Sketch and notes by John Muir, passing through Séet ka, canyon channel (Gastineau) under guidance of Toyatte in 1879. He did not name this glacier at the time, but called it 1 of 3 east-siders (other 2 became known on federal maps as Eagle and H-word). Perspective suggests he was somewhere in Taashuyee, river/tide/mud-flats (M-word Wetlands), looking over a mostly unforested valley to the Towers. ● John was a rather formulaic illustrator. This sketch of M-word glacier closely resembles his drawing of the D-word glacier we cruised by last weekend above SÍt’i X’aayÍ, glacier point, en route to Deishú, end of trail (Haines). So how faithful to reality was that narrow band of end-moraine spruces? ● Well, in both locations, expanded-toe glaciers built terminal and tightly-grouped early recessional moraines, inching back slowly for the first century of retreat. So that narrow forest fringe may have been a pretty typical feature wherever glaciers swelled out onto their own raised deltas.
Morning:
In the morning we visited coastal sites at Aanchg̱altsóow, nexus town (Auke Rec) and K’aan Héenak’u, porpoise little bay (Smuggler’s Cove).
geopdfs we used:
“5ft” in these titles indicates 5-foot contours, generated from the same LiDAR elevation model as the predicted streams and lovely hillshade that we’ll use to trace wavecut faces. A bold blue line is the Corps of Engineer’s 20.6-ft Extreme High Tide, and the bold green line above it shows highest tides at peak Little Ice Age, around 32 feet. In between them, I’ve coded blue the belt of raised tideland. This is where pretty much every village and fish camp I know of in northern Lingít Aaní was located. If connections between surficial geology and cultural sites intrigue you, download the course manual for Why do we live here? A semester high school class I helped teach for Goldbelt Heritage Foundation in 2013.
Cathy will show us recent Little Ice Age raised marine features and much older deposits from the early Holocene. “Smuggler’s Cove” may actually be a rare case of relevant place-based naming in the Euro-tradition. (When we get there, ask me about the walrus mandibles 🙂
Afternoon:
Two afternoon stops are both covered on this third geopdf. First, a turn up Kax̱dig̱oowu Héen, going back clear water (Montana Creek), then, finishing the day near Glacier Visitor Center. This is an area where the 2013 LiDAR allowed me to trace much finer borders for Miller’s alternating bands of moraine and outwash. Ice recession lines mapped by Don Lawrence and Charles Forward give us precise surface ages in this area. We’ll even see some of those sand-traps Cathy told us about that inspired the origins of golf in Scottish pitted outwash.
My custom geopdfs for this landforms class generally have a light overlay of RD Miller’s 1975 ‘surfgeo’ units, using his same color symbology. They’re easier to use in the field, cause you can see your position and track in Avenza, and scrutinize the beautiful LiDAR bare earth for features like moraines and wavecut escarpments. However, it always pays to reference original sources. RD’s map has stuff I omitted, like C-14 dates.
Go to the National Geologic Map Database, and download their print optimized pdf 8MB. This pdf is not rectified; send it to an app like Acrobat, not Avenza. On my phone it took awhile to figure out how to get it ‘de-clouded’ for offline use.
