Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 24, 2025
Pictures of the Rhone glacier published in the year 1820 and in the eighteenth century show that in old days the terminal ice-fall did not end abruptly in a narrowed "snout," as it does now, but spread out into a very broad half-dome or fan-shaped, apron-like expanse, some 700 feet high and a quarter of a mile broad at the base.
It had been half-past two when they had put on the rope, it was now close upon half-past six. They had taken four hours to traverse the ice-fall, and they should have taken only two and a half. Garratt Skinner, however, expressed no anxiety. On the contrary, one might have thought that he wished to lose time. "There's one of the difficulties disposed of," he said, cheerily.
Too tired to write geological notes. We all felt very slack this morning, partly rise of temperature, partly reaction, no doubt. Ought to have kept close in to glacier north of Mt. Buckley, but in bad light the descent looked steep and we kept out. Evidently we got amongst bad ice pressure and had to come down over an ice-fall.
M. Soret states that he has not absolute confidence in his thermometrical observations, but as he had more time than I to devote to such details, inasmuch as he did not pass down into the lowest part of the cave, I give his results rather than my own, which were carelessly made on this occasion: On a stone near the first column of ice, 0°·37 C.; on a stick propped against the column on the edge of the great ice-fall, 2°·37 C.; in a hole in the ice, filled with water by drops from the roof, 0° C. approximately.
About at right angles to the end of the glacier, and four thousand feet above it, is another glacier, which discharges by an almost perpendicular ice-fall upon the floor of the glacier below.
Often we could see nothing, and the noise of the avalanches without the sight of them was at times a little alarming. But the most notable discharges were those from the great ice-fall, and the more important of them were startling and really very grand sights. A slight movement would begin along the side of the ice, in one of the gullies of the rock, a little trickling and rattling.
We were all disappointed by the actual size of the ice-fall which it had cost us so much time and trouble to descend, the distance from the first step to the last being only 26 feet: as this, however, was given by a string stretched from the one point to the other, and not following the concave surface of the ice, the real distance was something more than this.
After a time, we reached a tumbled chaos of rock, much resembling the ice-fall of a glacier, and, on descending, and rounding a low spur of the mountain so as to take a north-westerly course, we found ourselves in a perfect paradise of flowers. One orchis I shall always regret.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking