Exploration of the Stickeen Glaciers
Next day I planned an excursion to the so-called Dirt Glacier, the most
interesting to Indians and steamer men of all the Stickeen glaciers
from its mysterious floods. I left the steamer Gertrude for the glacier
delta an hour or two before sunset. The captain kindly loaned me his
canoe and two of his Indian deck hands, who seemed much puzzled to know
what the rare service required of them might mean, and on leaving bade
a merry adieu to their companions. We camped on the west side of the
river opposite the front of the glacier, in a spacious valley
surrounded by snowy mountains. Thirteen small glaciers were in sight
and four waterfalls. It was a fine, serene evening, and the highest
peaks were wearing turbans of flossy, gossamer cloud-stuff. I had my
supper before leaving the steamer, so I had only to make a campfire,
spread my blanket, and lie down. The Indians had their own bedding and
lay beside their own fire.
The Dirt Glacier is noted among the river men as being subject to
violent flood outbursts once or twice a year, usually in the late
summer. The delta of this glacier stream is three or four miles wide
where it fronts the river, and the many rough channels with which it is
guttered and the uprooted trees and huge boulders that roughen its
surface manifest the power of the floods that swept them to their
places; but under ordinary conditions the glacier discharges its
drainage water into the river through only four or five of the
delta-channels.
Our camp was made on the south or lower side of the delta, below all
the draining streams, so that I would not have to ford any of them on
my way to the glacier. The Indians chose a sand-pit to sleep in; I
chose a level spot back of a drift log. I had but little to say to my
companions as they could speak no English, nor I much Thlinkit or
Chinook. In a few minutes after landing they retired to their pit and
were soon asleep and asnore. I lingered by the fire until after ten
o’clock, for the night sky was clear, and the great white mountains in
the starlight seemed nearer than by day and to be looking down like
guardians of the valley, while the waterfalls, and the torrents
escaping from beneath the big glacier, roared in a broad, low monotone,
sounding as if close at hand, though, as it proved next day, the
nearest was three miles away. After wrapping myself in my blankets, I
still gazed into the marvelous sky and made out to sleep only about two
hours. Then, without waking the noisy sleepers, I arose, ate a piece of
bread, and set out in my shirt-sleeves, determined to make the most of
the time at my disposal. The captain was to pick us up about noon at a
woodpile about a mile from here; but if in the mean time the steamer
should run aground and he should need his canoe, a three whistle signal
would be given.
Following a dry channel for about a mile, I came suddenly upon the main
outlet of the glacier, which in the imperfect light seemed as large as
the river, about one hundred and fifty feet wide, and perhaps three or
four feet deep. A little farther up it was only about fifty feet wide
and rushing on with impetuous roaring force in its rocky channel,
sweeping forward sand, gravel, cobblestones, and boulders, the bump and
rumble sounds of the largest of these rolling stones being readily
heard in the midst of the roaring. It was too swift and rough to ford,
and no bridge tree could be found, for the great floods had cleared
everything out of their way. I was therefore compelled to keep on up
the right bank, however difficult the way. Where a strip of bare
boulders lined the margin, the walking was easy, but where the current
swept close along the ragged edge of the forest, progress was difficult
and slow on account of snow-crinkled and interlaced thickets of alder
and willow, reinforced with fallen trees and thorny devil’s-club
(_Echinopanax horridum_), making a jungle all but impenetrable. The
mile of this extravagantly difficult growth through which I struggled,
inch by inch, will not soon be forgotten. At length arriving within a
few hundred yards of the glacier, full of panax barbs, I found that
both the glacier and its unfordable stream were pressing hard against a
shelving cliff, dangerously steep, leaving no margin, and compelling me
to scramble along its face before I could get on to the glacier. But by
sunrise all these cliff, jungle, and torrent troubles were overcome and
I gladly found myself free on the magnificent ice-river.
