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Travels in Alaska

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July 8. A fine clear day. I went up the glacier to observe stakes and
found that a marked point near the middle of the current had flowed
about a hundred feet in eight days. On the medial moraine one mile
from the front there was no measureable displacement. I found a raven
devouring a tom-cod that was alive on a shallow at the mouth of the
creek. It had probably been wounded by a seal or eagle.

July 10. I have been getting acquainted with the main features of the
glacier and its fountain mountains with reference to an exploration
of its main tributaries and the upper part of its prairie-like trunk,
a trip I have long had in mind. I have been building a sled and must
now get fully ready to start without reference to the weather.
Yesterday evening I saw a large blue berg just as it was detached
sliding down from the front. Two of Professor Reid's party rowed out
to it as it sailed past the camp, estimating it to be two hundred and
forty feet in length and one hundred feet high.



Chapter XVIII

My Sled-Trip on the Muir Glacier


I started off the morning of July 11 on my memorable sled-trip to
obtain general views of the main upper part of the Muir Glacier and
its seven principal tributaries, feeling sure that I would learn
something and at the same time get rid of a severe bronchial cough
that followed an attack of the grippe and had troubled me for three
months. I intended to camp on the glacier every night, and did so,
and my throat grew better every day until it was well, for no lowland
microbe could stand such a trip. My sled was about three feet long
and made as light as possible. A sack of hardtack, a little tea and
sugar, and a sleeping-bag were firmly lashed on it so that nothing
could drop off however much it might be jarred and dangled in
crossing crevasses.

Two Indians carried the baggage over the rocky moraine to the clear
glacier at the side of one of the eastern Nunatak Islands. Mr. Loomis
accompanied me to this first camp and assisted in dragging the empty
sled over the moraine. We arrived at the middle Nunatak Island about
nine o'clock. Here I sent back my Indian carriers, and Mr. Loomis
assisted me the first day in hauling the loaded sled to my second
camp at the foot of Hemlock Mountain, returning the next morning.

July 13. I skirted the mountain to eastward a few miles and was
delighted to discover a group of trees high up on its ragged rocky
side, the first trees I had seen on the shores of Glacier Bay or on
those of any of its glaciers. I left my sled on the ice and climbed
the mountain to see what I might learn. I found that all the trees
were mountain hemlock (Tsuga mertensiana), and were evidently the
remnant of an old well-established forest, standing on the only
ground that was stable, all the rest of the forest below it having
been sloughed off with the soil from the disintegrating slate bed
rock. The lowest of the trees stood at an elevation of about two
thousand feet above the sea, the highest at about three thousand
feet or a little higher. Nothing could be more striking than the
contrast between the raw, crumbling, deforested portions of the
mountain, looking like a quarry that was being worked, and the
forested part with its rich, shaggy beds of cassiope and bryanthus
in full bloom, and its sumptuous cushions of flower-enameled mosses.
These garden-patches are full of gay colors of gentian, erigeron,
anemone, larkspur, and columbine, and are enlivened with happy birds
and bees and marmots. Climbing to an elevation of twenty-five hundred
feet, which is about fifteen hundred feet above the level of the
glacier at this point, I saw and heard a few marmots, and three
ptarmigans that were as tame as barnyard fowls. The sod is sloughing
off on the edges, keeping it ragged. The trees are storm-bent from
the southeast. A few are standing at an elevation of nearly three
thousand feet; at twenty-five hundred feet, pyrola, veratrum,
vaccinium, fine grasses, sedges, willows, mountain-ash, buttercups,
and acres of the most luxuriant cassiope are in bloom.

A lake encumbered with icebergs lies at the end of Divide Glacier. A
spacious, level-floored valley beyond it, eight or ten miles long,
with forested mountains on its west side, perhaps discharges to the
southeastward into Lynn Canal. The divide of the glacier is about
opposite the third of the eastern tributaries. Another berg-dotted
lake into which the drainage of the Braided Glacier flows, lies a few
miles to the westward and is one and a half miles long. Berg Lake is
next the remarkable Girdled Glacier to the southeastward.

