WANDERINGS IN WESTLAND

Hokitika Guardian, 31 January 1930, Page 2

WANDERINGS IN WESTLAND

the BALFOUR RIVER AND GLACIER. (By C. E. Douglas, Explorer, 1893.) (Continued.) On the other side ol : the glacier the moraines from. three defined terraces with joint traces of a fourth. Those terraces rise to two hundred foet above the ice near the terminus, and the inner and upper one goes back flat to the foot of the range. No 1 commences nt the big creek and dies out near the gorge, the other two run parallel to near Peg; 10 where they merge into each other and finally disappear in slopes of debris from the hills.

At this Peg 10 the glacier takes a slight bend to the right. The ice at the edge is on a level with the top of the moraine but in the middle it is twenty or thirty feet higher. As shown on the map the Balfour glacier is almost covered with debris principally composed of torlessa , slates. There are no real ice falls all the way up to the Tasman cliffs the surface being rugged certainly, but comparatively flat, in some places the ice is highest in the centre of the glacier. At other places it is the reverse and it is not till near the bend that it becomes piled in irregular masses with hummocks and crevasses but nothing like the hummbpk? ; .afld cracks on the Franz Joseph ’ahcC'Fox. When I visited the Balfour in 1888 it was in DeeembbD&nd at that time the glacier wasClively. Nothing appalling certainly,-.'. bAt-, sufficient cracking and falling-of ; “icey.;'masses into crevasses apd along the asides ito show that, the glacier , wasn’t' dead but when visited last, winter had set in and hardly a movement could be seen or heard. All was silent except the usual falling of ice and snow off Tasmania movement as said before, that is continuous.

There are two features worth mentioning about tlie Balfour, first, it is a very well defined glacier with no branches of any importance. The small glaciers marked on the map are in reality only mere shoots of ice coming off the snowfield of Big Mac, or from patches hanging high up on the Balfour,'i’jtnge,, ,and ‘no doubt in many seasons mbst/ eff disappea r or only show as small patches of ic§ high up on the hill sides. 1 only found out. lately that a barrowful of ice stuck in a gully ought to l>e dignified with the name of a glacier. This acoounts for alpine, travellers with fertile imaginations. being able to see, and count and name so many glaciers when reaching, the top of some peak. The idea, isn’t a had one,' besides giving an air of : I have discovered and named something, so dear to a certain, class of ..-winds. It must be very useful to impecunious explorers extending the sphere of borrowing. Call a patch of ice the Plantage.net Jones,, take a photo of it with that box of fraud, the camera, send it to Plantagewet, and surely he can’t refuse to lend a finish.

The othqt;V feature, in connection with this glacier is. its extraordinary small neve which is out of all proportion to the mass of ice, the explanation of this peculiarity is very simple and applies .to more or less to a score of othet -glaciers in • the country. Tasman towers up from the main glacier for eight, thousand feet almost perpendicular . with the slopes or ledges enough to retain the winter snow, so it comes down to the foot as fast as it falls. The valley where this, snow lands "is high enough up to keep half -the year. It is exposed:'fif6v',:'.tho, full force, of the South AYest J-;drift,; :;’which-for six months of the year must: deposit enormous masses of snow and for half the year it is a practically sunless valley and sheltered from , the only warm wind that blows along the coast.viz:— the north e&stei'V So there is nothing wonderful in such a glacier, the only surprising-rithing’ to. me is it isn’t much longer. Few, if any, alpine explorers visit the mountains in winter, so people have no conception of the ehormoi's - sfn'ow drifting that takes place : iri the heart of the mountains/-'!' know ’several second and third rate glaciers which - are formed snow, glaciers with no neve whatever and are on hills a long way below the ordinary line of perpetual snow.

It was an open question for sonic time .whether the snowfield or Mt. Dumpier and away on Art. Tasman did not in reality belong to the Balfour, as -both times I was up in 18878S I iievdr-could get a clear view all over although the. glimpses I got of the Collins glacier from saddle T). showed it to be far tbo small to drain such - aii extent of country. Had it come down that wav then the PeTouse would have become a second class glacier and the Balfour would have gained a neve more in keeping with its size, hilt a clear view of the country from Byan’.s Peak showed the former to be a first class one and that it drained not only Stokes, and Dampier but went as far hack as the ridge on the divide running up to Alt Tasman. No doubt at one time one of the Perouse came over tlie Balfour range, down the Collins glacier, but that must have Been long ago and not for a sufficiently long period to make any depression in the range.

Our time on the Balfour was limited and we had no proper appliances to mark the rate of flow of the ice hut it appears to-move very slowly. As to any change on it of lat.® years

or evidence of a permanent advance or retreat the following is all the alteration of late years. The glacier has far more debris on it. now than it had in 1888, but perhaps the time of year may have .something to do with that. Much of the drift of that time may have been hidden with the remains of the winter snow. As said before, one of the lateral moraines on the north side has l>een almost destroyed, which shows encroachment of some kind or other. Perhaps this has been caused not by the ice wearing away its edge or shoving it back, but by getting bodily under it and forcing it up till it fell over on the, ice and started its travels again. This Would account for the extra supply of debris on the glacier at present. That lateral moraines along side of a glacier arc often, so shifted is undoubted. There are evidences all over the country of such action.

