Beardmore Glacier

“ Joyce had ever seen. They were steering in towards the mountains and were encountering the tremendous congestion created by the flow of the Beardmore Glacier into the barrier ice.
“We decided to keep the camp up,” ran Joyce’s account of the work done on January 26. “Skipper, Richards, and myself roped ourselves together, I taking the lead, to try and find a course through this pressure. We came across very wide crevasses, went down several, came on top of a very high ridge, and such a scene! Imagine thousands of tons of ice churned up to a depth of about 300 ft. ”

“ Nine times out of ten, says the meteorologist, he would have come through: but he struck the tenth. "We took risks, we knew we took them; things have come out against us, and therefore we have no cause for complaint." No better epitaph has been written.
He decided to use the only route towards the Pole of which the world had any knowledge, that is to go up the Beardmore Glacier, then the only discovered way up through the mountains which divide the polar plateau from the Great Ice Barrier: probably it is the only possible passage for those who travel from McMurdo Sound. ”

“ Monday, June 5.—The wind has been S. all day, sky overcast and air misty with snow crystals. The temperature has gone steadily up and to-night rose to +16°. Everything seems to threaten a blizzard which cometh not. But what is to be made of this extraordinary high temperature heaven only knows. Went for a walk over the rocks and found it very warm and muggy.
Taylor gave us a paper on the Beardmore Glacier. He has taken pains to work up available information; on the ice side he showed the very gradual gradient as compared with the Ferrar. ”

“ The Gateway is filled by a giant snowdrift which has been formed between Mount Hope on our left and the mainland on our right. From Shackleton's book we gathered that the Beardmore was a very bad glacier indeed. Once on the top of the divide we lunched, and we descended in the evening, camping at midnight on the edge of the glacier, which we found, as we had feared, covered with soft snow which was so deep as to give no indication whatever of the hard ice which Shackleton found here. ”

“ E. A. Wilson, Capt. L. E. G. Gates, Lt. H. R. Bowers, and Petty-Officer Edgar Evans. He reached the Beardmore glacier on Dec. 10 and on Jan. 4 1913 left behind him his last supporting party in lat. 87 32′ S. When last heard of he was about 150m. from the Pole, which his record shows that he reached Jan. 17 only to find Amundsen’s tent and records left there one month earlier. On the return journey Evans fell (Feb. 17) in descending the Beardmore glacier and died shortly after. Blizzards were encountered and progress was slow. ”

“ The land is much more snow covered than when we saw it before the storm. In spite of some doubt in our outlook, everyone is very cheerful to-night and jokes are flying freely around.
CHAPTER XVII On the Beardmore Glacier
Sunday, December 10.—Camp 32. [33] I was very anxious about getting our loads forward over such an appalling surface, and that we have done so is mainly due to the ski. I roused everyone at 8, but it was noon before all the readjustments of load had been made and we were ready to start. The dogs carried 600 lbs. of our weight besides the depot (200 lbs.) . ”

“ From the shoulder of the Hochstetter Dome down a long valley between the giant snow peaks of the Mount Cook Range on the one hand, and the rocky buttresses of the Malte Brun and Liebig Ranges on the other, swollen at intervals by tributary ice-streams, flowing with imperceptible movement, comes the Great Tasman Glacier—a veritable mer de glace—eighteen miles in length. Some six miles from its terminal face the Ball Glacier descends from the south-eastern shoulder of Aorangi, and pours its huge slabs of broken ice and a rubble of moraine into the parent stream. ”

“ As the tide fell, large pieces fell from this front, and avalanches of ice-fragments crashed down into the sea and raised waves that rocked our ship and set the ice-floes grinding together. On the other point of the crescent of this bay there lay the largest glacier, an ice-field that swept down from two mountain gorges, and, spreading out in fan shape, descended in a long slope to a moraine of sand, pebbles, and boulders. Across its rolling front this glacier measured at least three miles, and the low, level moraine was one mile in width. ”

