Ice cliff

“ It is here also that the great ice-cliff which runs for hundreds of miles to the east, with the Barrier behind it and the Ross Sea beating into its crevasses and caves, joins the basalt precipice which bounds the Knoll, as the two-knobbed saddle which forms Cape Crozier is called. Altogether it is the kind of place where giants have had a good time in their childhood, playing with ice instead of mud—so much cleaner too! ”

“ The foreground of berg-dotted fiord, the silvery ice cliff (Fig. 7) , the sea of serac and crevasse behind, and the mountain background rising to 8,000 and 10,000 feet within ten miles of sea-level, form a scene never to be forgotten. One might not presume to too great familiarity with this lordly glacier, however, for an approach to within a half mile of the ice cliff, even in a seaworthy dory, means danger of capsizing in the iceberg-generated waves from the cliff or from overturning bergs. The formation of icebergs from the glacier as seen at safer distances is of fascinating interest. ”

“ But the glacier front was not still; in form and color it was changing every minute. The descent was so steep that the glacial rapids above the bay must have flowed forward eighty or a hundred feet a day. The ice cliff, towering a thousand feet over the water, would present a slight incline from the perpendicular inwards toward the canyon, the face being white from powdered ice, the result of the grinding descent of the ice masses. Here and there would be little cascades of this fine ice spraying out as they fell, with glints of prismatic colors when the sunlight struck them. ”

“ Their fate, again, is what was to be expected if the glacier ends, as it commonly does in Arctic regions, in the sea. The ice grows out to sea-ward for more than a mile sometimes, about one-eighth of it being above water, and seven-eighths below, so that an ice-cliff one hundred feet high may project into water eight hundred feet deep. At last, when it gets out of its depth, the buoyancy of the water breaks it off in icebergs, which float away, at the mercy of tides and currents, often grounding again in shallower water, and ploughing the sea-bottom as they drag along it. ”

“ The wind lightly brushes sand and dust over exposed surfaces of rock. Running water sweeps fragments of various sizes along its channels, holding them with a loose hand. Glacial ice grinds the stones of its ground moraine against the underlying rock with the pressure of its enormous weight. The wave hurls fragments of rock against the sea cliff, bruising and battering it by the blow. It also rasps the bench as it drags sand and gravel to and fro upon it.
Weathering of sea cliffs. The sea cliff furnishes the weapons for its own destruction. ”

“ This line of cliff rises, like a solid wall of glass, three hundred feet above the water-level, with an unknown, unfathomable depth below it; and its curved face, sixty miles in length, disappears into unknown space at not more than a single day’s railroad-travel from the Pole. The [132] interior with which it communicates, and from which it issues, is an unexplored mer de glace, an ice-ocean, of apparently boundless dimensions. ”

“ In several places it is nothing unusual to see enormous masses of ice pushed over the edge of the cliff, and to hear them fall with a metallic rattle down the precipitous rocks, leaving in their wake clouds of finely-powdered snow. ”

“ Torrents of water and avalanches of rock and snow spouted at intervals all along the cliff walls. Not a tree nor a vestige of life was in sight, except far away upon ridges below, or out upon the dimly expanding plain. Granite and ice and snow, silence broken only by the howling tempest and the crash of falling ice or splintered rock, and a sky deep freighted with cloud and storm,—these were the elements of a period which lasted immeasurably long, and only in comparatively the most recent geological times have given way to the present marvellously changed condition. ”

“ And it continues to move. As you stand in the still cold air you may sometimes hear the silence broken by the sharp reports as the cold contracts it or its own weight splits it. Nature is tearing up that ice as human beings tear paper.
The sea-cliff is not so high here, and is more broken up by crevasses and caves, and more covered with snow. Some five miles along the coast the white line is broken by a bluff and black outcrop of rock; this is Turk's Head, and beyond it is the low white line of Glacier Tongue, jutting out for miles into the sea. ”

