Note on the Glacier of Mount Lyell, California

Abstract

The writer had the privilege of visiting the glacier on Mount Lyell on August 17 and 18 of the present year (1904), and of securing the photographs accompanying this note. Mount Lyell is one of the well-known peaks of the High Sierra, although it is by no means the highest, the elevation being only 13,090 feet. On the northern face of the mountain lies a body of ice something over a mile in east-andwest length, and extending down the slope about half a mile. It consists, in reality, of two glaciers lying side by side, and separated in part by a narrow tongue of rock. The present aspect of the glacier is shown in the accompanying photographs. Two phenomena seem especially worthy of note. First, there is an absence of any large amount of morainal material except at the immediate terminus of the ice. Lyell Canyon, which was formerly occupied by the extended Lyell Glacier, was examined for a distance of about fourteen miles, and only scattered bowlders and small beds of morainal material were noted until the present terminal moraine was reached. Abundant evidence of glacial action, however, is present throughout the valley in the form of polished and grooved surfaces, roches moutonnes, and domes. The retreat of the glacier to its present position must have been rapid. It is doubtful if the volume of glacial debris now found in Lyell Canyon is much greater than the volume that would be contained at any one time in a glacier filling this canyon to the extent which Lyell Glacier did in former