Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 76.djvu/307

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THE HUBBARD GLACIER, ALASKA
303

Disenchantment Bay. If avalanches were not abundant enough, however, along its tributaries it ma}' not feel this impulse at all. In any event it will continue to be, as it now is, one of the grand spectacles of nature, and worthy of the visits of appreciative men.

Beginning of Advance

The last paragraph was written in December, 1908. During the summer of 1909 the National Geographic Society's Alaskan Expedition, in charge of Professor E. S. Tarr and the writer, observed what seems to be the beginning of the advance predicted above, which has been

Fig. 12. Dark cliff of eastern Hubbard Glacier pushed up through ablation moraine between 1905 and 1909, and marking the beginning of the advance.

more fully described elsewhere.[1] The stagnant, dark-colored ice shown on the extreme right in Fig. 11 was resuming activity. Breaking had commenced, ice blocks were being pushed up through the morainic cover, as is shown in detail in Fig. 12. Stones were sliding down the surface and revived streams were burying willows growing near the ice front. A renewal of activity was in progress, but how great an advance there may be will not be known till studies can be made in the summer of 1910.

An adjacent ice tongue, the Hidden Glacier, advanced over two miles between 1906 and 1909. If the south side of the Hubbard Glacier advances a mile and half, however, it will override Osier Island once more (Fig. 13). This would change Russell Fiord southeast of the Hubbard Glacier from an arm of the sea to a fresh-water lake

  1. National Geographic Magazine. Vol. XXI., January, 1910.