These spurs like distinct
ranges meet at your feet; therefore you look at them mostly in the
direction of their extension, and their peaks seem to be massed and
crowded against one another, while immense amphitheaters, canyons
and subordinate ridges with their wealth of lakes, glaciers, and
snow-fields, maze and cluster between them. In making the ascent in
June or October the glacier is easily crossed, for then its snow mantle
is smooth or mostly melted off. But in midsummer the climbing is
exceedingly tedious because the snow is then weathered into curious
and beautiful blades, sharp and slender, and set on edge in a leaning
position. They lean towards the head of the glacier and extend across
from side to side in regular order in a direction at right angles to the
direction of greatest declivity, the distance between the crests being
about two or three feet, and the depth of the troughs between them about
three feet. A more interesting problem than a walk over a glacier thus
sculptured and adorned is seldom presented to the mountaineer.
The Lyell Glacier is about a mile wide and less than a mile long,
but presents, nevertheless, all the essential characters of large,
river-like glaciers--moraines, earth-bands, blue veins, crevasses,
etc., while the streams that issue from it are, of course, turbid with
rock-mud, showing its grinding action on its bed.
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