The traveller going westwards from the prairie finds the way blocked by a grim wall of cliffs rising 7,000 or 8,000 feet above the sea and justifying the name of the “Rockies” given to our greatest chain of mountains. Toward the end of the summer these desolate precipices are snowless and except for a glimpse of white peaks through some pass there is scarcely a suggestion of the glacier region within. Then the train enters the “Gap” and before long the summits around show fields or patches of midsummer snow; and as one draws nearer to the heart of the Rockies there is blue ice to be seen clinging to the cliffs or reaching as glaciers down into the wooded valleys, and one is thrilled with the wild charm of alpine scenery.
However, engineers are strict utilitarians and always choose the lowest pass for a railway, so that the passenger in the observation car catches only tantalizing glimpses of the wonders and beauties of the ice world a few miles away and a few thousand feet above the valley. One must stop at some place like lake Louise in the southern Rockies or Tête Jaune in the north or Glacier in the Selkirks to come into real contact with snow fields and glaciers. What a joy it is to get rid of the hot and dusty everyday world of cities for a while and come close to Nature in one of her wildest moods! It is not only the mountaineer who feels the seduction of the cool, clean solitudes where glaciers are born and do their wonderful work. Every healthy manor woman must yield to the delight of living in those inspiring surroundings.
It is worthwhile to put on warm strong clothes and hob-nailed shoes and fill your lungs with mountain air in a scramble up to the snow fields to see how the glacial machinery works, machinery which some thousands of years ago shaped almost the whole surface of Canada, doing its work on the plains as well as the mountains and leaving it the splendid land of lakes and rivers and fertile prairies and rolling hills which it is to-day.
Snowline.
To reach the snows generally means some miles of walking and climbing, often through forest covered slopes at first where the outside world is lost. Then the trees begin to thin and grow stunted, revealing between the trunks blue valleys with a lake or two and far off cliffs and mountains. At last the trees cease at 7,500 feet and you are at timberline. Here the three Rocky mountain heathers spread soft thick carpets between stiff bushes only a few feet high but with trunks a foot through, so buffeted have they been by the storms of centuries. The rows of dwarfed spruces leaning back against some rock ledge give fine shelter for the mountain goats, wisps of whose white wool cling to the stubborn branches.
Then come cliffs and rocky slopes and grassy or sedgy uplands (the true alps as the word is used in Switzerland) where mountain sheep or goats pasture and wild flowers grow by the million, blue ones such as lupines, gentians, fox-gloves and forget-me-nots; yellow ones such as adder-tongues, columbines and a multitude of starry composite flowers; the red or orange Indian paint brush; and white flowers innumerable. You have reached the edge of the snow rapidly melting on a July day under a sun that is hot even on high mountains. The plants just freed from their winter covering are all bursting into bloom together, bees are humming, butterflies lazily flutter past and a humming bird poises over a blossom; for it is spring at these altitudes and there is a whole season’s work to be done, seeds ripened and all, before autumn comes in September with its snowstorms burying all under the white silence of a nine-months winter again.
It is a thrilling experience to set foot at last on midsummer snow sweeping upwards, gleaming toward the higher summits, snow that never entirely melts and that is so dazzling in the July sunlight that one needs dark or colored glasses to avoid snow blindness if the tramp is to be a long one.
Glacier on President Range, Yoho Park
We have no special word in English for these perpetual snow fields and so the French term NÉVÉ is commonly used. Snowline is not nearly so definite as timberline and varies with latitude, exposure and snowfall. In the eastern Rockies of Alberta, where only a few feet fall in winter, the line is scarcely below 9,000 feet; while in the western Selkirks, which catch the full brunt of the Pacific winds laden with moisture and have a snowfall of 40 or 50 feet in a year, snowline is depressed almost to timberline, about 7,500 feet. This accounts for the bareness of the eastern Rockies as compared with the splendid Alpine features of the Selkirk range, which is the lower of the two.
While one gazes entranced at the array of lakes and valleys, of snowfields and dark cliffs, the wind rises and mountains to the west put on a cap of cloud. This grows and darkens and presently a mantle of mist sweeps up with the wind, the sun is dimmed and in a few minutes the wide world is shut out by a blizzard. We must make our way down to lower levels where sleet whitens the closing flowers, and then through a belt of rain swept hillside into the valley where the sun may still be shining hotly.
Since snow falls every month in the year on the névé fields and never melts away one might expect the mountains, especially the Selkirks, to grow as snowheaps into the sky; but of course this does not take place. Under the increasing load of snow the lower beds are compressed into ice; so that the névé, beginning as loose or hard drifted snow above passes downwards into ice banded with blue and white layers, the whole sometimes hundreds of feet in thickness.
The snow accumulates only on the gentler slopes or in the higher valleys. On cliffs it cannot lodge but piles upon the névé beneath; and on steep slopes it may lie for a time but now and then, especially toward spring, it breaks loose and thunders down into the valley as an avalanche.
