HANGING VALLEYS 421 



and an occasional dwarf willow abounds well up toward 4,000 feet. The 

 birches were all left below the valley mouth. 



Botner glaciers, usually longer than wide, abound in this region at 

 elevations above 4,000 feet and northerly exposure. They have no ap- 

 pearance of being remnants of former tributary valley glaciers, but 

 appear to have originated as patches of ice on the mountain side. They 

 gave me a distinct impression of eating into the mountain side as a 

 strong acid might eat into iron. They are strikingly contrasted to the 

 tongues of the great Jostedal ice sheet in possessing enormous moraines 

 at their lower ends. These moraines are often greater in bulk than the 

 mass of ice that seems to have made them. This is true of the Skaala 

 glaciers of Tjugedal (figure 2, 1 and 2). They lie side by side on the 

 mountain side like a pair of spectacles, a huge pillar of black rock rising 

 nose-like between them. They measure about 1% miles from extreme 

 east to west and half a mile or so from front to back. The rock behind 

 rises a thousand feet in a precipice whose lowest part is the freshest and 

 steepest, as if the ice had lately and suddenly sunk into the rock. Below, 

 the two run together again near the elevation of 4,000 feet. Isolated 

 under the ice foot is another snow mass of conic form, the result of 

 summer avalanches. The moraines are of great volume and moss- 

 covered and much weathered in the outer parts, which have the form of 

 wall or rampart, while those nearer the ice are fresh and unweathered. 

 Gravel makes the greater part of these moraines, but large stones are 

 not uncommon in the upper part. One was found 18 inches long, well 

 planed and striated, and a number show traces of glaciation ; but this is 

 not characteristic. Clay is not present. Even in the plain of deposit 

 which the stream is building within the lines of moraine, the finest 

 material is but a gritty sand. In the main Tjugedal stream, however, I 

 found a very fine deposit on the stones. 



The crest of Skaala above the glaciers is a ridge about 60 paces wide 

 and 1,200 long, falling steeply on the south side also to an outlying field 

 of the great ice sheet. The snow supply of the Skaala botner glaciers 

 does not come to it from the mountain above, but is limited to what falls 

 on their surfaces. Viewed from across the valley, these and similar 

 glaciers look like the work of some great burrowing animal, the moraine 

 representing the excavated stuif lying in front of the burrow. A little 

 west of these lies another botner (3, figure 2) on the south wall of Tjuge- 

 dal, but without a glacier, its foot at 3,500 feet. The snowline of the 

 Loen region is near 5,000 feet, varying a good deal, of course, for local 

 reasons of slope and exposure ; but there are no bare areas of importance 

 above that level. 



