Though there are higher mountains in the Rockies of the United States,
they rise from a dry and lofty tableland and most of them have little
snow and no glaciers. But for the row of extinct volcanoes beginning
with Mt. Baker, Mt. Rainier and Mt. Shasta, the United States has very
little truly alpine scenery except where our Rocky mountain ranges
extend for a degree or two south of the boundary. A great many of the
mountain climbers of the eastern states come to Alberta or British
Columbia when they want to use an ice axe or a glacier rope and most of
their experienced climbers are members of the Alpine Club of Canada.
Canadians themselves are often not aware of the splendid scenery and the
unsurpassed opportunities for climbing of all grades of difficulty
offered by their own mountains. There is no more exhilarating sport than
that of the mountaineer, and there is no more interesting region for the
geologist, the botanist or the zoologist than the grand ranges of
mountains that run parallel to the Pacific in our western territory.
While tourists from all over the world are being attracted more and more
to our glorious alpine region it is especially important that our own
people should seek a delightful holiday and gain health and vigor in our
mountain parks. As good roads and trails and cabins for shelter are
extended to the wilder and more impressive parts of the mountains it
becomes easier for the ordinary visitor to study the sublimities of
valleys, glaciers and mountain peaks once out of reach without an
expensive camp equipment.
A few good Swiss guides are available at the more important centres in
the mountains and the inexperienced climber should not undertake any
difficult glacier work nor bad rock climbing without the aid of a guide.
There is of course a wide range of less difficult walks and climbs that
brings one without risk into the heart of the mountains where one may
study the ways by which snowfields and glaciers and glacial rivers do
their work of shaping the mountains.
[Illustration]
A. P. Coleman in “The Canadian Rockies”
If one halts by chance anywhere on a mountain pass, all sorts of
thrilling things are going on around. Lovely flowers are opening eagerly
to the sun and wind of Spring—in mid August, with September snows just
at hand, a whole year’s work of blossom and seed to be accomplished
before the ten months’ winter Sleep begins. Bees are tumbling over them
intoxicated with honey and the joy of life while it is summer. Even the
humming-birds, with jewels on their breasts as if straight from the
tropics, are not afraid to skim up the mountain sides, poise over a
bunch of white heather, and pass with a flash from flower to flower. The
marmots with aldermanic vests are whistling and “making hay while the
sun shines,” and one may see their bundles of choice herbs spread on a
flat stone to dry, while the little striped gophers are busy too. Time
enough to rest in the winter.
Everything full of bustle and haste and of joy, what could be more
inspiring than the flowery meadows above tree-line when the warm sun
shines in the six weeks of summer! The full splendour and ecstacy of a
whole year’s life piled into six weeks after the snow has thawed and
before it falls again!
Higher up even the snow itself is alive with the red snow plant and the
black glacier flea, like the rest of the world making the most of
summer; and as you take your way across the snow to the mountain top,
what a wonderful world opens out! How strangely the world has been
built, bed after bed of limestone or slate or quartzite, pale grey or
pale green or dark red or purple, built into cathedrals or castles, or
crumpled like colored cloths from the rag-bag, squeezed together into
arches and troughs, into V’s and S’s and M’s ten miles long and two
miles high; or else sheets of rock twenty thousand feet thick have been
sliced into blocks and tilted up to play leap-frog with one another.
And then the sculpturing that is going on! One is right in the midst of
the workshop bustle where mountains are being carved into pinnacles,
magnificent cathedral doors that never open, towers that never had a
keeper—all being shaped before one’s eyes out of the mighty beds and
blocks of limestone and quartzite that were once the sea bottom. You can
watch the tools at work, the chisel and gouge, the file and the
sandpaper. All the workmen are hard at it this spring morning in August;
the quarryman Frost has been busy over night, as you hear from the
thunder of big blocks quarried from the cliffs across the valley; there
is a dazzling gleam on the moist, polished rock which craftsman Glacier
has just handed over to the daylight; and you can watch how recklessly
the waterfall is cutting its way down, slicing the great banks of rock
with canyons!
It is inspiring to visit the mountains any day in the year, but
especially so in the July and August springtime when a fresh start is
made, and plants, animals, patient glaciers, hustling torrents, roaring
rivers, shining lakes are all hard at work rough hewing or putting
finishing touches on an evernew world.
* * * * * *
“From the physical geographer’s point of view, every feature of the Alps
has its counterpart somewhere in the Rockies; folds and faults and
tilted strata are carved into an infinitude of shapes, including risky
peaks and aiguilles; snow and ice are present in every form, smooth and
easy or torn with blue crevasses and splintered into daring seracs.
There is every variety of stream at work, clear or muddy, gentle or
furious, including much larger rivers in much longer valleys than any in
the Alps. Small lakes are far more numerous and beautiful. Every element
of interest and beauty on the physical side is as well developed
somewhere in the Rockies as it is in the Alps but from my own
observation I may suggest that often the Alpine mountain group is better
posed, the picture better composed from the point of view of the
beholder, than in the Rockies. The reason for this is I believe, largely
one of area. The comparatively small mass of the Alps is more statuesque
and more easily seen from the proper point of view than any part of the
Cordilleran region, which sprawls over a hundred thousand square miles.
This seeming lack of focus and concentration of dramatic points seems to
me the greatest defect of the Rockies as compared with the Alps.
On the other hand, there is a cleanness and virginity, an exquisite
loneliness about many of the Rocky Mountain peaks and valleys that has a
peculiar charm. There is the feeling of having made a new discovery, of
having caught Nature unawares at her work of creation, as one turns off
from a scarcely-beaten route into one never trodden at all by the feet
of white men; and this experience may be had in a thousand valleys among
the Rockies.”
[Illustration]