Glaciers once filled all the mountain valleys and even pushed out
through the passes into the prairies and through the fiords to the sea,
for everywhere one finds boulder clay and moraines and valleys with U
shaped cross sections that can only be accounted for by glacial action
on a large scale. This work was done during the Ice Age, and one may
truly say that the higher mountains are still in the Glacial Period.
One of the most beautiful results of former ice action is to be found in
the “cirques,” half Kettle or arm chair valleys, high up among the
mountains overhanging the main valleys and enclosed by vertical cliffs
on all sides except in front. These are the deserted nests of cliff
glaciers, hollowed out by the ice itself and often deepened so that a
turquoise blue lake lies within rock rims. If not too high up these
cirque lakes are surrounded by evergreen forest, behind which rise the
gray or purple walls of rock with some snow in the ravines above, the
whole mirrored in the lake, until some catspaw of breeze shatters the
reflection. Lake Agnes in the mountains behind lake Louise is an easily
reached example of a cirque basin, and there are hundreds of others
scattered through the fastnesses of the mountains, all gems in their
way, many not yet seen by the eye of a white man. The higher cirque
lakes, above timberline, enclosed only by cliffs and snow, have an
austere beauty of their own, but lack the graces and the wild flowers of
their sisters below in the forest zone.
Often the walls of such valleys are leaped by streams from some melting
snowfield falling hundreds of feet and reaching the bottom as mere
threads of spray.
_Glaciers Reached by the Canadian Pacific_
There are very few parts of the world where fine glacial scenery can be
found so close to a great railway as in our mountain parks. If one stops
at lake Louise, in Rocky Mountains Park, the splendid Victoria glacier
is in view doubled by reflection in its waters, which get their
exquisite color from the last remaining particles of mud brought down by
the glacial stream. Two miles walk or ride along a good trail brings one
into its presence, and often great masses of ice may be seen avalanching
down from cliff glaciers above to the surface of the lower glacier. From
lake Louise as a centre one can reach the well named Paradise valley by
ten miles ride or drive over a good road and visit the fine Horseshoe
glacier at its head. The valley of the Ten Peaks farther to the
southeast requires a somewhat longer ride or drive, passing the splendid
front of Mt. Temple, the highest summit in sight from the railway
(11,626 feet). Moraine lake, eleven miles from lake Louise lies near the
entrance of the valley but farther up can be seen the great Wenkchemna
glacier, and several small glaciers lying between the Ten Peaks. Beyond
the Ten Peaks to the south there is a broad snowfield and glacier
leading over to Prospector’s valley and Vermilion pass, but for an
excursion of such length and difficulty one should be equipped for
serious climbing and have a light camp outfit.
From any high point west of lake Louise one can catch glimpses of a much
larger snowfield towards the north near Mts. Daly and Balfour, but the
glaciers flowing from it are not so easily reached as those to the south
of the railway.
There are glaciers in sight during most of the descent by rail from the
summit of the pass through the wild Kickinghorse valley to Field, in the
Yoho Park, from which the Yoho valley may be visited with Yoho glacier
at its head. Descending beyond this into the warm depths of the Columbia
valley the alpine type of scenery is lost for a time. As the railway
climbs laboriously westward out of the valley into the Selkirks, Glacier
Park is entered. Here the scenery grows more striking until at Rogers
pass one is once more surrounded by snow peaks—hidden, alas! too often
by the long snowshed. The five mile tunnel now being pierced to avoid
the heavy grades of the pass will cut out many a ravishing view of snow
peak and ice tongue; but a stay at Glacier, just beyond the pass, gives
an unrivalled chance to study a fine glacier with the least possible
trouble.
The Illecillewaet or Great glacier is only a mile and a half from
Glacier station and as its foot may be reached with very little
climbing, more travellers visit it than any other glacier in Canada. A
climb to Mt. Lookout just west of the glacier gives a magnificent view
over the Illecillewaet glacier and névé and over the grand mountains
surrounding it. This region was the first part of our snowy mountains to
be carefully explored and mapped by a skilful climber. The Rev. W.
Spotswood Green made Glacier his headquarters for this work in 1888 and
published his interesting book “Among the Selkirk Glaciers” in 1890.
[Illustration]