DanLJ images

Angel Glacier from the path to Cavell Meadows. This one of a couple of gaps where you can actually see it through the trees. We hurried up there because we heard prolonged thunder of crashing ice. But when we got to the viewpoint, there was just this pile of ice-dust, small from our vantange point, at its foot. Edith Cavell Mountain

2 September 2002, Jasper National Park, Alberta

Kodak Portra 800
Contax 645, 80mm, f22.0 1/90 sec
Copyright © 2002 Daniel L. Johnson

Looking north from the lateral moraine at Edith Cavell Mountain, Aquila Mountain (2880m/9446ft) looms over the Astoria River Valley.

2 September 2002, Jasper National Park, Alberta
Kodak Portra 800
Contax 645, 80mm, f16.0 1/90 sec
Copyright © 2002 Daniel L. Johnson

This lovely emerald lake is known on the maps as Cavell Lake, though I seem to recall being told -- as if in a dream -- that its true, spiritually significant name is ...oh, wait a minute, I forgot! Must have been a dream. The mountain in the back is the north shoulder of Edith Cavell Mountain.

2 September 2002, Jasper Park, Alberta
Kodak Portra 800 35mm
Canon z90w
Copyright © 2002 Daniel L. Johnson

A grandmother and a rodent, on speaking terms at high altitude. Edith Cavell Mountain

2 September 2002, Jasper National Park, Alberta

Kodak Portra 800
Contax 645, 80mm, f11.0 1/250 sec
Copyright © 2002 Daniel L. Johnson

It'a against the law in Canada to feed wild animals, but the animals can't read the signs, and the tourists don't either. The small animals are pretty attentive to the tourists. Edith Cavell Mountain

2 September 2002, Jasper National Park, Alberta

Kodak Portra 800
Contax 645, 80mm, f11.0 1/180 sec
Copyright © 2002 Daniel L. Johnson

High on the trail to Cavell Meadows, there's finally a gap in the trees through which you can clearly see Angel Glacier and the mountain's cap cloud. As we walked along, we regularly heard thunder, sometimes prolonged peals, which we at first thought were coming from the dark rain clouds over the mountain peak. But then we saw "little" (from a distance) cascades of ice tumbling down the cliff, and realized these were the roars of a disintegrating glacier.

The pale area of rock below the glacier was covered by ice when this glacier was named; that was the skirt of the angel. Its waist is still there, crumbling; you can see a long, slender waterfall cascanding down from its tip. The head and wings are intact above. The angel has had a hemicorporectomy...

2 September 2002, Edith Cavell Mountain, Jasper Park, Alberta
Kodak Portra 800 35mm, Canon z90w
Copyright © 2002 Daniel L. Johnson

The small glacial lake below Angel Glacier is milky because of suspended rock flour (limestone, I suspect). In it float small icebergs the size of grand pianos to buses. You might notice the wavy horizontal lines in the decaying glacier at the left; these are crevasses. The water melts the glacier from underneath, the rock slumps; as it slumps, it fractures into slices.

2 September 2002, Edith Cavell Mountain
Kodak Portra 800 35mm, Canon z90w
Copyright © 2002 Daniel L. Johnson

You note the small dark line along the foot of the glacier, showing the ice suspended by melting above the lake. Near the center, a section of ice has slumped into the lake. No one was wading in this water while we were there...

2 September 2002, Angel Glacier
Kodak Portra 800 35mm
Canon z90w
Copyright © 2002 Daniel L. Johnson

We walked up the trail to Cavell Meadows, 400 meters in about 2 kilometers, a very long staircase by anybody's definition, and at 6000-7000 ft altitude. At a switchback in the trail, you can look down at the lateral moraine and get a sense of scale.

The hikers are on top of the east lateral moraine; they very kindly posed so that you can appreciate that the pieces of gravel underfoot are the size of cars and buses.

In the 1840's, when the last "little ice age" ended, the glacier filled this valley to the top of the pale till across the valley and to the hiker's shoulders on the near side. In the century and a half since then, the globe has been warming; in the last decade the glacier spilling down the rock face across the way -- Angel Glacier -- has lost its connection with the glacial remnant below.

The controversy about global warming is not whether warming is occurring -- this is indisputable except by an ignoramus -- but whether human activity is primarily responsible for its recent acceleration.

