study scenery which quite fully covers the range of Glacier's natural
phenomena and peculiar beauty. The largest of these classes consists of
those who can travel, or think they can travel, only in vehicles, and
can find satisfactory accommodations only in good hotels. The
intermediate class includes those who can, at a pinch, ride ten or
twelve miles on comfortably saddled horses which walk the trails at two
or three miles an hour, and who do not object to the somewhat primitive
but thoroughly comfortable overnight accommodations of the chalets.
Finally comes the small class, which constantly will increase, of those
who have the time and inclination to leave the beaten path with tent and
camping outfit for the splendid wilderness and the places of supreme
magnificence which are only for those who seek.
The man, then, whose tendency to gout, let us say, forbids him ride a
horse or walk more than a couple of easy miles a day may, nevertheless,
miss nothing of Glacier's meaning and magnificence provided he takes the
trouble to understand. But he must take the trouble; he must comprehend
the few examples that he sees; this is his penalty for refusing the rich
experience of the trail, which, out of its very fulness, drives meaning
home with little mental effort. His knowledge must be got from six
places only which may be reached by vehicle, at least three of which,
however, may be included among the world's great scenic places. He can
find at Two Medicine, St. Mary, and McDermott superb examples of
Glacier's principal scenic elements.
Entering at Glacier Park, he will have seen the range from the plains,
an important beginning; already, approaching from the east, he has
watched it grow wonderfully on the horizon. So suddenly do these painted
mountains spring from the grassy plain that it is a relief to recognize
in them the advance guard of the Lewis Overthrust, vast fragments of the
upheavals of the depths pushed eastward by the centuries to their final
resting-places upon the surface of the prairie. From the hotel porches
they glow gray and yellow and purple and rose and pink, according to the
natural coloring of their parts and the will of the sun--a splendid
ever-changing spectacle.
THE TWO MEDICINE COUNTRY
An hour's automobile-ride from Glacier Park Hotel will enable our
traveller to penetrate the range at a point of supreme beauty and stand
beside a chalet at the foot of Two Medicine Lake. He will face what
appears to be a circular lake in a densely forested valley from whose
shore rises a view of mountains which will take his breath. In the near
centre stands a cone of enormous size and magnificence--Mount
Rockwell--faintly blue, mistily golden, richly purple, dull silver, or
red and gray, according to the favor of the hour and the sky. Upon its
left and somewhat back rises a smaller similar cone, flatter but quite
as perfectly proportioned, known as Grizzly Mountain, and upon its right
less regular masses. In the background, connecting all, are more distant
mountains flecked with snow, the continental divide. Towering mountains
close upon him upon both sides, that upon his right a celebrity in red
argillite known as Rising Wolf. He sees all this from a beach of
many-colored pebbles.
Few casual visitors have more than a midday view of Two Medicine Lake,
for the stage returns in the afternoon. The glory of the sunset and the
wonder before sunrise are for the few who stay over at the chalet. The
lover of the exquisite cannot do better, for, though beyond lie scenes
surpassing this in the qualities which bring to the lips the shout of
joy, I am convinced that nothing elsewhere equals the Two Medicine
canvas in the perfection of delicacy. It is the Meissonier of Glacier.
Nor can the student of Nature's processes afford to miss the study of
Two Medicine's marvellously complete and balanced system of cirques and
valleys--though this of course is not for the rheumatic traveller but
for him who fears not horse and tent. Such an explorer will find thrills
with every passing hour. Giant Mount Rockwell will produce one when a
sideview shows that its apparent cone is merely the smaller eastern end
of a ridge two miles long which culminates in a towering summit on the
divide; Pumpelly Piller, with the proportions of a monument when seen
from near the lake, becomes, seen sideways, another long and exceedingly
beautiful ridge; striking examples, these, of the leavings of converging
glaciers of old. Two Medicine Lake proves to be long and narrow, the
chalet view being the long way, and Upper Two Medicine Lake proves to be
an emerald-encircled pearl in a silvery-gray setting. The climax of such
a several days' trip is a night among the coyotes at the head of the
main valley and a morning upon Dawson Pass overlooking the indescribable
tangle of peak, precipice, and canyon lying west of the continental
divide.
