THE ARAPAHOE GLACIER 847 



schrund, or gaping crevasse, at the line which may be taken as 

 the limit of the neve and the beginning of the glacier proper 

 (Fig. 6). The very steep slope of the neve, its whiteness, 

 and the solitariness of this great crack make it strikingly promi- 

 nent from any point from which the glacier is visible. It is 

 almost continuous around the cirque and stands open at many 

 places as much as ten or fifteen feet. A partial descent into this 

 opening revealed the fact that it traverses from ten to twenty feet 

 of snow at the surface, below which is a colonnade of great icicles 

 lining a chasm at least fifty feet deep. Independent of these 

 icicles the walls of the chasm below the ten or twenty feet of snow, 

 seem to be of the same blue ice which is seen in the crevasses at 

 the center of the glacier. 



In the examination of crevasses the excessive melting of the 

 past summer proved a most fortunate circumstance. Probably 

 every crevasse down to the most minute was uncovered. The 

 real significance of this appeared after a snowfall of not more than 

 two inches on August 28. On the following day many crevasses, 

 having widths approximating ten inches, were found completely 

 covered by crusts of snow. It seemed evident from this that a 

 snowfall of a very few inches would easily obscure crevasses in 

 which a man might be lost. 



The complete absence of surface snow was of great advan- 

 tage in observing the stratification of the ice. Dark lines which 

 were nearly horizontal and continuous for long distances were 

 plainly visible for some miles. These mark the outcrops of ice 

 strata. The alternate strata are of clear ice, while the inter- 

 vening ones have a more spongy texture, the constituent beds 

 being for the most part not thicker than two inches and usually 

 less than one inch. The wasting of layers of varying hardness 

 produces small cliffs and platforms analogus to those observed 

 in canyons cut in stratified rock. The fine debris accumulates 

 along the lines of these outcrops and forms the dark lines which 

 are visible for great distances. The dip of stratification planes 

 near the margin of the ice is well seen in the canyons of sur- 

 face streams and is uniformly toward the direction from which 

 the ice comes (Fig. 7). Dips of thirty degrees or more 



