On this same occasion, Castner went on snowshoes some distance up the margin of the Yale Glacier, which may perhaps show that it was then less severely crevassed than in 1910 when traveling upon its surface was impossible.
The front of each was an almost perpendicular mass of ice, from which immense pieces were constantly breaking off and falling into the sea with a great roaring noise, due principally to the action of the tides.
The photographs and descriptions by Grant in 1905 and 1909, and the map by Higgins in the latter year show that Yale Glacier maintained essentially the same conditions during the decade following 1899.
The narrowness of the barren zones in 1909 leads Grant to conclude that the eastern margin was slightly farther advanced in that year than in 1898 and 1899.
Near the terminus the entire marginal barren zone was covered by ice, and bushes were being overridden, but in front of the glacier there were rock slopes bare of vegetation.
Bordering part of the glacier margin was a push moraine of till, bowlders and wood, and there were also some peat rolls.
Farther back along this margin practically all the former barren zone had been overridden, and the glacier was destroying thickets of alder and willow bushes from 10 to 33 years old.
The relationship to snow banks proves that part of this advance had taken place during the preceding autumn or early winter.