Taken as a whole, the Two Medicine drainage-basin is an epitome of
Glacier in miniature. To those entering the park on the east side and
seeing it first it becomes an admirable introduction to the greater
park. To those who have entered on the west side and finish here it is
an admirable farewell review, especially as its final picture sounds the
note of scenic perfection. Were there nothing else of Glacier, this spot
would become in time itself a world celebrity. Incidentally, exceedingly
lively Eastern brook-trout will afford an interesting hour to one who
floats a fly down the short stream into the lakelet at the foot of Two
Medicine Lake not far below the chalet. There are also fish below Trick
Falls.
THE SPECTACLE OF ST. MARY
St. Mary Lake, similarly situated in the outlet valley of a much greater
group of cirques north of Two Medicine, offers a picture as similar in
kind as two canvases are similar which have been painted by the same
hand; but they widely differ in composition and magnificence; Two
Medicine's preciousness yields to St. Mary's elemental grandeur. The
steamer which brings our rheumatic traveller from the motor-stage at the
foot of the lake lands him at the upper chalet group, appropriately
Swiss, which finds vantage on a rocky promontory for the view of the
divide. Gigantic mountains of deep-red argillite, grotesquely carved,
close in the sides, and with lake and sky wonderfully frame the amazing
central picture of pointed pyramids, snow-fields, hanging glaciers, and
silvery ridges merging into sky. Seen on the way into Glacier, St. Mary
is a prophecy which will not be fulfilled elsewhere in charm though
often far exceeded in degree. Seen leaving Glacier, it combines with
surpassing novelty scenic elements whose possibilities of further
gorgeous combination the trip through the park has seemed to exhaust.
The St. Mary picture is impossible to describe. Its colors vary with the
hours and the atmosphere's changing conditions. It is silver, golden,
mauve, blue, lemon, misty white, and red by turn. It is seen clearly in
the morning with the sun behind you. Afternoons and sunsets offer
theatrical effects, often baffling, always lovely and different. Pointed
Fusillade and peaked Reynolds Mountains often lose their tops in
lowering mists. So, often, does Going-to-the-Sun Mountain in the near-by
right foreground. So, not so often, does keel-shaped Citadel Mountain on
the near-by left; also, at times, majestic Little Chief, he of lofty
mien and snow-dashed crown, and stolid Red Eagle, whose gigantic
reflection reddens a mile of waters. It is these close-up monsters even
more than the colorful ghosts of the Western horizon which stamp St.
Mary's personality.
From the porches of the chalets and the deck of the steamer in its
evening tour of the lake-end the traveller will note the enormous size
of those upper valleys which once combined their glaciers as now they do
their streams. He will guess that the glacier which once swept through
the deep gorge in whose bottom now lies St. Mary Lake was several
thousand feet in thickness. He will long to examine those upper valleys
and reproduce in imagination the amazing spectacle of long ago. But they
are not for him. That vision is reserved for those who ride the trails.
THE SCENIC CLIMAX OF THE SWIFTCURRENT
Again passing north, the automobile-stage reaches road's end at
McDermott Lake, the fan-handle of the Swiftcurrent drainage-basin.
Overlooking a magnificent part of each of its contributing valleys, the
lake, itself supremely beautiful, may well deserve its reputation as
Glacier's scenic centre. I have much sympathy with the thousands who
claim supremacy for McDermott Lake. Lake McDonald has its wonderfully
wooded shores, its majestic length and august vista; Helen Lake its
unequalled wildness; Bowman Lake its incomparable view of
glacier-shrouded divide. But McDermott has something of everything; it
is a composite, a mosaic masterpiece with every stone a gem. There is no
background from which one looks forward to "the view." Its horizon
contains three hundred and sixty degrees of view. From the towering
south gable of that rock-temple to God the Creator, which the map calls
Mount Gould, around the circle, it offers an unbroken panorama in
superlative.
In no sense by way of comparison, which is absurd between scenes so
different, but merely to help realization by contrast with what is well
known, let us recall the Yosemite Valley. Yosemite is a valley,
Swiftcurrent an enclosure. Yosemite is gray and shining, Swiftcurrent
richer far in color. Yosemite's walls are rounded, peaked, and polished,
Swiftcurrent's toothed, torn, and crumbling; the setting sun shines
through holes worn by frost and water in the living rock. Yosemite
guards her western entrance with a shaft of gray granite rising
thirty-six hundred feet from the valley floor, and her eastern end by
granite domes of five thousand and six thousand feet; Swiftcurrent's
rocks gather round her central lake--Altyn, thirty-two hundred feet
above the lake's level; Henkel, thirty-eight hundred feet; Wilbur,
forty-five hundred feet; Grinnell, four thousand; Gould, forty-seven
hundred; Allen, forty-five hundred--all of colored strata, green at
base, then red, then gray. Yosemite has its winding river and
waterfalls, Swiftcurrent its lakes and glaciers.
