The Book of the National Parks Part 20

To see Glacier as thoroughly as Glacier deserves and to draw freely on its abundant resources of pleasure and inspiration, one must travel the trails and pitch his tent where day's end brings him. But that does not mean that Glacier cannot be seen and enjoyed by those to whom comfortable hotel accommodations are a necessity, or even by those who find trail-travelling impossible.

Visitors, therefore, fall into three general cla.s.ses, all of whom may study scenery which quite fully covers the range of Glacier's natural phenomena and peculiar beauty. The largest of these cla.s.ses 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 cla.s.s 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 cla.s.s, 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 princ.i.p.al 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 gra.s.sy 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 sh.o.r.e 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 ma.s.ses. 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 surpa.s.sing 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 pa.s.sing 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 Pa.s.s 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 surpa.s.sing 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 pa.s.sing 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 sh.o.r.es, 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 G.o.d 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _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]

[Ill.u.s.tration: _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 ma.s.s 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, ma.s.sively 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 ill.u.s.trative of all of Glacier. There are wilder spots, by far, some which frighten; there are places of n.o.bler beauty, though as I write I know I shall deny it the next time I stand on McDermott's sh.o.r.es; 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 Pa.s.s 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 ill.u.s.trative. 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 Pa.s.s, 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 Pa.s.s.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _From a photograph by Haynes_

PTARMIGAN LAKE AND MOUNT WILBUR, GLACIER NATIONAL PARK]

[Ill.u.s.tration: _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 Pa.s.s

To me one of the most stirring sights in all Glacier is the view of Gunsight Pa.s.s from the foot of Gunsight Lake. The immense glaciered uplift of Mount Jackson on the south of the pa.s.s, the wild whitened sides of Gunsight Mountain opposite dropping to the upturned strata of red shale at the water's edge, the pa.s.s 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 pa.s.sage 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 pa.s.s is gained, down St. Mary's gracious valley to Going-to-the-Sun Mountain and its horizon companions!