An Expedition to Mount St. Elias, Alaska — John Shaqi
An Expedition to Mount St. Elias, AlaskaRussell, Israel C. (Cook)
History
An Expedition to Mount St. Elias, Alaska
Russell, Israel C. (Cook)
Alaska -- Description and travel; Saint Elias, Mount (Alaska and Yukon)
[Footnote 27: The map accompanying Malaspina's report and indicating
these conditions has already been mentioned, and is reproduced on
plate 7, page 67.]
Reaching the topmost dome of Haenke island, a wonderful panorama of
snow-covered mountains, glaciers, and icebergs lay before us. The
island occupies the position of the stage in a vast amphitheatre; the
spectators are hoary mountain peaks, each a monarch robed in ermine
and bidding defiance to the ceaseless war of the elements. How
insignificant the wanderer who confronts such an audience, and how
weak his efforts to describe such a scene!
From a wild cliff-enclosed valley toward the north, guarded by
towering pinnacles and massive cliffs, flows a great glacier, the
fountains of which are far back in the heart of the mountains beyond
the reach of vision. Having vainly sought an Indian name for this
ice-stream, I concluded to christen it the _Dalton glacier_, in honor
of John Dalton, a miner and frontiersman now living at Yakutat, who is
justly considered the pioneer explorer of the region. The glacier is
greatly shattered and pinnacled in descending its steep channel, and
on reaching the sea it expands into a broad ice-foot. The last steep
descent is made just before gaining the water, and is marked by
crevasses and pinnacles of magnificent proportion and beautiful color.
This is one of the few glaciers in the St. Elias region that has
well-defined medial and lateral moraines. At the bases of the cliffs
on the western side there is a broad, lateral moraine, and in the
center, looking like a winding road leading up the glacier, runs a
triple-banded ribbon of débris, forming a typical medial moraine. The
morainal material carried by the glacier is at last deposited at its
foot, or floated away by icebergs, and scattered far and wide over the
bottom of Yakutat bay.
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