It is from 60
to over 100 feet high, and plunges forward at an angle of 38 deg..
Cautiously picking my way, I gained the top of the moraine and was
delighted to see a small but well characterized glacier swooping down
from the gloomy precipices of Black Mountain in a finely graduated curve
to the moraine on which I stood. The compact ice appeared on all the
lower portions of the glacier, though gray with dirt and stones embedded
in it. Farther up the ice disappeared beneath coarse granulated snow.
The surface of the glacier was further characterized by dirt bands and
the outcropping edges of the blue veins, showing the laminated structure
of the ice. The uppermost crevasse, or "bergschrund," where the
_neve_ was attached to the mountain, was from 12 to 14 feet wide,
and was bridged in a few places by the remains of snow avalanches.
Creeping along the edge of the schrund, holding on with benumbed
fingers, I discovered clear sections where the bedded structure was
beautifully revealed. The surface snow, though sprinkled with stones
shot down from the cliffs, was in some places almost pure, gradually
becoming crystalline and changing to whitish porous ice of different
shades of color, and this again changing at a depth of 20 or 30 feet to
blue ice, some of the ribbon-like bands of which were nearly pure, and
blended with the paler bands in the most gradual and delicate manner
imaginable.
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