At the terminus, the position now is exactly as in 1888 with one exception. The river then came from under the ice. in two well defined channels, and it does so vet and in the very same place, hut in the southeast branch through constant falling of the arch in summer the. ice has melted away back in a sort of bay for a hundred feet or so, but no doubt this will make up again next winter. Otherwise everything is the same as of yore. I recognised boulders at the terminus which stand the same distance from it as they did six years ago.

■ The river from the terminus of the glacier to where it plunges into the gorge, a distance of forty chains or so is of little interest. It is the usual' mountain river, muddy in summer' and winter and filled with the .orthodox boulders. About half-way 'down the McKenna comes in and a ‘few" chains further is. the creek that leads up to Craig’s spur and cairn E. S mill as it is the McKenna is of far nioie interest scientifically than the Balfour, as open valley gives one an idea as to what like a place would 10.. k if its was suddenly lifted away, showing the cave rock, recent ice sconrings. and fragments of moraines suddenly arrested in their formation. Every river in. Mestland th it fl .es contain an existing glacier, .shows at their source the same general appearance as the McKenna, an oval scooped o-ut basin, but in mostly every case it has been so long since the. ieo lias vanished, that slips from the hills’-weathering, water Wearing and a covering often of a dense matted scrub have altered their appearance considerably. Out in the McKenna as it now stands a sketch of i's' ‘ appearance at different periods could easily he made, from the. time when an almost perpendicular icefall dropped into the Balfour from a level mer-de-glace, then as the ice retreated a glacier coming half-way down the valley with probably a lake at its terminus with small irregular moraines on its upner shore, then a few patches of ic-e in the rocky creek which now; forms the main stream from Craig’s peak; then the small fast finishing neve on the shoulder of that peak as it stands at the present day, a hint to the glaciers and R'.ioivfiehis ef the Southern Alps that with all their present size and grandness the dav will come when their glories will sink into such asib.

Between the. McKenna and Balfour vp.l'eys there runs a narrow ridge which 1 have called the crag and tail although in reality it is not yet one of a formation of that sort which is so characteristic of glacier country, is composed of a series of rounded or oblong isolated hills with their steepest face shewing away from the direction of flow of ice, perhaps the best example on a large scale of this formation .is the Mosquito Hill, on the Haast River, where the main hill stands by itself to a height of nearly two thousand feet with a tail of low hills running from it up the Haast. The fair rounded knots on Conical hill, Fox Glacier, show the same formation in a le ; ser degree, the denudation not having been sufficient to isolate them.

What I have called the crag and tail shows the beginning of the process, a glacier on each side of a long spur grinding away at its sides till the ridge gradually assumed a wadiike form, but nor, having ice streams crossing it from one glacier to another. Except on a small scale at saddle D it has acquired it,s present shape and is likely to remain at that, unless in future ages an advance of the ice attacks it again and completes the job. On the McKenna side this ridis steep ceitamiy. but a few spurs from it have a tolerable slope into the flat. On the other side it comes down in an almost perpendicular cliff to moraine No. 1 on tlie Balfour shoving that on that side at least the glacier did not deposit sufficient debris to form moraines and thereby protect the reck, but ground away at the cliff with a fringe of boulders on its edge to act jrs sand paper on a large scale.

Tin’s in my opinion is how the rock tej races and glacial benches so common in the country have been formed, a gentle slope as a rule but sometimes the slope is steep with erratics anti remains of drift on them in many places, then a cliff perpendicular or nearly so, and running more or less continuous according to the nature of the rock, are the main features of those formations, (different (periods when the ice was more or less drift covered would account for them. A long p riod of comparatively clear ice would have the effect of rounding out the rock on which the glacier rests, hut the process would be as slow all over the valley as the denudation by perfectly clear water, then a period came when an amount of debris was deposited on the ice from slips far up the mountains sufficient to form a

fringe of boulders on the under edge of the ice as the supply would continue! as long as there was any left to tumble off. The process would be rapid and inclined to act on the rock in a perpendicular direction. Then again another period the shortcut of all—when the quantity of debris on the glacier would he so great as to form lateral moraines against the rock and narrowing the glacier itself, the grinding process m this case, would still go on hut under the ice and a slope would he formed its the moraine enlarged and shoved back the ice, and at this period the floor of thq glacier would denude much quickly but still retain its l' shaped form in a more or less degree. If a glacier could be suddenly re-

moved and its bed exposed it would be found that although the general appearance of the valley would he U shaped, vet there would he found to be ridges in places across it. sentinel rock loss and these and such . like irregularities. This the non-denudist hold to be evidence that a glacier only takes possession of an old valley and luvs liLtie or no effect in forming it. Otherwise they say why should such irregularities be there, but. any quarrymon could tell them what they don't appear to know, namely, that even in the most regular formation no two blocks are alike in texture. If regular undisturbed bed layers of the best building sandstone are this way. how much more so would a formation like the Southern Alps ' he

liable to blocks and dykes of soft and hard rocks. The lower down icefalls on the Waiho and Fox glaciers, the Sentinels, Corporals, Conical hills and such like arc sim.plv there because some rocks denude faster than others. Ordinary schist varies in hardness from that of soft sandstone to rocks as hard as granite. Sometimes for miles in this country the rock will appear to be uniform, sometimes a district of soft laminated schist, next perhaps the same rock, coat rled, twisted and laird as granite, between these there are dykes and patches and isolated masses totally different in texture to the rock surrounding them, any denuding power is bound to perform queer vagaries attaching such country.