850 N. M. FENNEMAN 



plete glacial character, often show this knobby surface to a 

 remarkable degree. 



The water issuing from below the glacier is characteristically 

 milky. Small pools are found whose bottoms cannot be seen 

 at depths greater than four inches. The turbid water escaping 

 from below is soon mixed with the clear drainage from the sur- 

 face, and the turbidity is thereby reduced ; but the first few 

 lakes of the long chain in the valley below are notably turbid. 



There are no records of the extent of this glacier in former 

 years. It is viewed from the rim of the cirque by occasional 

 visitors to Arapahoe peak, but visits to the glacier itself have 

 been rare. A few photographs taken from the surrounding 

 heights in former years would indicate that the loss of forty 

 or fifty feet in depth during the season just passed is not all to 

 be credited to the permanent wasting of the glacier. That 

 amount has plainly disappeared from the surface since last win- 

 ter ; this conclusion seems necessary from the presence of 

 absolutely fresh mud on the top of the moraine which rises to 

 that height above the present ice surface. Former photographs, 

 however, also show this same ridge rising above the ice, though 

 by a less amount than at the present time. As stated above, the 

 past two or three years have been favorable to wasting. As the 

 glacier is now accurately mapped and largely photographed, a 

 few more years may yield the interesting determination whether 

 the present climate of this locality in the Rocky Mountains is 

 capable of supporting a permanent glacier or whether the recently 

 observed shrinkage is a part of its final disappearance. 



A second consideration of theoretical significance is con- 

 nected with the rock terraces several hundred feet high on the 

 sides of the valley below the present glacier (Fig. i). These 

 plainly indicate an uplift. It is equally plain that the glaciation 

 was not the result of the uplift. The valley cut below these 

 terraces is several hundred feet deep and five hundred to one 

 thousand feet wide. If the glaciation as well as the valley 

 trenching resulted from this uplift, then the small stream must 

 have cut out the above-mentioned valley in the time required for 

 the ice to accumulate after the climate became suited to glaciers. 