When the ice-period was in its prime, much of the Muir Glacier that
now flows northward into Howling Valley flowed southward into Glacier
Bay as a tributary of the Muir. All the rock contours show this, and
so do the medial moraines. Berg Lake is crowded with bergs because
they have no outlet and melt slowly. I heard none discharged. I had a
hard time crossing the Divide Glacier, on which I camped. Half a mile
back from the lake I gleaned a little fossil wood and made a fire on
moraine boulders for tea. I slept fairly well on the sled. I heard
the roar of four cascades on a shaggy green mountain on the west side
of Howling Valley and saw three wild goats fifteen hundred feet up in
the steep grassy pastures.

July 14. I rose at four o'clock this cloudy and dismal morning and
looked for my goats, but saw only one. I thought there must be wolves
where there were goats, and in a few minutes heard their low, dismal,
far-reaching howling. One of them sounded very near and came nearer
until it seemed to be less than a quarter of a mile away on the edge
of the glacier. They had evidently seen me, and one or more had come
down to observe me, but I was unable to catch sight of any of them.
About half an hour later, while I was eating breakfast, they began
howling again, so near I began to fear they had a mind to attack
me, and I made haste to the shelter of a big square boulder, where,
though I had no gun, I might be able to defend myself from a front
attack with my alpenstock. After waiting half an hour or so to see
what these wild dogs meant to do, I ventured to proceed on my journey
to the foot of Snow Dome, where I camped for the night.

There are six tributaries on the northwest side of Divide arm,
counting to the Gray Glacier, next after Granite Canyon Glacier going
northwest. Next is Dirt Glacier, which is dead. I saw bergs on the
edge of the main glacier a mile back from here which seem to have
been left by the draining of a pool in a sunken hollow. A circling
rim of driftwood, back twenty rods on the glacier, marks the edge
of the lakelet shore where the bergs lie scattered and stranded. It
is now half past ten o'clock and getting dusk as I sit by my little
fossil-wood fire writing these notes. A strange bird is calling and
complaining. A stream is rushing into a glacier well on the edge of
which I am camped, back a few yards from the base of the mountain for
fear of falling stones. A few small ones are rattling down the steep
slope. I must go to bed.

July 15. I climbed the dome to plan a way, scan the glacier, and take
bearings, etc., in case of storms. The main divide is about fifteen
hundred feet; the second divide, about fifteen hundred also, is
about one and one half miles southeastward. The flow of water on the
glacier noticeably diminished last night though there was no frost.
It is now already increasing. Stones begin to roll into the crevasses
and into new positions, sliding against each other, half turning over
or falling on moraine ridges. Mud pellets with small pebbles slip and
roll slowly from ice-hummocks again and again. How often and by how
many ways are boulders finished and finally brought to anything like
permanent form and place in beds for farms and fields, forests and
gardens. Into crevasses and out again, into moraines, shifted and
reinforced and reformed by avalanches, melting from pedestals, etc.
Rain, frost, and dew help in the work; they are swept in rills,
caught and ground in pot-hole mills. Moraines of washed pebbles, like
those on glacier margins, are formed by snow avalanches deposited in
crevasses, then weathered out and projected on the ice as shallow
raised moraines. There is one such at this camp.

A ptarmigan is on a rock twenty yards distant, as if on show. It has
red over the eye, a white line, not conspicuous, over the red, belly
white, white markings over the upper parts on ground of brown and
black wings, mostly white as seen when flying, but the coverts the
same as the rest of the body. Only about three inches of the folded
primaries show white. The breast seems to have golden iridescent
colors, white under the wings. It allowed me to approach within
twenty feet. It walked down a sixty degree slope of the rock, took
flight with a few whirring wing-beats, then sailed with wings
perfectly motionless four hundred yards down a gentle grade, and
vanished over the brow of a cliff. Ten days ago Loomis told me that
he found a nest with nine eggs. On the way down to my sled I saw four
more ptarmigans. They utter harsh notes when alarmed. "Crack, chuck,
crack," with the r rolled and prolonged. I also saw fresh and old
goat-tracks and some bones that suggest wolves.

There is a pass through the mountains at the head of the third
glacier. Fine mountains stand at the head on each side. The one on
the northeast side is the higher and finer every way. It has three
glaciers, tributary to the third. The third glacier has altogether
ten tributaries, five on each side. The mountain on the left side
of White Glacier is about six thousand feet high. The moraines of
Girdled Glacier seem scarce to run anywhere. Only a little material
is carried to Berg Lake. Most of it seems to be at rest as a terminal
on the main glacier-field, which here has little motion. The curves
of these last as seen from this mountain-top are very beautiful.

