A glacier dams das A stream another carried boulders 20 miles As changeless as the ever last ing hills is a phrase which is not so in geology change is forever going on great mountain masses are shoved up in earth up to be cut down in after ages by erosion there is no stat ic condit condition ibn in geology some time during the ice age a glacier or glaciers were formed on the great heights of aquarius plateau boulder mountain these glaciers of forward moving flow ing ice shoved rocks forward picked up others by freezing them into the ice and slowly inexorably carried the rocks forward As they were shoved along grinding on the under surface each rock was smoothed rough angularities were abraded away came a day when conditions were war warmer mer and the ice of the slowly moving glacier melted the from front stopped moving and warmth left the rock mass at the end of the ice these rocks were so car ried in those days it is safe to con elude that earth somewhat soft lay in many hundreds of feet of depth where the ice terminated but that this earth was gradually eroded away by the fremont river gently lowering these rocks until today there are about 20 miles distant and about feet lower than their source the road passes by the edge of the rocks one las has merely to walk a few paces choose viewpoint and record them the picture was taken in the late afternoon sun of an october day shadows were long there was a decided reddening effect in the slanting rays of the sun nearing sunset increasing the hue of the reddish soil and giving each bould er a dull reddish color their size may be got from the figure of a man stan stand drig ng forward resting his hand upon one of them many of them weigh four or five tons yet ice much ice glacier ice had no difficulty in carrying them for ward shoving grind ng polishing unremittingly instances in text books on geology cite examples of rock carrying over much greater distances than this as for instance rocks carried from the latitude of wisconsin down nearly to kansas and what ages of years what eons of time are brought into the mind as one stands among them reconstructing the conditions and process let us briefly toy with it approximately 12 million years a go the great uplift of all that vast plateau lateau began the colorado riv er and its tributary the fremont kept pace with the uplift boug ing out the loose soil first and grinding away at the harder rocks but boulder mountain with its cap of lava kept its height being protected by the hard cap bil lions of tons of earth were re moved in the trough cut by the fremont river much later came the ice age glaciers were formed the grinding ice on top of boulder mountain gouged out many small lakes the paradise of fishermen today then the warmth we now feel ee gradually came into being the ice melted and gave up its burden why step on the gas hurrying past this interesting page of the past when just a few pause ause so much of the record of the page of geology 9 why not enjoy the pages of the scroll as it is presented 7 9 all may read so plain lain is it another glacier did other work fhe the top of fish la lake e mountains were carried up to about feet came the ice age between the two mountains a glacier form ed the main drainage and course of flow of that glacier was to the south the water emptying into what is now called otter creek and thence into the sevier then lake bonneville and the water was confined in the drainage tern of the great basin but and it is fascinating reading the slow ly moving glacier carried or chov ed a great mass of pebbles larger rocks much loose soil on Us its front like a huge snowplow and when warmth came the ice dropped that burden smack in the channel be tween the two fish lake moun bains ains and effectually dammed the channel this dam was high enough to block the way the lake rose and found an overflow to the north into the headwaters of the fremont river thence into the col orado and by it to the ocean so the relatively small mass of debris deposited by a glacier as a terminal moraine changed the drainage of 0 a lake from our great basin to the far distant ocean actually stole it A case of pira piracy c ly a captain kidd escapade for myself I 1 hold the viewpoint that man was present during the period of the retreat of the ice man with his spear maybe an in hand but not yet a bow and arrow his wife laying him out on the kitchen floor with a blud geon such were those erate days today on the lake left from aforetime ice boats resorts electric lights and autos to climb the grade to it itt the time when this 7 9 suit yourself choose your own date for it in the eastern U S retreat of the ice age is given tentatively anywhere from to 20 years ago but that is on the lower lying areas here in the mountains when could it have hav e been I 1 went to brighton and studied the smoothed rock surface there where a glacier once slow ly moved over the bedrock car crying rocks on its underside afroz en in and shoved along angular edges of the rocks so carried cut ting grooves in that bed rock that was aforetime how long ago I 1 dont don t know then an another trip I 1 went to the east side of timp and saw the present I 1 now existent glacier between one long since gone an one right before you there is a wide span of years fix your own dating pos sibly at fish lake and on the heights of boulder mountain each at a high elevation glaciers ling ered in the cold they didn dian t melt readily but man was thereabouts on the continent plying his needful craft of hunting for food so we who step on er may well let up on the gas and pause long enough to read the records before flitting on hell bent for leather as we hurry to a distant nowhere to do a nothing read what s by the road side turn the pages slowly for it is all good reading in merely a brief few miles we can see where one glacier stole a drainage system by a dam and another glacier desultorily drop ped its purpose and its burden and erosion gently lowered the rocks feet and 20 miles away a w ay one glacier had an aim and ac complis hed it the other forgot its aimless purpose and dumped the rocks As ch angless as the ever last ing hill is seen in this instance to be as shot full of holes as a lace curtain