The curving, out-bulging front of the glacier is about two miles wide,
two hundred feet high, and its surface for a mile or so above the front
is strewn with moraine detritus, giving it a strangely dirty, dusky
look, hence its name, the “Dirt Glacier,” this detritus-laden portion
being all that is seen in passing up the river. A mile or two beyond
the moraine-covered part I was surprised to find alpine plants growing
on the ice, fresh and green, some of them in full flower. These curious
glacier gardens, the first I had seen, were evidently planted by snow
avalanches from the high walls. They were well watered, of course, by
the melting surface of the ice and fairly well nourished by humus still
attached to the roots, and in some places formed beds of considerable
thickness. Seedling trees and bushes also were growing among the
flowers. Admiring these novel floating gardens, I struck out for the
middle of the pure white glacier, where the ice seemed smoother, and
then held straight on for about eight miles, where I reluctantly turned
back to meet the steamer, greatly regretting that I had not brought a
week’s supply of hardtack to allow me to explore the glacier to its
head, and then trust to some passing canoe to take me down to Buck
Station, from which I could explore the Big Stickeen Glacier.
Altogether, I saw about fifteen or sixteen miles of the main trunk. The
grade is almost regular, and the walls on either hand are about from
two to three thousand feet high, sculptured like those of Yosemite
Valley. I found no difficulty of an extraordinary kind. Many a crevasse
had to be crossed, but most of them were narrow and easily jumped,
while the few wide ones that lay in my way were crossed on sliver
bridges or avoided by passing around them. The structure of the glacier
was strikingly revealed on its melting surface. It is made up of thin
vertical or inclined sheets or slabs set on edge and welded together.
They represent, I think, the successive snowfalls from heavy storms on
the tributaries. One of the tributaries on the right side, about three
miles above the front, has been entirely melted off from the trunk and
has receded two or three miles, forming an independent glacier. Across
the mouth of this abandoned part of its channel the main glacier flows,
forming a dam which gives rise to a lake. On the head of the detached
tributary there are some five or six small residual glaciers, the
drainage of which, with that of the snowy mountain slopes above them,
discharges into the lake, whose outlet is through a channel or channels
beneath the damming glacier. Now these sub-channels are occasionally
blocked and the water rises until it flows alongside of the glacier,
but as the dam is a moving one, a grand outburst is sometimes made,
which, draining the large lake, produces a flood of amazing power,
sweeping down immense quantities of moraine material and raising the
river all the way down to its mouth, so that several trips may
occasionally be made by the steamers after the season of low water has
laid them up for the year. The occurrence of these floods are, of
course, well known to the Indians and steamboat men, though they know
nothing of their cause. They simply remark, “The Dirt Glacier has
broken out again.”
I greatly enjoyed my walk up this majestic ice-river, charmed by the
pale-blue, ineffably fine light in the crevasses, moulins, and wells,
and the innumerable azure pools in basins of azure ice, and the network
of surface streams, large and small, gliding, swirling with wonderful
grace of motion in their frictionless channels, calling forth devout
admiration at almost every step and filling the mind with a sense of
Nature’s endless beauty and power. Looking ahead from the middle of the
glacier, you see the broad white flood, though apparently rigid as
iron, sweeping in graceful curves between its high mountain-like walls,
small glaciers hanging in the hollows on either side, and snow in every
form above them, and the great down-plunging granite buttresses and
headlands of the walls marvelous in bold massive sculpture; forests in
side cañons to within fifty feet of the glacier; avalanche pathways
overgrown with alder and willow; innumerable cascades keeping up a
solemn harmony of water sounds blending with those of the glacier
moulins and rills; and as far as the eye can reach, tributary glaciers
at short intervals silently descending from their high, white fountains
to swell the grand central ice-river.
In the angle formed by the main glacier and the lake that gives rise to
the river floods, there is a massive granite dome sparsely feathered
with trees, and just beyond this yosemitic rock is a mountain, perhaps
ten thousand feet high, laden with ice and snow which seemed pure
pearly white in the morning light. Last evening as seen from camp it
was adorned with a cloud streamer, and both the streamer and the peak
were flushed in the alpenglow. A mile or two above this mountain, on
the opposite side of the glacier, there is a rock like the Yosemite
Sentinel; and in general all the wall rocks as far as I saw them are
more or less yosemitic in form and color and streaked with cascades.
But wonderful as this noble ice-river is in size and depth and in power
displayed, far more wonderful was the vastly greater glacier three or
four thousand feet, or perhaps a mile, in depth, whose size and general
history is inscribed on the sides of the walls and over the tops of the
rocks in characters which have not yet been greatly dimmed by the
weather. Comparing its present size with that when it was in its prime,
is like comparing a small rivulet to the same stream when it is a
roaring torrent.
