September. The season is growing late, the meadow-rue dying and the
leaves of the wild strawberry failing at last. Everywhere the red
contagion of autumn surrounds the vital green. The lower valleys have
lost the whistle of ground squirrels. They sun themselves no longer
these late, mild days. Ripe, sluggish, and hawk-vulnerable, they sensed
the need of hibernation.
It has been eight years since I last visited Hole-in-the-Wall, but I
retain its dimensions and hear its dozen waterfalls at will. Once you
have seen this basin you have a measure by which to judge the high
country and a thirst for the meadows at tree-line.
In Glacier, treelimit ranges between 1,850 and 2,300 meters, depending
on local conditions. The upper limit of tree growth—rarely an even,
horizontal line—is generally an indistinct band running erratically
across a mountain’s face: a tension zone reflecting variations in wind
and sun exposure, degree of slope, snowpack accumulations, and the
presence of adequate soil and water.
Subalpine fir, whitebark pine, and Engelmann spruce do not relinquish
easily their upward climb; where conditions become severe, their growth
is retarded and their stature dwarfed. Deformed and pruned by wind,
their leaders winter-killed when they outreach the protection of the
winter snowpack, trees become shrubs, forced to hug the ground. Size
belies age in these elfin forests, or krummholz, where the growing
season is painfully brief and progress is always uncertain. A twisted,
gnarled little bush, more snag than live branch, bearing a single cone
or two, may be senior by a century to the giants of its race in the
valley below, which yearly shower the ground with an abundant crop of
cones.
This time I will come from Goathaunt, passing Lakes Janet and Francis,
reaching Brown Pass from the east, and camp in the spectacular garden
between Brown and Boulder Passes.
Meadows and rock slides break the forest as the trail gains elevation
and distance through the valley. The spruce and fir thin out rapidly at
the valley head, the trail climbing the grassy slope to low, broad Brown
Pass. Below the pass is Thunderbird Pond, which receives the meltwater
from a glacier high on a shelf of Thunderbird Mountain and is bordered
by a low jungle of willow. In the water stands a bull moose, its heavy,
fully formed antlers ready for the season’s impending business.
I was hoping again to see Cassin’s finches and Audubon’s warblers on the
pass; but the fir grove is quiet. Sitting down to rest and listen, I
become aware of a strange silence. No birds sing or flit among the
trees, no alarms pass back and forth among alert ground squirrels. There
is no wind—an odd condition for the Continental Divide. This place seems
to be holding its breath. High overhead, a veil of cirrus cloud arranges
long spears across the sky.
Moving off the pass, along the dome of Mt. Chapman, I experience anew
the old excitement of this high country. Abruptly the gorge of Bowman
valley opens up, revealing the twisting blue snake of Bowman Lake far
down the narrow, cliff-imprisoned valley. Here again are the northern
titans—Numa, Peabody, Boulder, Thunderbird, and Rainbow; and Carter,
with its high glacier baring blue ice teeth to the sun.
It is not the climb that makes your heart pound now; the trail is
suddenly narrow and cliff-defiant, cut by the plunging waters of
snowbanks far above. These are splendid peaks, unmatched in a land of
muscled, brutal earth. Even the air seems to retain the scent of glacier
work.
At last the view of Hole-in-the-Wall, a staircase cirque excavated
between the gigantic spread ribs of Mt. Custer. The slopes of beargrass
are seed-spotted and gaunt now, the white fullness gone. Western
pasqueflowers have accomplished their magic transformation; known in
this season as old man’s beard, they nod their tufts of grizzled
seedhead silk in the wind. Red and yellow monkeyflowers bloom yet,
crowding along the many stream courses, and waterloving sedges and
mosses surround pools of collected water on the broad horseshoe tiers.
A spur trail drops down into the campground on the last ledge. Through a
cleft in its lip plummets the gathered water of the basin. From the
valley below, the waterfall appears to be springing from a hole in the
headwall, giving this basin its name. Down, down, down, roars the water
where once a mighty glacier ground its teeth.
I leave until later the making of camp; by now the sharp shadows of
Boulder Peak stab the valley forest and are beginning the upward assault
of Thunderbird.
Around the basin headwalls, last winter’s snowbanks remain formidable.
