Rambles among the Canadian Rockies

Abstract

Traveling westward from Calgary along the Bow River valley, we notice a different appearance in the country, hitherto flat or undulating, almost or quite treeless, and uninteresting save for its vastness. The land becomes more rolling; low, irregularly placed hills are frequent; trees come into view occasionally, usually in patches, but at times singly, and then taller, looking gaunt in their loneliness, with dead branches save at the top, where a tuft of leafy branches still proclaims the life within them. We wonder whether they are the scouts of the advancing forest, or a rearguard still showing where, but for the fires, the forest still would be. Continuing westward, we are among the foothills of the Rockies. Trees are now not infrequent, though too often only the standing skeletons remain, mute reproofs to our struggle after the material and our sorry loss of the love of nature. Before long the irregularities in the plain become valleys, the hills close in on the river, the trees, now more often living, fill the valleys and extend well up on the mountain sides. Mountains are everywhere; we look up the valleys to see only mountains and yet more mountains. From Banff onward, we meet a succession of valleys appearing at first much alike, except that some are deeper and longer than otheis. All are narrow, deep valleys of trees, squeezed in between mountains which seem to close right in on them as if grudging space for the stream bed. We rarely see any sign of the wide flat lands and marshes that largely form the Bow River valley to the summit of the pass and beyond. But after a time three types of valley stand out clear. Of the first are the Spray valley near Banff, and farther west the Sundance and Brewster Creek valleys. Wide near their mouths, with a gradual rise, they narrow rapidly until in the distance the mountains leave only room for the rivers between them. Farther west, against Hector Station, O'Hara and Sherbrooke valleys differ materially from those described above. From the train one sees little more than a break in the mountains. The rise is sharp and hilly, but on reaching the top the valley is seen to widen, with meadows, swamps, and lakes, though the stream is distinctly smaller. These are hanging valleys, common throughout the Rockies. The third type is composed of the real mountain valleys. They are short, at times little more than depressions, run rapidly into the mountains, and are often traceable directly to the snowfields and glaciers. With rock-bottomed streams, waterfalls, old and new moraines, and rocky sides, they form part of the mountains themselves. The streams at times run underground among the heaps of broken rock; glacier-fed brooks come tumbling over the sides to be lost in the mass of stones and debris they themselves have carried down. These mountain valleys and beautiful mountain lakes may be called the gems of the Rockies. To the botanist these valleys make a very strong appeal. In the higher reaches the mountains will have their way, and interest in the plants is divided with that in the mountain scenery. The moraines and the rocks seem so bare,