The Motion of Glaciers.
The final disposal of the snowfield, turned to ice in its lower parts, comes by a slow creep downwards. That the névé is actually in motion can be seen by following the slope of snow to its upper edge against some mountain wall where a “BERGSCHRUND” generally yawns between the snowfield and the cliff. This may be several feet wide, and may go down many feet to obscure depths. No amount of snow fall can fill the chasm permanently, though it may be bridged with fresh snow for a time, making a risky passage for the climber.
Snout or Forefoot of Robson Glacier, Jasper Park
The névé is always pulling away from the rocks at its upper border, and its general motion follows the direction of the lowest depression beneath, finally extending below snowline as a tongue of ice which reaches down into the valley until it is melted by the increasing warmth of the lower levels. Thus a glacier is born. Unless whitened by recent storms the glacier is bare of snow in summer with a rough uneven surface of a dirty blue green color, partly covered with rocky debris, and its volume diminishes downward by thawing until at a definite point the whole is melted and flows away as a river of water instead of ice. The lower end is sometimes called the “tongue” or “snout” or “foot” of the glacier—a bad case of mixed metaphors.
Crevasse on Great Glacier
Remembering that ice is a hard and brittle solid, it comes as a surprise to find that it can flow like a plastic body under the pull of gravity; but this can be easily proved. A row of stakes or of metal plates put across a glacier gradually gets out of line, the middle parts moving fastest as in a river; but the motion is very slow, even in the middle, seldom more than a few inches a day in our mountain glaciers, though some of the great Alaskan and Greenland glaciers are reported to move several feet a day and in one or two cases as much as 60 or 70 feet.
MOULIN (IN MORNING BEFORE THAW BEGINS) ROBSON GLACIER
Moraine of Victoria Glacier
At a sudden descent, where a river would leap as a waterfall, a glacier simply breaks across in what are called “CREVASSES,” fissures which may be several feet wide and hundreds of feet long, going down to blue black depths appalling to the inexperienced climber. As the glacier advances these crevasse are bent out of shape and may be crossed by fresh crevasses, splitting up the ice into wild lumps and pinnacles called “SERACS.” Seen from a distance across some valley such an ice fall looks like a cascade or a violent rapid covered with breakers. Below these steep descents the crevasses and seracs disappear by the pressure of the moving ice and the glacier becomes a solid mass again. Small glaciers hanging from cliffs may send down avalanches of ice which combine to make a lower glacier, the masses being welded together once more. It is evident that one cause of glacier motion is the power which ice has to break and then to freeze together again.
GLACIER TABLE, NEAR TEN PEAKS, ROCKY MOUNTAINS PARK
LAKE AGNES, A GOOD EXAMPLE OF A CIRQUE LAKE
Since glaciers are often the easiest way up a mountain, climbing parties make use of them, starting at dawn so as to have a long day and following up the rough and rigid slope, zigzagging round crevasses and avoiding regions of seracs. Toward the upper end there may be fresh snow bridging the crevasses and the party should be roped together and travel in single file, the leading guide thrusting his ice axe into the snow at every step to make sure of safe going. A fall into a crevasse when unroped may be fatal. Seventeen years ago, while climbing Mt. Gordon north of lake Louise, Mr. C. S. Thompson slipped 60 feet into a crevasse where he was wedged in between the narrowing walls. Dr. Collie was lowered to rescue him, and he was finally pulled out by a glacier rope fastened round his arms, but it was a narrow escape.
When the sun shines warmly on the glacier melting begins and water trickles down the ice ridges, and towards afternoon torrents of pale blue water are racing downwards in ice channels, here and there plunging into a crevasse. This becomes hollowed into a tube like the penstock of a water power and the foamy torrent springing into the blue chasm is called a “moulin,” or mill. In this way the waters thawed from the surface reach the bottom and there roar along through an ice tunnel to the end of the glacier, bursting into daylight as a full fledged river.
Glacial streams are capricious. On a frosty morning scarcely any water flows and one can go far into the ice cave, but in the late afternoon there is a raging torrent loaded with mud and stones spreading into half a dozen channels on the broad flood ground. On a rainy or snowy day when the sun is hidden, the glacial river almost goes out of business, but comes to life again when the clouds vanish and the sun shines. At those heights with a clear sky the heat of the sun may be intense though it is freezing a few feet away where some rock casts a shadow.
The Work of Glaciers.
One of the most interesting points in a glacier is its carrying power. Though it is in motion like a plastic substance it is solid and strong enough to support any weight loaded upon it. Debris quarried by frost from the mountain side buries its edge so that often one may walk 50 yards out before the ice can be seen. This fringe of broken rock carried on the edge of the glacier is called a marginal moraine. When two glaciers join, the marginal moraines between them unite to form a medial moraine, and when several tributaries combine to make a large glacier the dark lines of the medial moraines can be followed by the eye for long distances upwards to rocky peaks rising out of the névé, the source from which the train of rocks was derived.
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