2 JO ANNALS NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCJEXCES 



of Miller Eiver. One is immediately impressed — first, with the narrow- 

 ness of the ridge ; second, with the roughl_y triangular shape of the teeth 

 of the comb (arete), and third, with the abundance of cirques, many of 

 them occupied by tarns, on either side. This ridge is not serrated more 

 than normal in the district, for nearly every crest line is a narrow, jagged 

 series of cliffs always difficult to traverse. 



The trigonal pj^ramidal teeth, which are referred to above, are not 

 irregularities characteristic of the ridge crest. Nearly every culminating 

 peak of sufficient prominence to have attracted a name to itself is a pyra- 

 mid terminating upward in an apex, so sharp that not more than a dozen 

 men could occupy it at once. These points have been called "horns" in 

 the Alps, e. g., Matterhorn, Dreieckhorn, etc. Locally they are called 

 "hay-stacks." Usually they are accessible only from the soiithern slopes 

 because the northern face is precipitous and presents from a few hundred 

 to a thousand feet of almost vertical cliff face. It is at the foot of this 

 northern face that the small cliff glacier exists^ largely because it is there 

 protected from the sun^s heat throughout most of the day. Standing on 

 one of these "horns" one can count a dozen others at varying distances in 

 every direction. Certain areas at an elevation of 6000 feet are character- 

 ized by rolling surfaces which are comparatively smooth (P in Fig. 6). 

 These are interpreted as parts of the peneplain not affected by glaciation. 



DEAINAGE 



The climate of the northern Cascades is temperate. In the larger 

 valley bottoms the temperature never falls below 0° Fahrenheit, nor rises 

 above 100° Fahrenheit, and the daily variation for weeks at a time Avill 

 not be more than 10° above or below 40° Fahrenheit. The area lies in 

 the belt of prevailing westerlies and for a preponderant portion of the 

 seasons the air moves inland from the Pacific Ocean, after being warmed 

 by the Japanese current. In the winter, this warm wind blowing from 

 the southwest will melt snow wdth surprising rapidity and the great 

 floods of the year result. They immediately follow the lowest stage in 

 the river run-off — that is to say, about November 15, following the 

 minimum run-off period of late October. In the spring, the melting of 

 the winter's snowfall sustains the run-off well into the summer, and it is 

 not until about July 15 that the streams begin to lose volume markedly. 

 The months of January, February and March are those of least run-off. 

 Such a regime has been called "alpine" ^^ in Europe to describe streams 

 rising in the high Alps and fed until midsummer by melting snows 

 (Fig. 7). 



12 E. DE Martonne : Traite de Geographle Pby., p. ">oQ. 1009. 