It has been a glorious day, all pure sunshine. An hour or more
before sunset the distant mountains, a vast host, seemed more softly
ethereal than ever, pale blue, ineffably fine, all angles and
harshness melted off in the soft evening light. Even the snow and the
grinding, cascading glaciers became divinely tender and fine in this
celestial amethystine light. I got back to camp at 7.15, not tired.
After my hardtack supper I could have climbed the mountain again and
got back before sunrise, but dragging the sled tires me. I have been
out on the glacier examining a moraine-like mass about a third of a
mile from camp. It is perhaps a mile long, a hundred yards wide, and
is thickly strewn with wood. I think that it has been brought down
the mountain by a heavy snow avalanche, loaded on the ice, then
carried away from the shore in the direction of the flow of the
glacier. This explains detached moraine-masses. This one seems to
have been derived from a big roomy cirque or amphitheatre on the
northwest side of this Snow Dome Mountain.

To shorten the return journey I was tempted to glissade down what
appeared to be a snow-filled ravine, which was very steep. All went
well until I reached a bluish spot which proved to be ice, on which
I lost control of myself and rolled into a gravel talus at the
foot without a scratch. Just as I got up and was getting myself
orientated, I heard a loud fierce scream, uttered in an exulting,
diabolical tone of voice which startled me, as if an enemy, having
seen me fall, was glorying in my death. Then suddenly two ravens came
swooping from the sky and alighted on the jag of a rock within a few
feet of me, evidently hoping that I had been maimed and that they
were going to have a feast. But as they stared at me, studying my
condition, impatiently waiting for bone-picking time, I saw what they
were up to and shouted, "Not yet, not yet!"

July 16. At 7 A.M. I left camp to cross the main glacier. Six ravens
came to the camp as soon as I left. What wonderful eyes they must
have! Nothing that moves in all this icy wilderness escapes the eyes
of these brave birds. This is one of the loveliest mornings I ever
saw in Alaska; not a cloud or faintest hint of one in all the wide
sky. There is a yellowish haze in the east, white in the west, mild
and mellow as a Wisconsin Indian Summer, but finer, more ethereal,
God's holy light making all divine.

In an hour or so I came to the confluence of the first of the seven
grand tributaries of the main Muir Glacier and had a glorious view of
it as it comes sweeping down in wild cascades from its magnificent,
pure white, mountain-girt basin to join the main crystal sea, its
many fountain peaks, clustered and crowded, all pouring forth their
tribute to swell its grand current. I crossed its front a little
below its confluence, where its shattered current, about two or three
miles wide, is reunited, and many rills and good-sized brooks glide
gurgling and ringing in pure blue channels, giving delightful
animation to the icy solitude.

Most of the ice-surface crossed to-day has been very uneven, and
hauling the sled and finding a way over hummocks has been fatiguing.
At times I had to lift the sled bodily and to cross many narrow,
nerve-trying, ice-sliver bridges, balancing astride of them, and
cautiously shoving the sled ahead of me with tremendous chasms on
either side. I had made perhaps not more than six or eight miles in
a straight line by six o'clock this evening when I reached ice so
hummocky and tedious I concluded to camp and not try to take the sled
any farther. I intend to leave it here in the middle of the basin and
carry my sleeping-bag and provisions the rest of the way across to
the west side. I am cozy and comfortable here resting in the midst of
glorious icy scenery, though very tired. I made out to get a cup of
tea by means of a few shavings and splinters whittled from the bottom
board of my sled, and made a fire in a little can, a small campfire,
the smallest I ever made or saw, yet it answered well enough as far
as tea was concerned. I crept into my sack before eight o'clock as
the wind was cold and my feet wet. One of my shoes is about worn
out. I may have to put on a wooden sole. This day has been cloudless
throughout, with lovely sunshine, a purple evening and morning. The
circumference of mountains beheld from the midst of this world of
ice is marvelous, the vast plain reposing in such soft tender light,
the fountain mountains so clearly cut, holding themselves aloft with
their loads of ice in supreme strength and beauty of architecture. I
found a skull and most of the other bones of a goat on the glacier
about two miles from the nearest land. It had probably been chased
out of its mountain home by wolves and devoured here. I carried its
horns with me. I saw many considerable depressions in the glacial
surface, also a pitlike hole, irregular, not like the ordinary wells
along the slope of the many small dirt-clad hillocks, faced to the
south. Now the sun is down and the sky is saffron yellow, blending
and fading into purple around to the south and north. It is a
curious experience to be lying in bed writing these notes, hummock
waves rising in every direction, their edges marking a multitude
of crevasses and pits, while all around the horizon rise peaks
innumerable of most intricate style of architecture. Solemnly
growling and grinding moulins contrast with the sweet low-voiced
whispering and warbling of a network of rills, singing like
water-ouzels, glinting, gliding with indescribable softness and
sweetness of voice. They are all around, one within a few feet of
my hard sled bed.

