The crowning beauty of Glacier—the high, cirqueheld meadows that scent
the wind with wildflower and waterfall—belongs to the zone of
scrub-forest.
At Logan Pass you are introduced to the highlands. Here an exquisite
upland basin holds the Hanging Gardens, a wildflower-clothed gradient
laced with stair-step bogs and lines of wind-bent subalpine fir. In the
dawn sun, before the first engine noise, it shines unbroken, dewbright
and sagging like a spider web secured to the circle of surrounding
peaks.
This is the region the hiker remembers best. The tall mountains wear
this zone close to the cliffs, and the trails encounter it near the
passes or follow it for long, level stretches, as along the Garden Wall.
I remember Preston Park and Fifty Mountain, the fire-touched bench of
Granite Park and the first sight of Sperry chalet, built on a brow of
rock at the upper reach of trees. But most of all I remember the
terrible waterfall that becomes Bowman Creek, the plunge of nearly a
kilometer that drains the magnificent upland bench called
Hole-in-the-Wall.