While we have been considering the causes and effects of forest fires, our horses and men have been struggling with the more material side of the question, and as the imagination leaps lightly over all sorts of obstacles, let us now overtake them as they arrive at a good camping place about eight miles from Laggan. Here the Bow is no longer worthy the name of a river, but is rather a broad, shallow stream, flowing with moderate rapidity. Towards evening Peyto shot a black duck on the river, and I caught a fine string of trout, so that our camp fare was much improved.
The next day we marched for about three hours through light forests and extensive swamps, finally pitching our camp near the first Bow Lake. The fishing was remarkably fine in this part of the river. From a single pool I caught, in less than three minutes, five trout which averaged more than one pound each. We camped in this place for two days in order to have time to explore about the lake. This first Bow Lake is about four miles long, by perhaps one mile wide, and occupies the gently curving basin of a valley which here sweeps into that of the Bow. There is something remarkable in the unusual manner in which the Bow River divides itself into two streams some time before it reaches this lake. The lesser of these two streams continues in a straight course down the valley, while the larger deviates to the west and flows into the lower end of the lake, only to flow out again about a fourth of a mile farther down, at the extreme end of the lake. The island thus formed is intersected everywhere by the ancient courses of the river, which are now marked by crooked and devious channels, in great part filled with clear water, forming pools everywhere. This whole region must have once formed part of a much larger lake, as for several miles down the valley there are extensive swamps, almost perfectly level and underlaid by large deposits of fine clay.
The drier places in these muskegs are covered with a growth of bushes or clumps of trees, gathered together on hummocks slightly elevated above the general level. A rich growth of grass and sedge covers the lower and wetter places, which often assume all the features of a peat bog, with a thick growth of sphagnum mosses, while the ground trembles, for many yards about, under the tread of men and horses.
The next day Peyto and I crossed the river on one of our best horses known as the “Bay,” and after turning him back towards the meadow, we started on a tramp around the lake. We followed the west shore for the entire distance. The last half mile was over a talus slope of loose stones, broken down from the overhanging mountain, and now disposed at a very steep angle. There was a barely perceptible shelf or beach about six inches wide, just at the edge of the water, which we gladly took advantage of while it lasted.
The glacial stream entering the lake has built out a curious delta, not fan-shaped as we should expect, but almost perfectly straight from shore to shore. This delta is a great gravel wash, nearly level, and quite bare of trees or plants, except a few herbs, the seeds of which have lately been washed down from higher up the valley. All this material has been carried into the lake since the time when, in the great Ice Age, these valleys were flooded with glaciers several thousand feet in depth.
Mount Daly.
As we turned the corner near the end of the gravel wash, the glaciers at the head of the valley began to appear, and in a few more steps we commanded a magnificent view of a great mountain, literally covered by a vast sheet of ice and snow, from the very summit down to our level. As we looked up the long gentle slope of this mountain, we could hardly realize that it rose more than 5000 feet above us. The glacier which descended into the valley was not very wide, but showed the lines of flow very clearly. Six converging streams of ice united to form the glacier on our right, while the glacier on the left poured down a steep descent from the east, and formed a beautiful ice cascade, where the sharp-pointed seracs, leaning forward, resembled a cataract suddenly frozen and rendered motionless. As if by way of contrast, a beautiful little waterfall poured gracefully over a dark precipice of rock on the opposite side of the valley, and added motion to this grand expanse of dazzling white snow. The loud-roaring, muddy stream near where we stood, is one of the principal sources of the Bow, and, after depositing its milky sediment in the lake, the waters flow out purified and crystal clear, of that deep blue color characteristic of glacial water. On a smaller scale this lake is like Lake Geneva, with the Rhone entering at one end, muddy and polluted with glacial clays, and flowing out at the other, transparently clear, and blue as the skies above it.
After a partial ascent of Mount Hector on the next day, we moved our camp and continued our progress up the Bow River for about two hours. Here we camped on a terrace near the water, surrounded on all sides by a very light forest in a charming spot. On the following day the trail led us for two miles through some very bad country, where the horses broke through the loose ground between the roots of trees, and in their efforts to extricate themselves were often in great danger of breaking a leg. Fortunately, however, this was not of long duration. The trail soon improved and became very clearly marked like a well made bridle-path. It led us along the banks of the Bow, through groves of black pine, with a few spruces intermingled. The ascent was constant, though gradual, and our altitude was made apparent by the manner in which the trees grew in clumps, and by the fact that the forests were no longer densely luxuriant, but quite open, so that the horses could go easily among the trees in any direction.
In about three hours after leaving camp, our horses entered an open meadow where the trail deserted us, but there was not the slightest difficulty in making good progress. To the south, a great wall of rock rose to an immense height, one of the lower escarpments of the Waputehk Range, and as we progressed through the pleasant moors a remarkable glacier was gradually revealed, clinging to the cliffs in a three-pronged mass. As, one by one, these branches of the glaciers were disclosed, they appeared first in profile, and owing to the very steep pitch down which the ice was forced to descend, the glacier was rent and splintered into deep crevasses, with sharp pinnacles of ice between, which appeared to lean out over the steep descent and threaten to fall at any moment.