On Its Western Declivities Are Found A Group
Of Well-Characterized Moraines, Canyons, And Roches Moutonnees, All Of
Which Are Unmistakably Fresh And Telling.
The moraines in particular
could hardly fail to attract the eye of any observer.
Some of the
short laterals of the glaciers that drew their fountain snows from the
jagged recesses of the summit are from one to two hundred feet in
height, and scarce at all wasted as yet, notwithstanding the countless
storms that have fallen upon them, while cool rills flow between them,
watering charming gardens of arctic plants - saxifrages, larkspurs,
dwarf birch, ribes, and parnassia, etc. - beautiful memories of the Ice
Age, representing a once greatly extended flora.
In the course of explorations made to the eastward of here, between
the 38th and 40th parallels, I observed glacial phenomena equally
fresh and demonstrative on all the higher mountains of the White Pine,
Golden Gate, and Snake ranges, varying from those already described
only as determined by differences of elevation, relations to the snow-bearing winds, and the physical characteristics of the rock
formations.
On the Jeff Davis group of the Snake Range, the dominating summit of
which is nearly thirteen thousand feet in elevation, and the highest
ground in the basin, every marked feature is a glacier monument - peaks, valleys, ridges, meadows, and lakes. And because here the
snow-fountains lay at a greater height, while the rock, an exceedingly
hard quartzite, offered superior resistance to post-glacial agents,
the ice-characters are on a larger scale, and are more sharply defined
than any we have noticed elsewhere, and it is probably here that the
last lingering glacier of the basin was located. The summits and
connecting ridges are mere blades and points, ground sharp by the
glaciers that descended on both sides to the main valleys. From one
standpoint I counted nine of these glacial channels with their
moraines sweeping grandly out to the plains to deep sheer-walled neve-fountains at their heads, making a most vivid picture of the last days
of the Ice Period.
I have thus far directed attention only to the most recent and
appreciable of the phenomena; but it must be borne in mind that less
recent and less obvious traces of glacial action abound on ALL the
ranges throughout the entire basin, where the fine striae and grooves
have been obliterated, and most of the moraines have been washed away,
or so modified as to be no longer recognizable, and even the lakes and
meadows, so characteristic of glacial regions, have almost entirely
vanished. For there are other monuments, far more enduring than
these, remaining tens of thousands of years after the more perishable
records are lost. Such are the canyons, ridges, and peaks themselves,
the glacial peculiarities of whose trends and contours cannot be hid
from the eye of the skilled observer until changes have been wrought
upon them far more destructive than those to which these basin ranges
have yet been subjected.
It appears, therefore, that the last of the basin glaciers have but
recently vanished, and that the almost innumerable ranges trending
north and south between the Sierra and the Wahsatch Mountains were
loaded with glaciers that descended to the adjacent valleys during the
last glacial period, and that it is to this mighty host of ice streams
that all the more characteristic of the present features of these
mountain ranges are due.
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