244 



Sierra Club Bulletm 



medial moraine, a long, curving embankment of broken rock 

 and boulders fifteen or twenty feet high which extends back 

 about five miles to the entrance of a large tributary from Mt. 

 Monica. 



By sunrise next morning we were well on our way up our 

 glacial highway. Below us the canon lay shadowy and dark, 

 but far down the valley the jagged crest of Sally Serena 

 glowed in the early sunlight. The cornice of snow above us 

 and the white '']vir\gh2.Vi' ahead likewise shone with sunrise 

 color, and long sunbeams shot across the canon and touched 

 the craggy walls where mountain goats could be seen pausing 

 now and then to watch us as we toiled so far beneath them. 

 At its lower end the glacier was entirely free from snow and 

 its unfissured surface made rapid progress possible ; but as we 

 climbed higher it was broken by high seracs and ice cascades, 

 and by deep crevasses that stretched across the greater part 

 of its width. Back and forth we traveled to find a passage 

 amongst them, walking perhaps a quarter of a mile to win a 

 hundred yards. To gain time we cut across the ridge on our 

 right, around which the glacier made a long bend, and climbed 

 up and along it toward the glacier's higher fields. 



At about the 9,000 level we struck out across the glacier with 

 the summit directly ahead. Once fairly out upon it we could 

 begin to appreciate the magnitude of this vast amphitheater of 

 ice. A field fully three miles wide separated the ridge we had 

 just left from the peak of Bruce and stretched beyond it in 

 unbroken splendor to the West Kootenay Divide, five, perhaps 

 six miles away. On this western wall a shallow rim of rock 

 only occasionally was visible along its crest, for in many places 

 the ice swept to the summit and broke off in a cornice on the 

 Kootenay side. From a wide bench on the flank of Monica, the 

 shining guardian of the West Kootenay Divide, another 

 majestic glacier flowed down to join the Starbird; and beyond 

 Monica's glorious front other tributaries from the ''^wngirzM" 

 and from northward facing cirques along the basin's southern 

 wall added their splendor of snowy fields and blue-shadowed 

 cascades. 



Mt. Bruce itself was a massive pyramid of rock that rose 

 over two thousand feet above the point where we began our 



