Glacier Bjy itself is a sixty-mile-deep fjord that Ic.uls in fnnn 

 the channel that separates ("hichagof Island from the mainland. 

 This narrow channel is walled by lowering mountains, for the 

 most part of a rather modest aspect but here and there, notably 

 in the Fairweather Ran>;e. of extremely alpine and aggressive 

 mien Among these, snow gathers and is converted into what is 

 called firn. and then into montane ice to form icefields on the 

 higher cols. From these are born many glaciers (or ice rivers) 

 that do all the things described by the specialists and do them 

 in a sort of textbook orderliness that anybody can understand. In 

 fact, they are classic glaciers. 



Having gathered a sufficient overload of ice high up, the 

 mountains disgorge the surplus in the form of perfectly clean- 



resultant ice at the boiioni. the glacier grows ever onward If tin- 

 snowfall drops, or if the air temperature in the valley at the fwi 

 of the glacier rises and stays above a certain point, the front of 

 the glacier will diminish in thickness and eventually start melt 

 ing backward At such time it simply dumps all the broken rock 

 that it is bearing (either under it. in it. or on lop of it) on the 

 valley floor. If it then begins to grow again, its from pushes all 

 this material ahead of it like a great bulldozer to form what is 

 called a terminal moraine. The glory of some of these Alaskan 

 glaciers is that they reach the sea at the head of their fjords 

 Then they "calve" their beautiful peacock-blue-green ice directly 

 into the water in the form of icebergs However not all of them 

 now do so. for. at the moment, we appear to be in a warm phase 



White sheep rams resting. Despite their glaring whiteness, these animals have an uncanny way of 

 hi'Cinning invisible, through shadow breakup, against the face of a bare dark gray mountain side 



cut rivers of ice. These come down the valleys in a slightly cur- 

 vaceous manner that belies their inherent power and destruc- 

 tiveness. They burr off all the corners of the valleys through 

 which they pass, and they carry everything loose or movable 

 down with them. Most of them move only an inch or so a day, but 

 there are some, such as the famous Muir Glacier, that may move 

 downhill as much as thirty feet a day. This is a veritable torrent. 

 As long as the snowfall above is greater than the melting of the 



so that most glaciers, especially those in Alaska, are retreating. 

 Some are, strangely, advancing. 



Advances and retreats of glaciers are cyclical, or at least 



Overleaf: The Brown Bears are agile and can become ag- 

 gressive. They can cover ground at unexpected speed but are 

 most dangerous in shallow water. 



