THE GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY'S ALASKAN EXPEDITION 



25 



THE COPPER RIVER AND NORTHWESTERN RAILWAY PASSING BETWEEN CHILDS AND. 

 MILES GLACIERS AND OVER THE STAGNANT ICE OF BAIRD GLACIER 



Trains now cross the Miles Glacier Lake on a car ferry, pending completion of the bridge 

 across Copper River. (Map after U. S. Geological Survey.) (See pages 13 and 37.) 



Floral Pass, the glacier split against a 

 rock hill, or semi-nunatak, sending a 

 small tongue part way down the valley on 

 the western side of the nunatak. 



In 1909 the Lucia glacier was abso- 

 lutely transformed. It was crevassed 

 from side to side, so that the route to 

 Floral Pass, so easily followed in 1890, 

 1905, and 1906, was no longer passable. 

 The glacier was broken by great rents, 

 enclosing table- topped areas of unbroken 

 ice, on which the ablation moraine still 

 stood, and along the margin, as well as 

 within the mountain valley, was a maze 

 of crevasses, seracs, and pinnacles, giv- 

 ing the ice surface the appearance of an 



ice fall, where but three years earlier one 

 could walk in any direction with only an 

 occasional crevasse to impede the jour- 

 ney. Along the eastern margin the break- 

 ing of the glacier was still in progress and 

 the cracking of the ice and the falling of 

 ice blocks was heard every few moments, 

 while the moraine was all the time sliding 

 down the ice face or into crevasses (p.41). 

 Where in 1906 was a moderately slop- 

 ing embankment of moraine-covered ice, 

 up which we could easily climb at any 

 point, there was in 1909 an ice precipice 

 with jagged, serrated skyline, due to the 

 recent breaking of the glacier. On the 

 western margin, which we were unable to 



