Climb the glacier
Before theBayside glacier melts away for one more season — and possibly its last — it’s worth a visit. You can climb the glacier yourself, although at your own risk (it is icy). As much garbage as there is in the glacier, for now it’s still mostly snow, and walking on top of it is no more unsanitary than walking along the curb of the average city street. The easiest route of ascent begins from the corner of Chestnut and Somerset streets, following the tread tracks of the bulldozer that shapes the glacier after every storm. If you climb on a warm day, the trickiest part will be leaping from the street onto the ice without getting your shoes lost in the thick mud at the glacier’s melting edge. From there, it’s a gradual, half-block ascent to the summit. From the top, you can look down the steep western slope and study the geological layers: near the bottom third is a leaf-strewn layer, a reminder of how the first snowstorms struck before street-cleaning crews had a chance to sweep up the autumn’s fallen leaves. Just above that is a small ridge — the January thaw, when the glacier briefly retreated. Above that are two or three additional layers, interspersed with smaller ridges associated with other rain storms and warm spells. And on the surface of the glacier is an impressive, and growing, layer of grime, the stuff that we walk though on our city streets and inhale into our lungs (albeit in smaller doses) every day.
_CM | 