The Retreat of Glaciers.
Our glaciers, like those of other countries, are now almost all in retreat, either because the climate is slowly growing warmer so that thawing goes on faster or because the snowfall is lessening so that the névé fields no longer feed the glaciers as substantially as before. On this account one can often see several terminal moraines down the valley below the one now forming. The nearest to the present end of the ice is almost bare, the next, a few hundred yards away, may have bushes growing on it, and others a mile or two away may be covered with ancient forest.
For some years past the Vaux family of Philadelphia, two brothers and a sister, all admirable photographers, have fixed the position of the end of all accessible glaciers by marking points and directions on rocks near by and by photographing the snout of the glacier. This work determines their rate of advance or recession from year to year, and a record of the results is published in the journal of the Alpine Club of Canada and elsewhere.
LAKE LOUISE AND VICTORIA GLACIER
Glaciers once filled all the mountain valleys and even pushed out through the passes into the prairies and through the fiords to the sea, for everywhere one finds boulder clay and moraines and valleys with U shaped cross sections that can only be accounted for by glacial action on a large scale. This work was done during the Ice Age, and one may truly say that the higher mountains are still in the Glacial Period.
One of the most beautiful results of former ice action is to be found in the “cirques,” half Kettle or arm chair valleys, high up among the mountains overhanging the main valleys and enclosed by vertical cliffs on all sides except in front. These are the deserted nests of cliff glaciers, hollowed out by the ice itself and often deepened so that a turquoise blue lake lies within rock rims. If not too high up these cirque lakes are surrounded by evergreen forest, behind which rise the gray or purple walls of rock with some snow in the ravines above, the whole mirrored in the lake, until some catspaw of breeze shatters the reflection. Lake Agnes in the mountains behind lake Louise is an easily reached example of a cirque basin, and there are hundreds of others scattered through the fastnesses of the mountains, all gems in their way, many not yet seen by the eye of a white man. The higher cirque lakes, above timberline, enclosed only by cliffs and snow, have an austere beauty of their own, but lack the graces and the wild flowers of their sisters below in the forest zone.
Often the walls of such valleys are leaped by streams from some melting snowfield falling hundreds of feet and reaching the bottom as mere threads of spray.
Glaciers Reached by the Canadian Pacific
There are very few parts of the world where fine glacial scenery can be found so close to a great railway as in our mountain parks. If one stops at lake Louise, in Rocky Mountains Park, the splendid Victoria glacier is in view doubled by reflection in its waters, which get their exquisite color from the last remaining particles of mud brought down by the glacial stream. Two miles walk or ride along a good trail brings one into its presence, and often great masses of ice may be seen avalanching down from cliff glaciers above to the surface of the lower glacier. From lake Louise as a centre one can reach the well named Paradise valley by ten miles ride or drive over a good road and visit the fine Horseshoe glacier at its head. The valley of the Ten Peaks farther to the southeast requires a somewhat longer ride or drive, passing the splendid front of Mt. Temple, the highest summit in sight from the railway (11,626 feet). Moraine lake, eleven miles from lake Louise lies near the entrance of the valley but farther up can be seen the great Wenkchemna glacier, and several small glaciers lying between the Ten Peaks. Beyond the Ten Peaks to the south there is a broad snowfield and glacier leading over to Prospector’s valley and Vermilion pass, but for an excursion of such length and difficulty one should be equipped for serious climbing and have a light camp outfit.