The traveller going westwards from the prairie finds the way blocked by
a grim wall of cliffs rising 7,000 or 8,000 feet above the sea and
justifying the name of the “Rockies” given to our greatest chain of
mountains. Toward the end of the summer these desolate precipices are
snowless and except for a glimpse of white peaks through some pass there
is scarcely a suggestion of the glacier region within. Then the train
enters the “Gap” and before long the summits around show fields or
patches of midsummer snow; and as one draws nearer to the heart of the
Rockies there is blue ice to be seen clinging to the cliffs or reaching
as glaciers down into the wooded valleys, and one is thrilled with the
wild charm of alpine scenery.
However, engineers are strict utilitarians and always choose the lowest
pass for a railway, so that the passenger in the observation car catches
only tantalizing glimpses of the wonders and beauties of the ice world a
few miles away and a few thousand feet above the valley. One must stop
at some place like lake Louise in the southern Rockies or Tête Jaune in
the north or Glacier in the Selkirks to come into real contact with snow
fields and glaciers. What a joy it is to get rid of the hot and dusty
everyday world of cities for a while and come close to Nature in one of
her wildest moods! It is not only the mountaineer who feels the
seduction of the cool, clean solitudes where glaciers are born and do
their wonderful work. Every healthy manor woman must yield to the
delight of living in those inspiring surroundings.
It is worthwhile to put on warm strong clothes and hob-nailed shoes and
fill your lungs with mountain air in a scramble up to the snow fields to
see how the glacial machinery works, machinery which some thousands of
years ago shaped almost the whole surface of Canada, doing its work on
the plains as well as the mountains and leaving it the splendid land of
lakes and rivers and fertile prairies and rolling hills which it is
to-day.
_Snowline._
To reach the snows generally means some miles of walking and climbing,
often through forest covered slopes at first where the outside world is
lost. Then the trees begin to thin and grow stunted, revealing between
the trunks blue valleys with a lake or two and far off cliffs and
mountains. At last the trees cease at 7,500 feet and you are at
timberline. Here the three Rocky mountain heathers spread soft thick
carpets between stiff bushes only a few feet high but with trunks a foot
through, so buffeted have they been by the storms of centuries. The rows
of dwarfed spruces leaning back against some rock ledge give fine
shelter for the mountain goats, wisps of whose white wool cling to the
stubborn branches.
Then come cliffs and rocky slopes and grassy or sedgy uplands (the true
alps as the word is used in Switzerland) where mountain sheep or goats
pasture and wild flowers grow by the million, blue ones such as lupines,
gentians, fox-gloves and forget-me-nots; yellow ones such as
adder-tongues, columbines and a multitude of starry composite flowers;
the red or orange Indian paint brush; and white flowers innumerable. You
have reached the edge of the snow rapidly melting on a July day under a
sun that is hot even on high mountains. The plants just freed from their
winter covering are all bursting into bloom together, bees are humming,
butterflies lazily flutter past and a humming bird poises over a
blossom; for it is spring at these altitudes and there is a whole
season’s work to be done, seeds ripened and all, before autumn comes in
September with its snowstorms burying all under the white silence of a
nine-months winter again.
It is a thrilling experience to set foot at last on midsummer snow
sweeping upwards, gleaming toward the higher summits, snow that never
entirely melts and that is so dazzling in the July sunlight that one
needs dark or colored glasses to avoid snow blindness if the tramp is to
be a long one.
[Illustration]