HIGH MOUNTAIN DISTRICT 
171 
vicinity of Mount Fairweather, and this character seems 
naturally related to the gentler declivity of the mountain 
front. The enhanced alimentation of Pleistocene glaciers 
would tend everywhere to increase their thickness and 
their rate of flow, but it is easy to understand that the 
greater resistance to flow encountered on a gentle slope 
would cause 
the thicken¬ 
ing there to 
be more nota¬ 
ble than on a 
steep slope. 
So far as 
may be judged 
by the gradi¬ 
ents of the 
n eighboring 
M a 1 a s p i n a 
Glacier, the 
ice flood as¬ 
sociated with the hanging valleys and rounded crests of 
the Yakutat region should have extended farther seaward 
than the line of the present coast, and it is probable that 
the outer morainic deposit is not visible. The submerged 
moraine ridges within the bay and across its mouth (page 
49) pertain to quite moderate expansions of the Malaspina 
Glacier. 
The inference that the sea-level associated with the 
moraine ramparts coincided with their highest summits 
may be interpreted in terms of land change or sea change. 
The local phenomena would be explained by assuming 
that the land has risen about 1,500 feet since the building 
of the moraines, or by assuming that the sea has subsided 
that amount, and it is, of course, possible that there have 
been changes of both land and sea, and that the discord- 
FIG. 8l. HANGING VALLEY ON THE SOUTH SIDE OF 
NUNATAK FIORD. 
