Thirty-Five Miles Above The Big Stickeen Glacier Is The "Dirt
Glacier," The Second In Size.
Its outlet is a fine stream, abounding
in trout.
On the opposite side of the river there is a group of five
glaciers, one of them descending to within a hundred feet of the
river.
Near Glenora, on the northeastern flank of the main Coast Range, just
below a narrow gorge called "The Canyon," terraces first make their
appearance, where great quantities of moraine material have been
swept through the flood-choked gorge and of course outspread and
deposited on the first open levels below. Here, too, occurs a marked
change in climate and consequently in forests and general appearance
of the face of the country. On account of destructive fires the woods
are younger and are composed of smaller trees about a foot to
eighteen inches in diameter and seventy-five feet high, mostly
two-leaved pines which hold their seeds for several years after
they are ripe. The woods here are without a trace of those deep
accumulations of mosses, leaves, and decaying trunks which make so
damp and unclearable mass in the coast forests. Whole mountain-sides
are covered with gray moss and lichens where the forest has been
utterly destroyed. The river-bank cottonwoods are also smaller, and
the birch and contorta pines mingle freely with the coast hemlock
and spruce. The birch is common on the lower slopes and is very
effective, its round, leafy, pale-green head contrasting with the
dark, narrow spires of the conifers and giving a striking character
to the forest. The "tamarac pine" or black pine, as the variety of
P. contorta is called here, is yellowish-green, in marked contrast
with the dark lichen-draped spruce which grows above the pine at a
height of about two thousand feet, in groves and belts where it has
escaped fire and snow avalanches. There is another handsome spruce
hereabouts, Picea alba, very slender and graceful in habit, drooping
at the top like a mountain hemlock. I saw fine specimens a hundred
and twenty-five feet high on deep bottom land a few miles below
Glenora. The tops of some of them were almost covered with dense
clusters of yellow and brown cones.
We reached the old Hudson's Bay trading-post at Glenora about one
o'clock, and the captain informed me that he would stop here until
the next morning, when he would make an early start for Wrangell.
At a distance of about seven or eight miles to the northeastward of
the landing, there is an outstanding group of mountains crowning a
spur from the main chain of the Coast Range, whose highest point
rises about eight thousand feet above the level of the sea; and
as Glenora is only a thousand feet above the sea, the height to
be overcome in climbing this peak is about seven thousand feet.
Though the time was short I determined to climb it, because of the
advantageous position it occupied for general views of the peaks
and glaciers of the east side of the great range.
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