The return trip to the camp past the shelving cliff and through the
weary devil’s-club jungle was made in a few hours. The Indians had gone
off picking berries, but were on the watch for me and hailed me as I
approached. The captain had called for me, and, after waiting three
hours, departed for Wrangell without leaving any food, to make sure, I
suppose, of a quick return of his Indians and canoe. This was no
serious matter, however, for the swift current swept us down to Buck
Station, some thirty-five miles distant, by eight o’clock. Here I
remained to study the “Big Stickeen Glacier,” but the Indians set out
for Wrangell soon after supper, though I invited them to stay till
morning.
The weather that morning, August 27, was dark and rainy, and I tried to
persuade myself that I ought to rest a day before setting out on new
ice work. But just across the river the “Big Glacier” was staring me in
the face, pouring its majestic flood through a broad mountain gateway
and expanding in the spacious river valley to a width of four or five
miles, while dim in the gray distance loomed its high mountain
fountains. So grand an invitation displayed in characters so telling
was of course irresistible, and body-care and weather-care vanished.
Mr. Choquette, the keeper of the station, ferried me across the river,
and I spent the day in getting general views and planning the work that
had been long in mind. I first traced the broad, complicated terminal
moraine to its southern extremity, climbed up the west side along the
lateral moraine three or four miles, making my way now on the glacier,
now on the moraine-covered bank, and now compelled to climb up through
the timber and brush in order to pass some rocky headland, until I
reached a point commanding a good general view of the lower end of the
glacier. Heavy, blotting rain then began to fall, and I retraced my
steps, oftentimes stopping to admire the blue ice-caves into which
glad, rejoicing streams from the mountain-side were hurrying as if
going home, while the glacier seemed to open wide its crystal gateways
to welcome them.
The following morning blotting rain was still falling, but time and
work was too precious to mind it. Kind Mr. Choquette put me across the
river in a canoe, with a lot of biscuits his Indian wife had baked for
me and some dried salmon, a little sugar and tea, a blanket, and a
piece of light sheeting for shelter from rain during the night, all
rolled into one bundle.
“When shall I expect you back?” inquired Choquette, when I bade him
good-bye.
“Oh, any time,” I replied. “I shall see as much as possible of the
glacier, and I know not how long it will hold me.”
“Well, but when will I come to look for you, if anything happens? Where
are you going to try to go? Years ago Russian officers from Sitka went
up the glacier from here and none ever returned. It’s a mighty
dangerous glacier, all full of damn deep holes and cracks. You’ve no
idea what ticklish deceiving traps are scattered over it.”
“Yes, I have,” I said. “I have seen glaciers before, though none so big
as this one. Do not look for me until I make my appearance on the
river-bank. Never mind me. I am used to caring for myself.” And so,
shouldering my bundle, I trudged off through the moraine boulders and
thickets.
My general plan was to trace the terminal moraine to its extreme north
end, pitch my little tent, leave the blanket and most of the hardtack,
and from this main camp go and come as hunger required or allowed.
After examining a cross-section of the broad moraine, roughened by
concentric masses, marking interruptions in the recession of the
glacier of perhaps several centuries, in which the successive moraines
were formed and shoved together in closer or wider order, I traced the
moraine to its northeastern extremity and ascended the glacier for
several miles along the left margin, then crossed it at the grand
cataract and down the right side to the river, and along the moraine to
the point of beginning.
On the older portions of this moraine I discovered several kettles in
process of formation and was pleased to find that they conformed in the
most striking way with the theory I had already been led to make from
observations on the old kettles which form so curious a feature of the
drift covering Wisconsin and Minnesota and some of the larger moraines
of the residual glaciers in the California Sierra. I found a pit eight
or ten feet deep with raw shifting sides countersunk abruptly in the
rough moraine material, and at the bottom, on sliding down by the aid
of a lithe spruce tree that was being undermined, I discovered, after
digging down a foot or two, that the bottom was resting on a block of
solid blue ice which had been buried in the moraine perhaps a century
or more, judging by the age of the tree that had grown above it.
Probably more than another century will be required to complete the
formation of this kettle by the slow melting of the buried ice-block.
The moraine material of course was falling in as the ice melted, and
the sides maintained an angle as steep as the material would lie. All
sorts of theories have been advanced for the formation of these
kettles, so abundant in the drift over a great part of the United
States, and I was glad to be able to set the question at rest, at least
as far as I was concerned.
