THE HUBBARD GLACIER, ALASKA
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| THE HUBBARD GLACIER, ALASKA[1] |
By Professor LAWRENCE MARTIN
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN
SOUTHEAST of Mt. St. Elias and the Malaspina Glacier, Alaska, in the fiorded upper part of Yakutat Bay, known as Disenchantment Bay, is the Hubbard Glacier. It is the largest ice tongue in this region, except certain tributaries of the great Malaspina glacier. It has a total known length of twenty-eight miles along the trunk glacier, exclusive of one broad tributary whose lower twelve and one half miles is all that man has ever seen, two other much narrower tributaries each twelve miles long, five other branches each over five miles in length and scores of smaller tributaries. This system of ice tongues (Fig. 1) has, therefore, nearly one hundred miles of valley glaciers larger than
Fig. 1. Map of Hubbard Glacier and its known tributaries. The main glacier may rise at least
twelve miles farther north, or over forty miles from the sea, while the northwest tributaries may be even longer.
- ↑ Published by permission of the Director of the U. S. Geological Survey. These observations are based upon (1) a U. S. Geological Survey expedition in 1905 under Professor R. S. Tarr, to which the writer was attached, his expenses being met by a grant of the American Geographical Society of New York, and (2) upon the National Geographic Society's Alaskan expedition of 1909, in charge of Professor Tarr and the writer. The illustrations are from photographs by A. J. Brabazon, of the Canadian Boundary Survey, Oscar von Engeln and the author.