| Summary: | Alaska Ice Cap Melts At Fringe: Glacier Priest Says Great Sheets Are Slowly Retreating Inland. ALASKA ICE CAP MELTS AT FRINGE Glacier Priest Says Great Sheets Are Slowly Retreating Inland. JUNEAU, Alaska, Sept. 6. (/P)— The "retreat" of the huge Mendenhal' and Taku glaciers shows that the entire Alaska coastal range ice cap is melting away along the fringe, Father Bernard R. Hubbard, the "glacier priest," said today. "A cycle has apparently set in during which the entire ice cap in this area and back into the Canadian mountains is retreating inland," he said. "However, I can see nothing to indicate such a 'shrinkage' will be' permanent." "We could see that the huge Mendenhal glacier is losing many miles of its front annually," Father Hubbard said. "Mendenhal, you know, is large enough so that all the glaciers in the Alps could be thrown into the mighty chasm it occupies, and there would be empty spaces left. Has Heat Theory. "The same is true of the Norris, Taku, Twins, Tulsequah and the other glacier fingers radiating from the ice cap." Father Hubbard has a definite theory he is working on this summer, that ice areas can not reach a depth of more than about 2000 feet. The pressure under such weight, he holds, produces so much heat that the ice at that depth is melted. "The retreat of the Taku glacier," he said, "may see that great ice mass, with its immense front, resting at no distant time entirely upon land, Mud from underneath now shows at the center of the glacier."
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