The glacier and the mountains about it are on so grand a scale and so
generally inaccessible in the ordinary sense, it seemed to matter but
little what course I pursued. Everything was full of interest, even the
weather, though about as unfavorable as possible for wide views, and
scrambling through the moraine jungle brush kept one as wet as if all
the way was beneath a cascade.
I pushed on, with many a rest and halt to admire the bold and
marvelously sculptured ice-front, looking all the grander and more
striking in the gray mist with all the rest of the glacier shut out,
until I came to a lake about two hundred yards wide and two miles long
with scores of small bergs floating in it, some aground, close inshore
against the moraine, the light playing on their angles and shimmering
in their blue caves in ravishing tones. This proved to be the largest
of the series of narrow lakelets that lie in shallow troughs between
the moraine and the glacier, a miniature Arctic Ocean, its ice-cliffs
played upon by whispering, rippling waveless and its small berg floes
drifting in its currents or with the wind, or stranded here and there
along its rocky moraine shore.
Hundreds of small rills and good-sized streams were falling into the
lake from the glacier, singing in low tones, some of them pouring in
sheer falls over blue cliffs from narrow ice-valleys, some spouting
from pipelike channels in the solid front of the glacier, others
gurgling out of arched openings at the base. All these water-streams
were riding on the parent ice-stream, their voices joined in one grand
anthem telling the wonders of their near and far-off fountains. The
lake itself is resting in a basin of ice, and the forested moraine,
though seemingly cut off from the glacier and probably more than a
century old, is in great part resting on buried ice left behind as the
glacier receded, and melting slowly on account of the protection
afforded by the moraine detritus, which keeps shifting and falling on
the inner face long after it is overgrown with lichens, mosses,
grasses, bushes, and even good-sized trees; these changes going on with
marvelous deliberation until in fullness of time the whole moraine
settles down upon its bedrock foundation.
The outlet of the lake is a large stream, almost a river in size, one
of the main draining streams of the glacier. I attempted to ford it
where it begins to break in rapids in passing over the moraine, but
found it too deep and rough on the bottom. I then tried to ford at its
head, where it is wider and glides smoothly out of the lake, bracing
myself against the current with a pole, but found it too deep, and when
the icy water reached my shoulders I cautiously struggled back to the
moraine. I next followed it down through the rocky jungle to a place
where in breaking across the moraine dam it was only about thirty-five
feet wide. Here I found a spruce tree which I felled for a bridge; it
reached across, about ten feet of the top holding in the bank brush.
But the force of the torrent, acting on the submerged branches and the
slender end of the trunk, bent it like a bow and made it very unsteady,
and after testing it by going out about a third of the way over, it
seemed likely to be carried away when bent deeper into the current by
my weight. Fortunately, I discovered another larger tree well situated
a little farther down, which I felled, and though a few feet in the
middle was submerged, it seemed perfectly safe.
As it was now getting late, I started back to the lakeside where I had
left my bundle, and in trying to hold a direct course found the
interlaced jungle still more difficult than it was along the bank of
the torrent. For over an hour I had to creep and struggle close to the
rocky ground like a fly in a spider-web without being able to obtain a
single glimpse of any guiding feature of the landscape. Finding a
little willow taller than the surrounding alders, I climbed it, caught
sight of the glacier-front, took a compass bearing, and sunk again into
the dripping, blinding maze of brush, and at length emerged on the
lake-shore seven hours after leaving it, all this time as wet as though
I had been swimming, thus completing a trying day’s work. But
everything was deliciously fresh, and I found new and old plant
friends, and lessons on Nature’s Alaska moraine landscape-gardening
that made everything bright and light.
It was now near dark, and I made haste to make up my flimsy little
tent. The ground was desperately rocky. I made out, however, to level
down a strip large enough to lie on, and by means of slim alder stems
bent over it and tied together soon had a home. While thus busily
engaged I was startled by a thundering roar across the lake. Running to
the top of the moraine, I discovered that the tremendous noise was only
the outcry of a newborn berg about fifty or sixty feet in diameter,
rocking and wallowing in the waves it had raised as if enjoying its
freedom after its long grinding work as part of the glacier. After this
fine last lesson I managed to make a small fire out of wet twigs, got a
cup of tea, stripped off my dripping clothing, wrapped myself in a
blanket and lay brooding on the gains of the day and plans for the
morrow, glad, rich, and almost comfortable.