“ The nature, origin, and aspect of the moraines, the mode of melting of the ice beneath them, and the isolated pinnacles of ice which support large solitary 478 boulders, agree so entirely with descriptions of glaciers in other parts of the world, that it is unnecessary to dwell upon them. The large glaciers are often a good deal lower in their central parts than where they are covered by a bulky moraine; and a curious ravine-like hollow, between the moraine and the bare ice, which makes the former appear as if entirely disconnected from the glacier, is of very common occurrence. ”

“ A low temperature alone can do nothing without moisture, and this fact quickly disposes of the popular notion that glaciers invariably exist in cold countries. Thibet, for instance, and also some parts of Arctic North America are destitute of ice streams, though eternal cold may be said to reign supreme in these parts.
Imagine for a moment the higher mountains clear of snow and ice, and then watch for the formation of a glacier. Snow falls and fills up all the valleys and gullies, avalanches descend from the higher parts, and a great accumulation gathers in all hollows. ”

“ It is one of the many fields of ice which stellates from a center fifteen miles back of the Muir front and covers the valley of the mountains between the Pacific and the headwaters of the Yukon river. Nine glaciers now discharge icebergs into the bay. All of these glaciers have receded from one to four miles in the past twenty years. Kate Field says, “In Switzerland a glacier is a vast bed of dirty air-holed ice that has fastened itself like a cold porous plaster to the Alps. In Alaska a glacier is a wonderful torrent that seems to have been frozen when about to plunge into the sea.” ”

“ Throughout the millions of years during which the folding, faulting, and overthrusting have been taking place, the process of erosion has continued; a thousand meters of stratified rocks have been worn away, so that only a remnant of the overthrust layers can be seen today. Because Glacier’s eastern slope represents the eroded face of the overthrust block, the mountain range rises precipitously from the prairie, with no foothills breaking the abrupt transition from open prairie to mountain valley. ”

“ Mount Darwin sends its one great glacier sweeping down into the main stream; then the Hochstetter Dome stands at the head of the Tasman Glacier itself, and westward rise the noble summits of Mounts Elie de Beaumont, Green, and De la Bêche—the last a most beautiful triple peak, queen of the whole group, and over 10,000 feet in height. Still following round, the eye falls on the Rudolf Glacier descending from the peak of the same name, then Mounts Jervois, Spencer, Glacier Peak, and lastly Mount Haidinger, a fine flat-topped mountain clothed from base to summit in broken ice. ”

“ Its history is similar to that of the debris cone. After a time the boulder slides off its perch, and then the mound of ice melts away.
Snow which fills crevasses and wells during the winter often melts out from below, leaving thin snowbridges in the early part of the summer. These constitute real hazards to travel on a glacier because the thinner ones are incapable of supporting a person’s weight. This is one very good reason why the inexperienced should never venture onto the surface of a glacier without a guide. ”

“ For some reason or other the temperature gradually fell, and great glaciers forming in the northern regions, the highlands of Canada and the Arctic Circles, submerged Northern Europe and reduced Canada and half of the United States to the present condition of Greenland. Those who see glaciers to-day can form little idea of the enormous possibilities of semi-fluid ice. Only in Alaska, where the Muir Glacier empties itself into the Muir inlet at the rate of seventy feet a day, can we form any idea of the glacier as a destructive agency. ”

“ The bed of last year’s streams is of course filled up with hard-frozen snow, so that there is no exit for the waters till the cup is full. The moment it begins to overflow the cutting of the channel takes place. The pent-up waters are let loose and evidently operate with extraordinary force, excavating a deep cañon out of the glacier. The floating ice acquires a momentum, whereby it not merely gets ripped and broken up, but forced forward on to the dry glacier ahead, great tables of it being turned up on end or piled on one another two or three deep. ”

“ In midwinter, when the infiltration is reduced to a minimum, the motion is least. The water thus introduced into the glacier acts, as we have seen above, in various ways: by its weight, by loosening the particles of snow through which it trickles, and by freezing and consequent expansion, at least within the limits and during the season at which the temperature of the glacier sinks below 32° Fahrenheit. The simple fact, that in the spring the glacier swells on an average to about five feet more than its usual level, shows how important this infiltration must be. ”