2 September 2002, Edith Cavell Mountain, Angel Glacier, Jasper Park, Alberta
Kodak Portra 800 35mm, Canon z90w
Copyright © 2002 Daniel L. Johnson

A striped ground squirrel in the moraine of Angel Glacier. It's illegal to feed wild animals in Canada, but the behavior of the animals near tourist locations strongly suggests that tourists idiotically translate this law to "don't feed the bears."

2 September 2002, Edith Cavell Mountain
Kodak Portra 800 35mm, Canon z90w
Copyright © 2002 Daniel L. Johnson

Looking south across the lake, one can see the ice gradually slumping into the water. The cliffs are dark above because they haven't been ice covered. Edith Cavell Mountain, Angel Glacier.

2 September 2002, Jasper National Park, Alberta

Kodak Portra 400VC
Contax 645, 80mm, f8.0 1/180 sec
Copyright © 2002 Daniel L. Johnson

Tourists here show that the ice chunks in this glacial lake are merely doghouse to grand piano in scale rather than garage to bus in scale. As always, 90% is below the surface. Looming above everyone is the eastern lateral moraine; its valley was filled with glacier at this point early in this century. (There is no question that global warming is occuring; the dispute is to what extent it is caused by the activities of man.)

The tourist near the middle of the photo, in blue jeans, has connections to the photographer. She is patiently enjoying the view while time stops for him, as it always does while composing a photo. He had thought she was beside him, there not having been time for her to go anywhere. Then he spoke to her from from behind the camera, but got no response. Well, this is not so unusual, but when he looked up, she was gone. Later she showed up in this photograph.

2 September 2002, Jasper National Park, Alberta

Kodak Portra 400VC
Contax 645, 80mm, f8.0 1/250 sec
Copyright © 2002 Daniel L. Johnson

The connection between the angel's thorax and skirt has long ago vanished, but there is still a large slope of ice, covered in many places with rock that has popped off the cliffs above, below it. We are here at the end of summer. The waterfall will not disappear until well into winter, as cold penetrates slowly. Edith Cavell Mountain

2 September 2002, Jasper National Park, Alberta

Kodak Portra 400VC
Contax 645, 80mm, f8.0 1/180 sec

Copyright © 2002 Daniel L. Johnson

The guides all say that the continual, often stron westering winds cause the trees to have branches only on the lee side. This sounds very good and logical, especially while looking at the afflicted tree. But the theory runs aground on the neigboring tree that is not lopsided. The only answer is that in winter the symmetrical tree happens to be in a spot that is covered by snow, while the lopsided tree is in a spot that is exposed. It's not the wind, precisely: it's that the wind scours the tree with ice crystals, and the cold damages the buds that are exposed. Dan Johnson, amateur naturalist, with you at at Edith Cavell Mountain...

2 September 2002, Jasper National Park, Alberta

Kodak Portra 400VC
Contax 645, 80mm, f9.5 1/60 sec
Copyright © 2002 Daniel L. Johnson

Angel Glacier, from the lateral moraine on the west. The "wings" are outlined above the cliffs; the remnant of the "thorax" is exuding a waterfall which seems tiny from this distance. Every 3-5 minutes we heard rolling thunder that at first we thought was coming from the dark clouds over the mountain, but then we saw a little white dust fall onto the cliff below the glacier, and realized that big chunks of ice were calving off the glacier and falling down.

2 September 2002, Jasper National Park, Alberta

Kodak Portra 400VC
Contax 645, 80mm, f5.6 1/125 sec
Copyright © 2002 Daniel L. Johnson

Angel Glacier from Cavell Meadows, with the mountain visible above it.
2 September 2002, Jasper National Park, Alberta

Kodak Portra 800 Contax 645, 80mm, f16.0 1/125 sec
Copyright © 2002 Daniel L. Johnson

The file names are my file numbers, and are not directly related to image contents. The subject and technical data are contained within each jpeg file itself, as a comment readable by the Gimp or Photoshop, and the comment is provided to the right of each thumbnail image below.

I'm not in the photography business, but if you'd like a print of any, these photos in real life are all 6x4.5 cm color negatives (unless noted otherwise), and we can arrange this through Photos, Inc., of Minneapolis. I send them my negative and you send them your charge card number and address, and in a week or two you'll get a print. email me at drdan AT wwt.net if you wish to pursue this.