It was raining hard when I awoke, but I made up my mind to disregard
the weather, put on my dripping clothing, glad to know it was fresh and
clean; ate biscuits and a piece of dried salmon without attempting to
make a tea fire; filled a bag with hardtack, slung it over my shoulder,
and with my indispensable ice-axe plunged once more into the dripping
jungle. I found my bridge holding bravely in place against the swollen
torrent, crossed it and beat my way around pools and logs and through
two hours of tangle back to the moraine on the north side of the
outlet,—a wet, weary battle but not without enjoyment. The smell of the
washed ground and vegetation made every breath a pleasure, and I found
_Calypso borealis_, the first I had seen on this side of the continent,
one of my darlings, worth any amount of hardship; and I saw one of my
Douglas squirrels on the margin of a grassy pool. The drip of the rain
on the various leaves was pleasant to hear. More especially marked were
the flat low-toned bumps and splashes of large drops from the trees on
the broad horizontal leaves of _Echinopanax horridum_, like the
drumming of thundershower drops on veratrum and palm leaves, while the
mosses were indescribably beautiful, so fresh, so bright, so cheerily
green, and all so low and calm and silent, however heavy and wild the
wind and the rain blowing and pouring above them. Surely never a
particle of dust has touched leaf or crown of all these blessed mosses;
and how bright were the red rims of the cladonia cups beside them, and
the fruit of the dwarf cornel! And the wet berries, Nature’s precious
jewelry, how beautiful they were!—huckleberries with pale bloom and a
crystal drop on each; red and yellow salmon-berries, with clusters of
smaller drops; and the glittering, berry-like raindrops adorning the
interlacing arches of bent grasses and sedges around the edges of the
pools, every drop a mirror with all the landscape in it. A’ that and a’
that and twice as muckle’s a’ that in this glorious Alaska day,
recalling, however different, George Herbert’s “Sweet day, so cool, so
calm, so bright.”
In the gardens and forests of this wonderful moraine one might spend a
whole joyful life.
When I at last reached the end of the great moraine and the front of
the mountain that forms the north side of the glacier basin, I tried to
make my way along its side, but, finding the climbing tedious and
difficult, took to the glacier and fared well, though a good deal of
step-cutting was required on its ragged, crevassed margin. When night
was drawing nigh, I scanned the steep mountainside in search of an
accessible bench, however narrow, where a bed and a fire might be
gathered for a camp. About dark great was my delight to find a little
shelf with a few small mountain hemlocks growing in cleavage joints.
Projecting knobs below it enabled me to build a platform for a
fireplace and a bed, and by industrious creeping from one fissure to
another, cutting bushes and small trees and sliding them down to within
reach of my rock-shelf, I made out to collect wood enough to last
through the night. In an hour or two I had a cheery fire, and spent the
night in turning from side to side, steaming and drying after being wet
two days and a night. Fortunately this night it did not rain, but it
was very cold.
Pushing on next day, I climbed to the top of the glacier by ice-steps
and along its side to the grand cataract two miles wide where the whole
majestic flood of the glacier pours like a mighty surging river down a
steep declivity in its channel. After gazing a long time on the
glorious show, I discovered a place beneath the edge of the cataract
where it flows over a hard, resisting granite rib, into which I crawled
and enjoyed the novel and instructive view of a glacier pouring over my
head, showing not only its grinding, polishing action, but how it
breaks off large angular boulder-masses—a most telling lesson in
earth-sculpture, confirming many I had already learned in the glacier
basins of the High Sierra of California. I then crossed to the south
side, noting the forms of the huge blocks into which the glacier was
broken in passing over the brow of the cataract, and how they were
welded.
The weather was now clear, opening views according to my own heart far
into the high snowy fountains. I saw what seemed the farthest
mountains, perhaps thirty miles from the front, everywhere
winter-bound, but thick forested, however steep, for a distance of at
least fifteen miles from the front, the trees, hemlock and spruce,
clinging to the rock by root-holds among cleavage joints. The greatest
discovery was in methods of denudation displayed beneath the glacier.
After a few more days of exhilarating study I returned to the
river-bank opposite Choquette’s landing. Promptly at sight of the
signal I made, the kind Frenchman came across for me in his canoe. At
his house I enjoyed a rest while writing out notes; then examined the
smaller glacier fronting the one I had been exploring, until a passing
canoe bound for Fort Wrangell took me aboard.