“ Ice within these glaciers moves slowly. The average rate in the smallest ones may be as low as 6 to 8 feet a year, and in the largest probably 25 to 30 feet a year. There is no period of the year when a glacier is motionless, although movement is somewhat slower in winter than in summer. Despite the slowness of its motion the ice, over a period of years, transports large quantities of rock material ultimately to the glacier’s end where it is piled up in the form of a moraine. ”

“ The Olympic area is unique, for here the regional snowline descends to about 6,000 feet lower than anywhere within the boundaries of the Continental United States south of Alaska. Extraordinarily heavy annual snowfall and the high percentage of cloudy weather, which retards the melting of snow, combine to depress the snowline to such a low level.
4 Glaciers of Glacier National Park
Within the boundaries of Glacier National Park there are 50 to 60 glaciers, of which only two have surface areas of nearly one-half square mile, and not more than seven others exceed one-fourth square mile in area. ”

“ Where there are no ice masses streams are clear, and where glaciers occur the water possesses many shades varying from clear blue through turquoise to gray, and in rare cases even pink.
MORAINE NEAR GRINNELL GLACIER IS 120 FEET HIGH. THE GLACIER EXTENDED NEARLY TO TOP OF MORAINE 50 YEARS AGO. (DYSON PHOTO)
Although the former large glaciers of the Ice Age transported huge amounts of rock debris down the valleys of the Park, the moraines which they deposited are, as a rule, not conspicuous features of the landscape. ”

“ The small débris-covered ice-streams, too small to reach the water, are typical of a large class of glaciers in southern Alaska, which are slowly wasting away and have become buried beneath débris concentrated at the surface by reason of their own melting. The Galiano glacier is a good example of this class. The Hubbard and Dalton glaciers are fine examples of another class of ice-streams which flow into the sea and end in ice-cliffs, and which for convenience we call tide-water glaciers. Nowhere can finer or more beautiful examples of this type be found than those in view from Haenke island. ”

“ As the ice moves it continually breaks rock fragments loose. Some of these are ground into powder as they move against each other and against the bedrock under the glacier. Most types of rock, especially the limestones and shales on which the Park glaciers rest, when ground fine enough yield a gray powder. All melt-water streams issuing from glaciers are cloudy or milky from their load of this finely ground “rock flour.”
Water from Grinnell Glacier is so laden with rock flour that the small lake along the edge of the ice into which the water pours is nearly white. ”

“ Flow rate of a glacier depends upon the thickness of the ice and the degree of slope. Under tremendous pressure, ice becomes plastic, like thick taffy. Unlike kilometer-thick continental glaciers, which may move a hundred meters a day, small alpine glaciers seldom progress more than two or three centimeters per day.
Although a glacier moves, it gets nowhere if in a state of equilibrium—when annual melting equals annual accumulation. Snow mass gained at the sun-shielded headwall is usually lost as melt at the exposed snout. ”

“ But lower down in the glacier proper, where it is completely transformed into ice, its surface becomes convex, for the following reason: The rocky walls of the valley, as they approach the plain, partake of its higher temperature. They become heated by the sun during the day in summer, so that the margins of the glacier melt rapidly in contact with them. In consequence of this, there is always in the lower part of the glacier a broad depression between the ice and the rocky walls, while, as this effect is not felt in the centre of the glacier, it there retains a higher level. ”

“ The most striking evidence, in my opinion, that at times the whole mass of the glacier actually freezes, is drawn from the fact, already alluded to, that, while the surface of the glacier loses annually from nine to ten feet of its thickness by evaporation and melting, it swells, on the other hand, in the spring, to the amount of about five feet. Such a dilatation can hardly be the result of pressure and the packing of the snow and ice, since the difference in the bulk of the ice brought down, during one year, from a point above to that under observation, would not account for the swelling. ”

“ The question always arises where do all the boulders and pebbles that cover the lower parts of the glaciers come from? In the upper parts of the glaciers or névé regions, where the snow remains perpetual and increases from year to year, the stones from the mountain sides are covered as they fall, and are at length buried deep and surrounded by ice as the snow becomes compressed and solidified. As the glacier advances down the valley and descends to lower altitudes, a level is at length reached where the snowfall of winter is exactly balanced by the melting of summer. ”