Abstract
A BULLETIN of the National Geographic Society of America announces that an expedition, under the auspices of Harvard University and of the National Geographic Society, and under the leadership of Mr. Bradford Washburn, has made, during the course of aeroplane flights, the important discovery of a vast inland ice field in Alaska. The ice is hemmed in by a coastal range of mountains with peaks reaching 10,000–19,000 ft. above sea-level. This range stretches from the Copper River Valley above Cordova to the Alsek River Valley in the Yukon. Most of the ice lies athwart and to the west of the Alaska–Canada boundary line, where it turns north to the Arctic Ocean. The ice thus forms a barrier to land communication between the south “panhandle” of Alaska and the major part of the territory in the north. It is stated that the ice field covers a stretch of territory 235 miles long. It is in effect so extensive as to constitute an ice reservoir which provides the source of large outflowing glaciers, including the Bering and Malaspina glaciers, the immense size of which–they are 30 and 50 miles wide respectively–is now accounted for. This part of Alaska (which possesses the conditions favourable to glacier formation–namely, high altitude, low temperature and high precipitation) thus contains the largest known ice fields outside the polar regions. It is a remarkable feat that an expedition of only four men should have succeeded in photographing 1,500 square miles of territory in a country peculiarly difficult of access. They have also carried out geological work in the St. Elias Range.
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Inland Ice Field in Alaska. Nature 142, 564 (1938). https://doi.org/10.1038/142564b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/142564b0