July 17. Another glorious cloudless day is dawning in yellow and
purple and soon the sun over the eastern peak will blot out the blue
peak shadows and make all the vast white ice prairie sparkle. I slept
well last night in the middle of the icy sea. The wind was cold but
my sleeping-bag enabled me to lie neither warm nor intolerably cold.
My three-months cough is gone. Strange that with such work and
exposure one should know nothing of sore throats and of what are
called colds. My heavy, thick-soled shoes, resoled just before
starting on the trip six days ago, are about worn out and my feet
have been wet every night. But no harm comes of it, nothing but good.
I succeeded in getting a warm breakfast in bed. I reached over the
edge of my sled, got hold of a small cedar stick that I had been
carrying, whittled a lot of thin shavings from it, stored them on my
breast, then set fire to a piece of paper in a shallow tin can, added
a pinch of shavings, held the cup of water that always stood at my
bedside over the tiny blaze with one hand, and fed the fire by adding
little pinches of shavings until the water boiled, then pulling
my bread sack within reach, made a good warm breakfast, cooked and
eaten in bed. Thus refreshed, I surveyed the wilderness of crevassed,
hummocky ice and concluded to try to drag my little sled a mile or
two farther, then, finding encouragement, persevered, getting it
across innumerable crevasses and streams and around several lakes and
over and through the midst of hummocks, and at length reached the
western shore between five and six o'clock this evening, extremely
fatigued. This I consider a hard job well done, crossing so wildly
broken a glacier, fifteen miles of it from Snow Dome Mountain, in
two days with a sled weighing altogether not less than a hundred
pounds. I found innumerable crevasses, some of them brimful of water.
I crossed in most places just where the ice was close pressed and
welded after descending cascades and was being shoved over an upward
slope, thus closing the crevasses at the bottom, leaving only the
upper sun-melted beveled portion open for water to collect in.

Vast must be the drainage from this great basin. The waste in
sunshine must be enormous, while in dark weather rains and winds also
melt the ice and add to the volume produced by the rain itself. The
winds also, though in temperature they may be only a degree or two
above freezing-point, dissolve the ice as fast, or perhaps faster,
than clear sunshine. Much of the water caught in tight crevasses
doubtless freezes during the winter and gives rise to many of the
irregular veins seen in the structure of the glacier. Saturated snow
also freezes at times and is incorporated with the ice, as only from
the lower part of the glacier is the snow melted during the summer. I
have noticed many traces of this action. One of the most beautiful
things to be seen on the glacier is the myriads of minute and
intensely brilliant radiant lights burning in rows on the banks of
streams and pools and lakelets from the tips of crystals melting in
the sun, making them look as if bordered with diamonds. These gems
are rayed like stars and twinkle; no diamond radiates keener or more
brilliant light. It was perfectly glorious to think of this divine
light burning over all this vast crystal sea in such ineffably fine
effulgence, and over how many other of icy Alaska's glaciers where
nobody sees it. To produce these effects I fancy the ice must be
melting rapidly, as it was being melted to-day. The ice in these
pools does not melt with anything like an even surface, but in long
branches and leaves, making fairy forests of points, while minute
bubbles of air are constantly being set free. I am camped to-night on
what I call Quarry Mountain from its raw, loose, plantless condition,
seven or eight miles above the front of the glacier. I found enough
fossil wood for tea. Glorious is the view to the eastward from this
camp. The sun has set, a few clouds appear, and a torrent rushing
down a gully and under the edge of the glacier is making a solemn
roaring. No tinkling, whistling rills this night. Ever and anon I
hear a falling boulder. I have had a glorious and instructive day,
but am excessively weary and to bed I go.