Swiftcurrent has the repose but not the softness of Yosemite. Yosemite
is unbelievably beautiful. Swiftcurrent inspires wondering awe.
McDermott Lake, focus point of all this natural glory, is scarcely a
mile long, and narrow. It may be vivid blue and steel-blue and
milky-blue, and half a dozen shades of green and pink all within twice
as many minutes, according to the whim of the breeze, the changing
atmosphere, and the clouding of the sun. Often it suggests nothing so
much as a pool of dull-green paint. Or it may present a reversed image
of mountains, glaciers, and sky in their own coloring. Or at sunset it
may turn lemon or purple or crimson or orange, or a blending of all. Or,
with rushing storm-clouds, it may quite suddenly lose every hint of any
color, and become a study in black, white, and intermediate grays.
[Illustration: _From a photograph by Bailey Willis_
THE GREAT GABLE OF GOULD MOUNTAIN
The water is McDermott Lake, one of the most beautiful in Glacier
National Park]
[Illustration: _From a photograph by A.J. Baker_
THE CIRQUE AT THE HEAD OF CUT BANK CREEK
Fine examples of glacier cirques throughout the park. The peak is Mount
Morgan, Glacier National Park.]
There are times when, from hotel porch, rock, or boat, the towering
peaks and connecting limestone walls become suddenly so fairy-like that
they lose all sense of reality, seeming to merge into their background
of sky, from which, nevertheless, they remain sharply differentiated.
The rapidity and the variety of change in the appearance of the water is
nothing to that in the appearance of these magical walls and mountains.
Now near, now distant; now luring, now forbidding; now gleaming as if
with their own light; now gloomy in threat, they lose not their hold on
the eye for a moment. The unreality of McDermott Lake, the sense it
often imparts of impossibility, is perhaps its most striking feature.
One suspects he dreams, awake.
THE SCENIC CIRCLE
To realize the spot as best we may, let us pause on the bridge among
those casting for trout below the upper fall and glance around. To our
left rises Allen Mountain, rugged, irregular, forest-clothed half-way up
its forty-five hundred feet of elevation above the valley floor. Beyond
it a long gigantic wall sets in at right angles, blue, shining,
serrated, supporting, apparently on the lake edge, an enormous gable end
of gray limestone banded with black diorite, a veritable personality
comparable with Yosemite's most famous rocks. This is Mount Gould. Next
is the Grinnell Glacier, hanging glistening in the air, dripping
waterfalls, backgrounded by the gnawed top of the venerable Garden Wall.
Then comes in turn the majestic mass of Mount Grinnell, four miles long,
culminating at the lakeside in an enormous parti-colored pyramid more
impressive from the hotel than even Rockwell is from Two Medicine
chalets. Then, upon its right, appears a wall which is the unnamed
continuation of the Garden Wall, and, plastered against the side of
Swiftcurrent Mountain, three small hanging glaciers, seeming in the
distance like two long parallel snow-banks. Then Mount Wilbur, another
giant pyramid, gray, towering, massively carved, grandly proportioned,
kingly in bearing! Again upon its right emerges still another
continuation, also unnamed, of the Garden Wall, this section loftiest of
all and bitten deeply by the ages. A part of it is instantly recognized
from the hotel window as part of the sky-line surrounding famous Iceberg
Lake. Its right is lost behind the nearer slopes of red Mount Henkel,
which swings back upon our right, bringing the eye nearly to its
starting-point. A glance out behind between mountains, upon the
limitless lake-dotted plain, completes the scenic circle.
McDermott Lake, by which I here mean the Swiftcurrent enclosure as seen
from the Many Glacier Hotel, is illustrative of all of Glacier. There
are wilder spots, by far, some which frighten; there are places of
nobler beauty, though as I write I know I shall deny it the next time I
stand on McDermott's shores; there are supreme places which at first
glance seem to have no kinship with any other place on earth.
