68 UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO STUDIES 



Sierra Blanca Glaciers. — "The valley of the Huerfano, heading 

 on the northeast side of Blanca Peak, is distinguished from the others 

 by the presence of living glaciers — small, it is true, but characteristic," 

 under the steep north face of Blanca Peak. The width of the north 

 glacier is 



about 800 feet and its greatest length is about 1,000 feet, although the ice probably 

 extends a considerable distance farther beneath the terminal moraine. The 

 glacier lies in a pocket on the mountain side, and the ice is probably quite thick. 

 A prospecting tunnel, starting in the moraine below the edge of the visible ice, 

 went horizontally in the clear ice for a distance of 115 feet without reaching rock, 

 which, taking into account the slope of the surface, demonstrates a vertical thick- 

 ness of over 80 feet. The slope of the ice surface is very steep, about 42° 



Two embryonic terminal morainic ridges are visible, the lower and larger one some 

 400 feet below the present edge of visible ice. The ice ... . shows the char- 

 acteristic upturned dirt-bands looped concentrically about the point of supply, 

 and the surface of the lower half of the glacier is for the most part covered with 

 fine black gravelly dirt, residual from the dirt-bands. Many small longitudinal 

 rivulets have cut gullies down the otherwise notably smooth surface of the ice, 

 exposing the banded ice beneath the dirt covering. The ice itself displays char- 

 acteristic gletscherkorne about one-tenth inch in diameter. Because of the con- 

 formation of the pocket in which the ice accumulates, the production of crevasses 

 is impossible, with the exception of a definite bergschrund which marks the line 

 where the upper edge of the ice pulls away from the rock wall in the wasting 

 season The Blanca glaciers possess an added interest in being the southern- 

 most existing glaciers yet reported in the Rocky Mountains, and, so far as known 

 to the writer, the southernmost in the United States. Their latitude is 37° 35' N., 

 their longitude 105° 28' W., and their elevation about 12,000 feet.' 



Unnamed Ice-Masses. — Cross^ reports a "remnant of crevassed 

 neve ice, of a bluish color," on the north slope of a high ridge east of 

 Dallas Peak, in Telluride Quadrangle. Cross and Howe^ repeat the 

 statement concerning neve ice in Telluride Quadrangle, and say that 

 "small glaciers are known at several places in the Front Range, north- 

 east of Denver," thus tacitly recognizing the vaHdity of the designa- 



■ SiEBENTHAL, C. E., "Notes on Glaciation in the Sangre de Cristo Range, Colorado," Journ. Geol., 

 Vol. XV, pp. 18-22, 1907. 



' Cross, Whitman, " General Geology," Telluride Polio, No. $7, Geologic Atlas of the United States, U.S. 

 Geol. Surv., p. 15. 



» Cross, Whitman, and Howe, Ernest, "Geography and General Geology of the Quadrangle," Silverton 

 Folio, No. 120, Geologic Atlas of the United Slates, U.S. Geol. Surv., p. 25, 1905. 



