Show worlds largest ice lee field found stretches over miles in alaska and yukon expedition says washington D C discovery of what is believed to be the world s largest ice field and glacial group outside the polar regions has been announced in dispatches from brad ford washburn leader of the har vard university national geography Geo graph ic society expedition to alaska heads of the martin river and miles glaciers are also connected to the long icecap reaching from cape st elias in alaska to the albek river valley in yukon dis covered on our flight right of august 20 mr washburn wired to the society s headquarters on a spectacular flight which cir cled mount logan and mount st elias second and third highest peaks on the north american conti nent the expedition made aerial photographs of an unexplored area of southeastern alaska to be used later in mapping the report to the society continues this flight over icebound fast nesses previously unvisited by man reveals that the bering glacier and the malaspina glacier whose known extent had already won for them the titles of the world worlds s largest non polar rivers of ice are merely two overflows from a vast highland ice field shrouding a stretch of alaska about miles long equal to the distance from new york city to washington D C long lain unseen explorations of the harvard uni versify national geographic society expedition have outlined a coast range of mountains stretching from the copper river valley above cor dova alaska to the albek river val ley in canada s yukon which walls in a mighty reservoir of ice corn com plemely hidden behind the mountain wall the mammoth octopus of ice has lam unseen and ble its size to be guessed only from the tentacles of glaciers it has clamped around the coastal range largest of the numerous streams of ice overflowing from this giant ice bowl cupped high among peaks two and three miles above sea level are the bering and malaspina glaciers 30 and 50 miles wide after they have broken through the mountain wall and ground their way down al most to the sea in a single flight of discovery over alaska s newly revealed ice giant the expedition saw more ice than is is known in all the famous glaciers glacie ts of europe put together summing up washburn s reports and commenting on their signify cance a bulletin from the national geographic society says photo graphing 1500 1 square miles of tern terri tory the expedition found 1 new ridges in the coast mountain range 2 new glaciers between the range and the chilina river 50 miles far ther inland to the north and 1 3 a glacier system uniting the bering and malaspina giants with the seward glacier in the southeast and with the miles glacier in the north west difficulties encountered most of the newly discovered ice bowl lies athwart and to the west of the alaska canada boundary line just where it jurns due north to the arctic ocean in surveying irl eying this fron tier famous as one of the longest straight line borders ever marked some of the tle difficulties in running the line along the meridian were due to the eastward overflow of glaciers from the then unknown ice field the massive glacier bowl pours its slow and irresistible flood across the border southeastward between mount logan and mount st elias into the seward 9 glacier vhf which ch in furn adds its cogg eai acl volume to the great malaspina the great glacier system ex plains why there is no land corn com muni cation between the southern panhandle of alaska containing the capital and the major portion of the territory to the north the land link is broken by a glacier barrier of more than miles of perpetual ice the malaspina glacier is so ex that it was not recognized as a glacier until 1880 rocks and soil cover the ice around the edges and forests take root in the ice borne earth it is a composite ice stream formed by about a dozen coalescing glaciers the largest of which is the seward when the new glacier system is mapped there is little doubt that alaska will be confirmed as the world s largest stronghold of the ice age outside the polar regions |