Nevertheless, McDermott contains all of Glacier's elements, all her
charm, and practically all her combinations. It is the place of places
to study Glacier. It is also a place to dream away idle weeks.
So he who cannot ride or walk the trails may still see and understand
Glacier in her majesty. Besides the places I have mentioned he may see,
from the Cut Bank Chalet, a characteristic forested valley of great
beauty, and at Lewis's hotel on Lake McDonald the finest spot accessible
upon the broad west side, the playground, as the east side is the
show-place, of hundreds of future thousands.
So many are the short horseback trips from Many Glacier Hotel to places
of significance and beauty that it is hard for the timid to withstand
the temptation of the trail. Four miles will reach Grinnell Lake at the
foot of its glacier, six miles will penetrate the Cracker Lake Gorge at
the perpendicular base of Mount Siyeh, eight miles will disclose the
astonishing spectacle of Iceberg Lake, and nine miles will cross the
Swiftcurrent Pass to the Granite Park Chalet.
ICEBERG LAKE TYPICAL OF ALL
In some respects Iceberg Lake is Glacier's supreme spectacle. There are
few spots so wild. There may be no easily accessible spot in the world
half so wild. Imagine a horseshoe of perpendicular rock wall,
twenty-seven hundred to thirty-five hundred feet high, a glacier in its
inmost curve, a lake of icebergs in its centre. The back of the
tower-peak of Mount Wilbur is the southern end of this horseshoe. This
enclosure was not built up from below, as it looks, but bitten down
within and without; it was left. On the edge of the lake in early July
the sun sets at four o'clock.
Stupendous as Iceberg Lake is as a spectacle, its highest purpose is
illustrative. It explains Glacier. Here by this lakeside, fronting the
glacier's floating edge and staring up at the jagged top in front and on
either side, one comprehends at last. The appalling story of the past
seems real.
THE CLIMAX AT GRANITE PARK
It is at Granite Park that one realizes the geography of Glacier. You
have crossed the continental divide and emerged upon a lofty abutment
just west of it. You are very nearly in the park's centre, and on the
margin of a forested canyon of impressive breadth and depth, lined on
either side by mountain monsters, and reaching from Mount Cannon at the
head of Lake McDonald northward to the Alberta plain. The western wall
of this vast avenue is the Livingston Range. Its eastern wall is the
Lewis Range. Both in turn carry the continental divide, which crosses
the avenue from Livingston to Lewis by way of low-crowned Flattop
Mountain, a few miles north of where you stand, and back to Livingston
by way of Clements Mountain, a few miles south. Opposite you, across the
chasm, rises snowy Heavens Peak. Southwest lies Lake McDonald, hidden by
Heavens' shoulder. South is Logan Pass, carrying another trail across
the divide, and disclosing hanging gardens beyond on Reynolds' eastern
slope. Still south of that, unseen from here, is famous Gunsight Pass.
[Illustration: _From a photograph by Haynes_
PTARMIGAN LAKE AND MOUNT WILBUR, GLACIER NATIONAL PARK]
[Illustration: _From a photograph by A.J. Thiri_
SCOOPED BOTH SIDES BY GIANT GLACIERS
Wall on the left encloses Iceberg Lake; on the right is the Belly River
abyss; Glacier National Park]
It is a stirring spectacle. But wait. A half-hour's climb to the summit
of Swiftcurrent Mountain close at hand (the chalet is most of the way
up, to start with) and all of Glacier lies before you like a model in
relief. Here you see the Iceberg Cirque from without and above. The
Belly River chasm yawns enormously. Mount Cleveland, monarch of the
region, flaunts his crown of snow among his near-by court of only lesser
monsters. The Avenue of the Giants deeply splits the northern half of
the park, that land of extravagant accent, mysterious because so little
known; the Glacier of tourists lying south. A marvellous spectacle,
this, indeed, and one which clears up many misconceptions. The Canadian
Rockies hang on the misty northern horizon, the Montana plains float
eastward, the American Rockies roll south and west.
OVER GUNSIGHT PASS
To me one of the most stirring sights in all Glacier is the view of
Gunsight Pass from the foot of Gunsight Lake. The immense glaciered
uplift of Mount Jackson on the south of the pass, the wild whitened
sides of Gunsight Mountain opposite dropping to the upturned strata of
red shale at the water's edge, the pass itself--so well named--perched
above the dark precipice at the lake's head, the corkscrew which the
trail makes up Jackson's perpendicular flank and its passage across a
mammoth snow-bank high in air--these in contrast with the silent black
water of the sunken lake produce ever the same thrill however often
seen. The look back, too, once the pass is gained, down St. Mary's
gracious valley to Going-to-the-Sun Mountain and its horizon companions!
