century ago, it is now creeping 

 inexorably back and reclaiming the land. Lichens are now well 

 within the sand area, and the waters are again filled with 

 Rainbow and Lake Trout, Dolly Varden, Grayling, Whitefish, 

 Northern Pike, and even Salmon. The convulsions have not 

 recurred but this does not mean that they may not blast out 

 again at any time, for this area lies on the very brink of the great 

 circum-Pacific crack in the earth's crust. 



If more than half a dozen volcanos of the size of Mt. Katmai 

 ever went off at once, we might well enter a new ice age. and 

 literally overnight, for their combined effect in cutting out the 

 sun's radiation by dust clouds in the upper atmosphere could 

 well drop the over-all surface temperature of the earth for one 

 or two seasons to a point where winter snows would not melt. 

 Was this what happened to the poor shredded and frozen mam- 

 moths? 



NAKED MOUNTAINS 



The main body of this province is, in its way. as fabulous as the 

 area of volcanic mountains. Nobody who has not visited this 

 country and few of those who have, even by air, can gain any 

 real conception of its sheer size. Instead of having a "spine" 

 this land has a sort of central gutter or gut. This is an enormous 

 valley containing the Yukon River, which rises away to the east 

 in the Stikine Mountains. It is thus divided into two major 

 blocks, each of which is subdivided into a number of perfectly 

 distinct mountain ranges. 



North and east of the Yukon there are two enormous moun- 

 tain complexes, called the Brooks and the Mackenzie Ranges. 

 These are not as yet fully explored, and their size is little appre- 

 ciated. The former is for the most part a barren wilderness of 

 ranges and peaks, though its valleys are choked with the ubiqui- 

 tous spruce balsam and aspen of the north timberland. The 

 Mackenzie Range really towers into the skies but is cleft by 

 endless deep forested valleys. It is really remarkable how little 

 is known about this land. 



That part of central or inland Alaska that lies south of the 

 Yukon is somewhat better known. It is composed, basically, of 

 two great parts. The first is the stem of the volcanic string that 

 leads from the Aleutians via the Alaska Peninsula to culminate 

 in Mt.McKinley, a peak that tops 20,000 feet. The second com- 

 prises the whole of the territory south of the Yukon and east of 

 Cook Inlet. This contains many subcomplexes of mountains, each 

 of stunning proportions, all of which pile up to the St. Elias Range, 

 the peak of which is over 18,000 feet in height. At 60 degrees 

 north such altitudes result in most of the upper slopes of these 

 ranges being glaciated. We have met glaciers before in Green- 

 land, but there they are the sprouts of a true icecap. Here, in 

 Alaska, they are of another gender. They are montane glaciers, 

 and from them we can learn a great deal about the past history 

 of our earth. 



RIVERS OF ICE 



If you want to see and study glaciers, there is no better place to 

 go to than Glacier Bay National Park. This encompasses almost 

 230.000 acres of magnificent territory about Glacier Bay, which 

 lies at the extreme southeastern corner of the Alaskan province. 



60 