Snow caves send out meltwater torrents. Glacier lilies and patches of
spring beauty line their fringes. Pasqueflowers bloom in pockets. Here,
among the asters of August, bloom also the first flowers of spring,
shooting up as the snowbanks shrink, making these spots of snow-free
ground a patchwork of May and July, August and June. The shrubs that
line the furious water are willows, still bud-swollen this tenth day of
September. The coming days will bring a sharp surprise.
Winter will soon stop the melting of this snow. Could it be that I am
seeing the first year of a reawakening ice age? If so, each year the
snowfields would grow thicker and broader, connecting the shelves into
one ice mass again, lilies and willows entombed, the summer heat failing
to rescue them, until the ice at last began to slide, stripping the soil
and once more plucking at living rock.
Then these dwarfed fir, which cling precariously to the cliffs and hide
behind the backs of boulders, would be in more danger than they were
from their recent antagonists. Engulfed by ice, they would know the
shearing wind no more. Their skeletons would rain down into the valley
below, signalling another long forest retreat. But they have waited out
the mountain ice before and would send their seeds again to this valley,
changed however it might be, as they have always done.
Evening brings out two sleek mule deer does. As they graze, their large
ears stand erect, sorting out the lesser sounds from the ceaseless roar
of water. Both raise their heads and point their ears, statue straight,
at the scuttle of a porcupine. A noise among the rocks draws a backward
glance and focus of those ears. I would like the sensitivity of such
fine equipment, to hear what deer have always heard.
Setting about the business of camp, I wonder about those animals that
watched me for a while, then moved off, having seen a tent go up before.
With the appearance of the moon the wind increases and they test the air
more often now. Do they have visions of cougar or grizzly with every
snap the wind delivers?
In summer these high meadows see a surprising variety of animal life.
Briefly out of hibernation are marmots and the handsome golden-mantled
ground squirrels. Mice, voles, shrews, and woodrats run among the
shadows, feeding on the season’s feast of seeds and insects. A nightmare
for these are the fierce little weasels that haunt the rocks.
Tracks of cougar and wolverine are sometimes seen, often teasingly
fresh; to glimpse either of these elusive predators is to taste the
finest wine of wilderness.
Before the berry season, grizzlies grub the meadows for the tasty bulbs
of glacier lilies and the tubers of spring beauty; often distracted by
the scent of a ground squirrel in its burrow, they sometimes make a huge
excavation for a small reward.
White-crowned sparrows sing in July from the low tops of the battered
trees, though their nests are on the ground below. Grey-crowned rosy
finches patrol the drier ground for seeds while water pipits hunt
insects in the wet areas. High above, a golden eagle scans the basin
again, circling slowly before following a ridge south to sight another
likely slope in its 10,000-hectare territory.
The moon shines through the tent top. The wind, blowing more violently
now, shivers the nylon and interrupts the voice of the waterfall. I have
followed the pasqueflower run from the April prairies here to its
highest bloom near treeline. I think about the triangular seed pods of
the glacier lilies, colonies of steep-throated blue gentians, and the
season’s last glory of goldenrod. Indian paintbrush, from white to fire
red, blazes the slopes that light the fringes of sleep.
I awake to a determined rain, the moon gone and the tent shuddering with
wind-blast. I try not to think of the steel-cold air, and slip into a
fitful sleep that seems an endless treadmill of rocky trail.
Stiff and unrefreshed, I look out into the dawnless morning. The tip of
Thunderbird is detached from its base by grey clouds swirling at its
throat. A wave of sleet slants down, dancing on the rocks, chanting
triumph over the buried, bent, and broken flowers of yesterday.
So I must make my escape, short of Boulder Pass. Unattainable now,
invisible above the cirque, that high pass grows in my memory. This
testament to what a glacier can do, to the struggle of trees and the
life-pioneers that invade such harsh places, is at my feet but shrouded
with snow. My hands grow stiff and numb in the blunt work of packing up.
I had wished to see Kinnerly Peak again, rising from the western Kintla
valley, and walk along black ledges of the lava that floors the pass.
Beyond it grows a grove of subalpine larch, stately, seldom encountered,
the least common tree species in Glacier. Confined to this narrow zone
between forest and alpine, it reaches up tall and proud, impervious to
the gruelling climate that makes cowering shrubs of other trees.
But all must wait another year, for this season comes down hard. And the
will of winter is to erase whatever summer had devised.