Sun Mountain (for short), always a personality, is never from any other
point of view so undeniably the crowned majesty as from Gunsight Pass.
And finally, looking forward, which in this speaking means westward, the
first revelation of Lake Ellen Wilson gives a shock of awed astonishment
whose memory can never pass.
Truly, Gunsight is a pass of many sensations, for, leaving Lake Ellen
Wilson and its eighteen hundred feet of vertical frothing outlet, the
westward trail crosses the shoulder of Lincoln Peak to the Sperry
Glacier and its inviting chalet (where the biggest hoary marmot I ever
saw sat upon my dormitory porch), and, eight miles farther down the
mountain, beautiful Lake McDonald.
DESTINY OF THE WEST SIDE
Although it was settled earlier, Glacier's west side is less developed
than its east side; this because, for the most part, its scenery is less
sensational though no less gorgeously beautiful. Its five long lakes, of
which McDonald is much the longest and largest, head up toward the snowy
monsters of the divide; their thin bodies wind leisurely westward among
superbly forested slopes. Its day is still to come. It is the land of
the bear, the moose, the deer, the trout, and summer leisure. Its
destiny is to become Glacier's vacation playground.
THE COMING SPLENDORS OF THE NORTH
The wild north side of Glacier, its larger, bigger-featured, and
occasionally greater part, is not yet for the usual tourist; for many
years from this writing, doubtless, none will know it but the traveller
with tent and pack-train. He alone, and may his tribe increase, will
enjoy the gorgeous cirques and canyons of the Belly River, the wild
quietude of the Waterton Valley, the regal splendors of Brown Pass, and
the headwater spectacles of the Logging, Quartz, Bowman, and Kintla
valleys. He alone will realize that here is a land of greater power,
larger measures, and bigger horizons.
And yet with Kintla comes climax. Crossing the border the mountains
subside, the glaciers disappear. Canada's Waterton Lakes Park begins at
our climax and merges in half a dozen miles into the great prairies of
Alberta. It is many miles northwest before the Canadian Rockies assume
proportions of superlative scenic grandeur.
THE BELLY RIVER VALLEYS
To realize the growing bigness of the land northward one has only to
cross the wall from Iceberg Lake into the Belly River canyon. "Only,"
indeed! In 1917 it took us forty miles of detour outside the park, even
under the shadow of Chief Mountain, to cross the wall from Iceberg Lake,
the west-side precipice of which is steeper even than the east. The
Belly River drainage-basin is itself bigger, and its mountains bulk in
proportion. Eighteen glaciers contribute to the making of perhaps as
many lakes. The yellow mountains of its northern slopes invade Canada.
The borders of its principal valley are two monster mountains,
Cleveland, the greatest in the park for mass and height and intricate
outline; the other, Merritt, in some respects the most interesting of
Glacier's abundant collection of majestic peaks.
There are three valleys. The North Fork finds its way quickly into
Canada. The Middle Fork rises in a group of glaciers high under the
continental divide and descends four giant steps, a lake upon each step,
to two greater lakes of noble aspect in the valley bottom. The South
Fork emerges from Helen Lake deep in the gulf below the Ahern Glacier
across the Garden Wall from Iceberg Lake. Between the Middle and South
Forks Mount Merritt rises 9,944 feet in altitude, minareted like a
mediaeval fort and hollow as a bowl, its gaping chasm hung with glaciers.
This is the valley of abundance. The waters are large, their trout many
and vigorous; the bottoms are extravagantly rich in grasses and flowers;
the forests are heavy and full-bodied; there is no open place, even
miles beyond its boundaries, which does not offer views of extraordinary
nobility. Every man who enters it becomes enthusiastically prophetic of
its future. After all, the Belly River country is easily visited. A
leisurely horseback journey from McDermott, that is all; three days
among the strange yellow mountains of the over thrust's eastern edge,
including two afternoons among the fighting trout of Kennedy Creek and
Slide Lake, and two nights in camp among the wild bare arroyos of the
Algonkian invasion of the prairie--an interesting prelude to the fulness
of wilderness life to come.