First in a northerly direction, then curving
around to the west, while a well-characterized terminal moraine,
formed by the glacier towards the close of its existence, unites them
near their lower extremities at a height of eighty-five hundred feet.
Another pair of older lateral moraines, belonging to a glacier of
which the one just mentioned was a tributary, extend in a general
northwesterly direction nearly to the level of Big Smoky Valley, about
fifty-five hundred feet above sea level.
Four other canyons, extending down the eastern slopes of this grand
old mountain into Monito Valley, are hardly less rich in glacial
records, while the effects of the mountain shadows in controlling and
directing the movements of the residual glaciers to which all these
phenomena belonged are everywhere delightfully apparent in the trends
of the canyons and ridges, and in the massive sculpture of the neve
wombs at their heads. This is a very marked and imposing mountain,
attracting the eye from a great distance. It presents a smooth and
gently curved outline against the sky, as observed from the plains,
and is whitened with patches of enduring snow. The summit is made up
of irregular volcanic tables, the most extensive of which is about two
and a half miles long, and like the smaller ones is broken abruptly
down on the edges by the action of the ice. Its height is
approximately eleven thousand three hundred feet above the sea.
A few days after making these interesting discoveries, I found other
well-preserved glacial traces on Arc Dome, the culminating summit of
the Toyabe Range. On its northeastern slopes there are two small
glacier lakes, and the basins of two others which have recently been
filled with down-washed detritus. One small residual glacier lingered
until quite recently beneath the coolest shadows of the dome, the
moraines and neve-fountains of which are still as fresh and unwasted
as many of those lying at the same elevation on the Sierra - ten
thousand feet - while older and more wasted specimens may be traced on
all the adjacent mountains. The sculpture, too, of all the ridges and
summits of this section of the range is recognized at once as glacial,
some of the larger characters being still easily readable from the
plains at a distance of fifteen or twenty miles.
The Hot Creek Mountains, lying to the east of the Toquima and Monito
ranges, reach the culminating point on a deeply serrate ridge at a
height of ten thousand feet above the sea. This ridge is found to be
made up of a series of imposing towers and pinnacles which have been
eroded from the solid mass of the mountain by a group of small
residual glaciers that lingered in their shadows long after the larger
ice rivers had vanished.
