270 R. S. TARE RECENT ADVANCE OF GLACIERS IN ALASKA 



tongue, almost if not entirely stagnant in its bulb-shaped terminus. In 

 but one section was pronounced crevassing seen, and that extended over 

 only a small area, in which the ice was bulged upward into a small dome. 

 This was so exceptional a feature in the desert of morainic waste that we 

 took a photograph of it (plate 15, figure 1), interpreting it then as the 

 result of some obstacle over which the glacier was flowing. Unfortu- 

 nately this was the only photograph taken of Atrevida glacier — a fact 

 which, however, indicates how little of exceptional interest this particular 

 glacier presented in 1905. 



Swinging past Terrace point, which bounds the outer end of the valley 

 portion of the glacier on its western side, the Atrevida coalesces with the 

 stagnant terminus of Lucia glacier, which had in 1905, and retained in 

 1906 (23late 17, figure 2), the same characteristics as those described 

 above for the Atrevida. 



Condition in 1906. — It was our intention in 1906 to cross the Atrevida 

 on our way westward across Malaspina glacier, and until we had reached 

 its very edge, late in June, 1906, we had no intimation of the striking- 

 change which had occurred in ten months (compare figures 1 and 2, 

 plate 15). The alder-covered margin, which we ascended with such ease 

 in 1905, was now transformed to a steep, jagged ice-cliff from which the 

 vegetation had been stripped, down which moraine and boulders were 

 steadily sliding, and from which huge fragments of ice were tumbling 

 (plate 17, figure 1). The margin of the glacier had advanced somewhat 

 and now rested in the fringing forest, which was being destroyed by the 

 falling of ice-blocks and boulders into it (plate 16, figure 1). By this 

 advance spruce trees over a half century old were overturned, uprooted, 

 and battered by the forward thrust and the falling blocks of rock and 

 ice (plate 17, figure 1). So frequent were these falls of ice and rock 

 that traveling along the margin was distinctly hazardous, and so steep and 

 jagged was the margin of the glacier that it could be ascended only by 

 the use of ice-axes and the hewing of steps in the ice. 



The sliding down of the moraine along the marginal ice-cliff' was form- 

 ing a talus which was rapidly advancing into the forest and including 

 battered tree fragments — veritable tree trunk boulders. "Where small 

 streams descended, new alluvial fans were spreading out over the moss- 

 covered floor of the spruce forest. The ice-margin was indeed the scene 

 of rapid changes. 



The advancing glacier had destroyed the ice-cave from which the 

 stream issued in the previous summer, and the stream now issued from 

 the very base of the ice, beneath a brokfen and faulted ice-cliff in which 