July 18. I felt tired this morning and meant to rest to-day. But
after breakfast at 8 A.M. I felt I must be up and doing, climbing,
sketching new views up the great tributaries from the top of Quarry
Mountain. Weariness vanished and I could have climbed, I think, five
thousand feet. Anything seems easy after sled-dragging over hummocks
and crevasses, and the constant nerve-strain in jumping crevasses so
as not to slip in making the spring. Quarry Mountain is the barest
I have seen, a raw quarry with infinite abundance of loose decaying
granite all on the go. Its slopes are excessively steep. A few
patches of epilobium make gay purple spots of color. Its seeds fly
everywhere seeking homes. Quarry Mountain is cut across into a series
of parallel ridges by oversweeping ice. It is still overswept in
three places by glacial flows a half to three quarters of a mile
wide, finely arched at the top of the divides. I have been sketching,
though my eyes are much inflamed and I can scarce see. All the lines
I make appear double. I fear I shall not be able to make the few more
sketches I want to-morrow, but must try. The day has been gloriously
sunful, the glacier pale yellow toward five o'clock. The hazy air,
white with a yellow tinge, gives an Indian-summerish effect. Now the
blue evening shadows are creeping out over the icy plain, some ten
miles long, with sunny yellow belts between them. Boulders fall now
and again with dull, blunt booming, and the gravel pebbles rattle.

July 19. Nearly blind. The light is intolerable and I fear I may be
long unfitted for work. I have been lying on my back all day with a
snow poultice bound over my eyes. Every object I try to look at seems
double; even the distant mountain-ranges are doubled, the upper an
exact copy of the lower, though somewhat faint. This is the first
time in Alaska that I have had too much sunshine. About four o'clock
this afternoon, when I was waiting for the evening shadows to enable
me to get nearer the main camp, where I could be more easily found in
case my eyes should become still more inflamed and I should be unable
to travel, thin clouds cast a grateful shade over all the glowing
landscape. I gladly took advantage of these kindly clouds to make an
effort to cross the few miles of the glacier that lay between me and
the shore of the inlet. I made a pair of goggles but am afraid to
wear them. Fortunately the ice here is but little broken, therefore
I pulled my cap well down and set off about five o'clock. I got on
pretty well and camped on the glacier in sight of the main camp,
which from here in a straight line is only five or six miles away. I
went ashore on Granite Island and gleaned a little fossil wood with
which I made tea on the ice.

July 20. I kept wet bandages on my eyes last night as long as I
could, and feel better this morning, but all the mountains still
seem to have double summits, giving a curiously unreal aspect to the
landscape. I packed everything on the sled and moved three miles
farther down the glacier, where I want to make measurements. Twice
to-day I was visited on the ice by a hummingbird, attracted by the
red lining of the bear-skin sleeping-bag.

I have gained some light on the formation of gravel-beds along
the inlet. The material is mostly sifted and sorted by successive
railings and washings along the margins of the glacier-tributaries,
where the supply is abundant beyond anything I ever saw elsewhere.
The lowering of the surface of a glacier when its walls are not too
steep leaves a part of the margin dead and buried and protected from
the wasting sunshine beneath the lateral moraines. Thus a marginal
valley is formed, clear ice on one side, or nearly so, buried ice
on the other. As melting goes on, the marginal trough, or valley,
grows deeper and wider, since both sides are being melted, the land
side slower. The dead, protected ice in melting first sheds off the
large boulders, as they are not able to lie on slopes where smaller
ones can. Then the next larger ones are rolled off, and pebbles
and sand in succession. Meanwhile this material is subjected to
torrent-action, as if it were cast into a trough. When floods come
it is carried forward and stratified, according to the force of the
current, sand, mud, or larger material. This exposes fresh surfaces
of ice and melting goes on again, until enough material has been
undermined to form a veil in front; then follows another washing and
carrying-away and depositing where the current is allowed to spread.
In melting, protected margin terraces are oftentimes formed. Perhaps
these terraces mark successive heights of the glacial surface. From
terrace to terrace the grist of stone is rolled and sifted. Some,
meeting only feeble streams, have only the fine particles carried
away and deposited in smooth beds; others, coarser, from swifter
streams, overspread the fine beds, while many of the large boulders
no doubt roll back upon the glacier to go on their travels again.

It has been cloudy mostly to-day, though sunny in the afternoon, and
my eyes are getting better. The steamer Queen is expected in a day or
two, so I must try to get down to the inlet to-morrow and make signal
to have some of the Reid party ferry me over. I must hear from home,
write letters, get rest and more to eat.

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