“ The rain was falling in gentle and melting showers; the south wind, laden with penetrating warmth, borne [Pg 68] from lands hundreds of leagues distant, cut down drift and ice-hill with its fatal kisses; from the rocky cliff a thousand tiny cascades wept and plashed; and over the icy bonds of every brook and river another stream ran swiftly to the sea. Over the icy levels of harbor and bay rippled another sheet of fresh water, which each moment grew deeper and wider as the warm rain fell more heavily, and the withering south wind came in increasing strength. ”

“ It presented an extraordinary appearance, gradually increasing in height, as we got nearer to it, and proving at length to be a perpendicular cliff of ice, between one hundred and fifty and two hundred feet above the level of the sea, perfectly flat and level at the top, and without any fissures or promontories on its even seaward face. What was beyond it we could not imagine; for being much higher than our mast-head, we could not see any thing except the summit of a lofty range of mountains extending to the southward as far as the seventy-ninth degree of latitude. ”

“ The cliff of ice towering above the place where our rope was fastened had become greatly melted and honey-combed, and threatened every moment to crash down and destroy any one who chanced to be beneath. To stand above the precipice in the shadow of the treacherous snow-cliffs while the men were descending the rope was exceedingly trying to one's nerves; but the avalanches did not come, and the previous camping place below Rope cliff was reached with safety. ”

“ This ice-cliff is about twenty-five miles from the mouth of the Pitmegea, at a place where the hills run their spurs out to the banks of the river, closing the picturesque valley that stretches away to the sea-coast in an almost unbroken width of a mile. A glacier faces southward, and receives the full benefit of the sunlight during the short polar summer. Gales have deposited particles of soil and débris of plants, along with their seeds, upon the surface of the ice to a depth of from four inches to a foot. ”

“ This ice cliff, varying in height from almost sea-level to about 100 feet above the sea, stretches in an east and west direction between Mounts Erebus and Terror and Edward Land for a distance of nearly 300 miles. It is quite easy to imagine that pieces many miles in length and breadth might break off and float out to sea, as well as almost innumerable smaller pieces from a mile or two in length and breadth to only a few feet. This is exactly what does happen, and it certainly must occur in other parts of the Antarctic Regions besides the Ross Sea. ”

“ From this point one looked down a hundred feet or more of overhanging ice cliff into the blue-black depths of the Schrund. The top of this cliff, which forms the upper lip of the Schrund, still towered high above our heads, but the piled-up séracs gave us a means of circumventing the obstruction, and we could see that the first serious obstacle was overcome. With ever lessening difficulty, though not without much hewing of steps and an occasional wrestle with loose snow, we gained the well-swept avalanche groove, and were able to cut really reliable foothold in its icy floor. ”

“ When this river of ice comes to the edge of a precipice, or tries to crawl down a very steep cliff, it splits across and forms tottering crags of ice, which lean over more and more till they lose their balance and go crashing down the slope. Some of the ice is crushed to powder by its fall, yet many blocks generally survive, and are occasionally heaped up in such huge masses below that they form another glacier on a small scale. ”

“ The dark-colored ice, [p. 95] mixed with stones and earth, might easily be mistaken for stratified rock; but the dirt discoloring the ice is almost entirely superficial. The crest of the cliff is formed of débris, and is the edge of the sheet of stones and earth covering the general surface of the glacier. Owing to the constant melting, stones and bowlders are continually loosened to rattle down the steep slope and plunge into the water beneath. ”

“ From east to west the formation was proved to be as much as two hundred miles, with one hundred and eighty miles between its northern and southern limits.
This vast block of ice originates fundamentally from the glacial flow over the southern hinterland. Every year an additional layer of consolidated snow is added to its surface by the frequent blizzards. These annual additions are clearly marked in the section exposed on the dazzling white face near the brink of the ice-cliff. ”

“ The submerged terrace is composed of ice, and may extend out a thousand feet or more in front of the visible part of the ice-cliffs. These conditions are represented in the accompanying diagram (figure 1) , which exhibits a longitudinal section of the lower end of a tide-water glacier where it pushes out into the sea.
As the sea-cliff of ice recedes and the submerged terrace increases in breadth there comes a time when the buoyancy of the [p. 102] ice at the bottom exceeds its strength, and pieces break off and rise to the surface. ”

