652 WILLIS T. LEE 



The ice is hard and compact to the surface. Bowlders weigh- 

 ing two hundred or three hundred pounds were rolled down the 

 slopes but made little impression on the surface of the ice. A 

 small lake fifteen feet across and four feet deep was found on the 

 surface. Late in the afternoon I found that the ice had softened 

 scarcely enough during the day to prevent me from slipping 

 even on comparatively gentle slopes. 



The mountaineers who are familiar with the Arapahoes, had 

 warned us against descending over the ice on account of crevasses. 

 An opening seen about five hundred feet below the top of the 

 ridge and which appears as a broken line in the illustration (Fig. 

 1 ) is presumably a crevasse. Others were seen from a distance 

 which were not so well defined. I had no opportunity for close 

 inspection. The mountaineers gave me somewhat careful des- 

 criptions of the openings, and told of a man who had been lost 

 presumably in a crevasse. Their search for him resulted in find- 

 ing nothing but his overcoat. From the descriptions given by 

 these men, and from what I saw of the snow and ice, I am con- 

 vinced that true crevasses are to be found there. 



The stratified nature of the ice is seen along the steep 

 face of its lower edge. Dark bands, probably due to the accu- 

 mulation of foreign material on the surface during the summer, 

 alternate with lighter bands. Some of the individual bands were 

 traced, with the aid of the field glass, for long distances. Only 

 the uppermost of these bands can be distinguished in the accom- 

 panying photograph. This is seen as a light line along the upper 

 edge of the face of the ice, and is due to the whiteness of last 

 winter's snow. On the surface of the ice at the right and a 

 little way back from the edge, is a dark spot where the fresh 

 white snow has been removed from the darkened surface of an 

 older accumulation. 



Along the base of the eastern rim of the cirque, a relatively 

 small amount of snow and ice accumulates to form the smaller 

 field. Its tendency to movement indicated by the slope of its 

 surface, is diagonally opposed to that of the greater mass mov- 

 ing; from the west and south. Over the surface of this smaller 



