Mount Lefroy and Mirror Lake.
The ground is covered with underbrush tangled in a dense luxuriance of vegetable life and partly concealing the ancient trunks of fallen trees long since covered with moss and now slowly decaying into a red vegetable mold.
At length, after half an hour of constant climbing, a certain indefinable change takes place in the forest. The air is cooler, the trees grow wider apart, and the view is extended through long vistas of forest trees. Presently a new species of tree, like our Eastern tamarack, makes its appearance. It is the Lyall’s larch, a tree that endures the rigors of a subalpine climate better than the spruces and balsam firs, so that it soon becomes to the climber among these mountains an almost certain indication of proximity to the tree-line.
It is not far from the truth to say that the Lyall’s larch is the most characteristic tree of the Canadian Rockies. It is not found in the Selkirk Range just west of the main range, and while it has indeed been found as far south as the International boundary, it has not been discovered in the Peace River valley to the north. Restricted in latitude, it grows on the main range of the Rockies only at a great altitude. Here on the borderland between the vegetable and mineral kingdoms it forms a narrow fringe at the tree-line and in autumn its needles turn bright yellow and mark a conspicuous band around all the cliffs and mountain slopes at about 7000 feet above sea level. Its soft needles, gathered in scattered fascicles, are set along the rough and tortuous branches, affording a scanty shade but permitting of charming glimpses of distant mountains, clouds, and sky among its gray branches and light-green foliage. It seems incapable of sending up a tall slender stem but branches out irregularly and presents an infinite variety of forms. Possibly for this reason the larch cannot contest with the slender spruces and firs of the valley, where it would be crowded out of light and sun among its taller rivals.
ANEMONES
Presently the trail leads from out the forest and crosses an open slope where some years ago a great snow-slide swept down and stripped the trees from the mountain side. Here, 1200 feet above Lake Louise, the air feels sensibly cooler and indicates an Alpine climate. The mountains now reveal themselves in far grander proportions than from below, as they burst suddenly on the view. Nature has already made compensation for the destroyed forest by clothing this slope with a profusion of wild flowers, though much different in character from those at Lake Louise. Alpine plants and several varieties of heather, in varying shades of red or pink and even white, cover the ground with their elegant coloring. One form of heath resembles almost perfectly the true heather of Scotland, and by its abundance recalls the rolling hills and flowery highlands of that historic land. The retreating snow-banks of June and July are closely followed by the advancing column of mountain flowers which must needs blossom, bear fruit, and die in the short summer of two months duration. One may thus often find plants in full blossom within a yard of some retreating snow-drift.
On reaching the farther side of the bare track of the avalanche, the trail begins to lead along the face of craggy cliffs like some llama path of the Andes. The mossy ledges are in some places damp and glistening with trickling springs, where the climber may quench his thirst with the purest and coldest water. Wherever there is the slightest possible foothold the trees have established themselves, sometimes on the very verge of the precipice so that their spreading branches lean out over the airy abyss while their bare roots are flattened in the joints and fractures of the cliff or knit around the rocky projections like writhing serpents.
More than four hundred feet below is a small circular pond of clear water, blue and brilliant like a sapphire crystal. Its calm surface, rarely disturbed by mountain breezes, reflects the surrounding trees and rocks sharp and distinct as it nestles in peace at the very base of a great rock tower—the Beehive. Carved out from flinty sandstone, this tapering cone, if such a thing there be, with horizontal strata clearly marked resembles indeed a giant beehive. Round its base are green forests and its summit is adorned by larches, while between are the smooth precipices of its sides too steep for any tree or clinging plant. What suggestions may not this ancient pile afford! Antiquity is of man; but these cliffs partake more of the eternal—existing forever. Their nearly horizontal strata were formed in the Cambrian Age, which geologists tell us was fifty or sixty millions of years ago. Far back in those dim ages when the sea swarmed with only the lower forms of life, the fine sand was slowly and constantly settling to the bottom of the ocean and building up vast deposits which now are represented by the strata of this mountain. Solidified and made into flinty rock, after the lapse of ages these deposits were lifted above the ocean level by the irresistible crushing force of the contracting earth crust. Rain and frost and moving ice have sculptured out from this vast block monuments of varied form and aspect which we call mountains.
Just to one side of the Beehive a graceful waterfall dashes over a series of ledges and in many a leap and cascade finds its way into Mirror Lake. This stream flows out from Lake Agnes, whither the trail leads by a short steep descent through the forest. Lake Agnes is a wild mountain tarn imprisoned between gloomy cliffs, bare and cheerless. Destitute of trees and nearly unrelieved by any vegetation whatsoever, these mountain walls present a stern monotony of color. The lake, however, affords one view that is more pleasant. One should walk down the right shore a few hundred feet and look to the north. Here the shores formed of large angular blocks of stone are pleasantly contrasted with the fringe of trees in the distance.