“ A grand avalanche was pouring down the dark perpendicular precipices which shut in the head of the Trift glacier, a cataract of powdery whiteness, which, when the glass was brought to bear, revealed hundreds of tons of frozen snow and huge ice blocks, falling into a frightful chasm at the foot of the cliff, whence arose a column of powdery spray for many minutes afterward. ”

“ If the right-hand rib had been chosen, we might conceivably have missed the object of our search altogether. We made our way up the rocks without any great difficulty. Half-melted masses of snow constantly hissed down the ice-gully as we ascended, and the great chasm that extends along the base of the cliff was choked for the most part with avalanche snow. The rocks were steep, but so broken as to offer good hand-and foot-hold. Still, the mind was sufficiently occupied in attending to the details of climbing to prevent the thoughts from wandering. ”

“ When the first [Pg 70] man reached solid ice again there was another equally dangerous minute or two, for then all three behind him were on the snow slope. The beetling cliff, where the trail turned at right angles, was the acutely dangerous spot. With heavy and bulky packs it was exceedingly difficult to squeeze past this projection. Ice gives no such entrance to the point of the axe as hard snow does, yet the only aid in steadying the climber, and in somewhat relieving his weight on the loose snow, was afforded by such purchase upon the ice-wall, shoulder high, as that point could effect. ”

“ Here a succession of precipitous glaciers sweep down from the lofty cradles of their birth to the waters of the sea, making an icy cliff of more than fifteen miles in breadth, where it breaks in constant reverberation and repetition. At the mouth of Copper River all silt carried down from old eroded glacial paths has been deposited for thousands and thousands of years, until a big deltoid chart of sea-water channels in muddy relief of bank and shoal has been formed, and through which the flood of an ice-chilled river takes its rapid course. ”

“ The sudden appearance of these masses of bottom ice at the surface is always startling. While watching the ice-cliffs and admiring the play of colors in the deep crevasses which penetrate them in every direction, or tracing in fancy the strange history of the silent river and wondering in what age the snows fell on the mountains, which are now returning to their parent, the sea, one is frequently awakened by a commotion in the waters below, perhaps several hundred feet in front of the ice-cliffs. ”

“ Again getting under way, we soon were upon that shoulder, and anon making our way under most ticklish conditions to the base of the hindering cliff. A narrow arête of several rods in length connected it with the snow shoulder, and this arete was itself ominously corniced, and with snow in a most treacherous state. Seldom have I seen Hasler so trepidant, so insistent that the ice-axes should be so planted as not to serve as levers to start a crack that would imperil the entire party, should the cornice fall; but, in good time, we were standing at the base of the cliff. ”

“ Every detail of which the huge mass is composed is certain to be underestimated. A gentleman the other day pointed out to me a grand ice-cliff at the end of a hanging glacier, which must have been at least 100 feet high, and asked me whether that snow was three feet deep. Nothing is more common than for tourists to mistake some huge pinnacle of rock, as big as a church tower, for a traveller. The rocks of the Grands Mulets, in one corner of which the châlet is hidden, are often identified with a party ascending Mont Blanc ”

“ For at least 80 to 100 feet the ice rose at an angle of 60° to 70°, cutting off all view of the face above, with no flanking wall of rock on the right, but bounded on the left by an overhanging cliff, which dripped slightly with water from melting snow above. ”

“ Wherever a glacier skirts a cliff, it is cutting into its side, as it cuts into its own bed below. From the overhanging rocks, too, debris falls as a result of "weathering." The daily ebb and flow of frost and heat help greatly to tear down the cliffs. Thus marginal moraines built of the debris begin to form, on the ice, far up the side of the peak. As the glacier advances, driven by its weight and the resistless mass of snow above, it is often joined by another glacier, bringing its own marginal moraines. Where the two meet, a medial moraine results. ”