Camping in the Canadian Rockies / an account of camp life in the wilder parts of the Canadian Rocky mountains, together with a description of the region about Banff, Lake Louise, and Glacier, and a sketch of early explorations.

by Walter Dwight Wilcox

The lake is a little more than a mile long and about one fourth of a mile wide. The outline is remarkably like that of the left human foot. Forests come down nearly to the water’s edge on all sides of the lake, but there is a narrow margin of rough angular stones where the ripples from the lake have washed out the soil and even undermined the trees in some places. The water is a blue-green color, so clear that the stones on the bottom and the old water-logged trunks of trees, long since wrested from the shores by storms and avalanches, may be discerned even in several fathoms of water. The lake is 230 feet deep in the centre, and the bottom slopes down very suddenly from the shores.

The west shore makes a gently sinuous or wavy line, forming little bays and capes. Ever new and artistic foregrounds are thus presented, with the forest making a retreating line of vegetation down the shore. Nothing could be more beautiful than this border of the lake, rough and tangled though it is, with a strange mingling of sharp boulders and prostrate trees covered with moss and half concealed by copses of alder bushes and flowering shrubs.

I shall never forget my first view of Lake Louise. From the station, the old trail, constantly ascending as it approaches the lake, leads its irregular course through the forest. After a walk of nearly three miles, partial glimpses of the lake and surrounding mountains were obtained from among the tall spruce trees. A short rapid descent of a small ridge placed us on the borders of the lake.

It would be difficult indeed to give even a partial description of the scene. Imagine a cool morning with the rising sun just beginning to touch the surface of a mountain lake. The air is tranquil and calm so that the glassy surface of the water mirrors the sky and mountains perfectly. In the realm of sound, too, all is repose but for the call of birds near at hand among the balsam trees. From the shores of the lake on either side rise great mountains, showing cliffs and rocky ledges or long sweeping slopes of forest to the tree line. Higher still are bare slopes, crags, ledges, and scattered areas of snow. At the end of the lake a great notch in the nearer mountains reveals at a distance the wall-like, lofty mass of Mount Lefroy. This most imposing snowy mountain stands square across the gap, and with a sharp serrated cliff piercing the very vault of heaven, shuts off the view and forms the most conspicuous object of all. The lower part of the mountain is a vertical cliff or precipice where the longitudinal strata are distinctly visible. Above, rise alternating slopes covered with perpetual snow and hanging glaciers, the white-blue ice of which is splintered by deep rents and dark yawning crevasses. This mountain forms part of the continental water-shed, for on the other side the melting snows finally reach the Pacific Ocean, while on the near side the snows swept into the valleys by avalanches, and melted by the warmer air of lower altitudes, find their way at length into the Saskatchewan River and Hudson Bay.

There is something wonderfully attractive about this mountain. The pleasure grows as one continues to gaze at the immense mass; harsh and stern and cold though it be, it excites awe and wonder as though here were the rocky foundation and substratum of the globe. This is the abode of perpetual winter, where ice and snow and bleak rocks exist apart. Here all is grand but menacing, dangerous, and forbidding. And these high mountains and deep valleys, suggesting that some awful storm at sea had become petrified into colossal waves to stand at rest forever, have been carved out by rain and running water, frost and change of temperature, through the lapse of countless ages.

Lake Louise.

Our attention finally came to the quiet beauty of the surrounding vegetation, where among the scattered skirmishers of the forest are flowering shrubs, and in the more open grassy places forming the swampy borders of the lake, are many bright flowers. The white mountain anemones in several varieties, the familiar violets, the yellow columbine with beautiful pendent blossoms claiming relationship to its Eastern cousin with scarlet flowers, the fragrant spiranthes, and orchids with pale-green flowers, resembling insects on a leafy stem, may all be seen in profusion near the north side of the lake. These humble herbs, with their gaudy coloring, are the growth of a single season, but on all sides are copses of bushy plants which endure the long winter, some of them clad in a garb of evergreen and, like the annual plants, bearing elegant floral creations. The most conspicuous is the sheep laurel, a small bush adorned with a profusion of crimson-red flowers, each saucer-shaped, hanging in corymbs among the small green leaves. Various shrubs with white flowers, some small and numerous, others large and scattered, make a contrast to the ever present laurel, while the most beautiful of all is a species of mountain rhododendron, a large bush, the most elegant among the mountain heaths, with large white flowers in clustered umbels. In early July this bush may be found, here and there, scattered sparingly in the forest in full blossom at the level of Lake Louise, but after this one must seek ever higher on the mountain side as the advancing summer creeps to altitudes where spring is later.

The early morning visitor turns with sharpened appetite to the hotel, if we may call it such,—a little Swiss chalet of picturesque architecture built on an eminence in full view of the lake. Here the tourist may live in rustic comfort for a day, or for weeks, should he desire to prolong his visit.

Tourists come sparingly to Lake Louise. Unlike Banff with its varied attractions, there is little here outside of nature, and few have the power to appreciate nature alone. Of those who do come, only a small number really see the lake with its forests and mountains combined in exquisite attractiveness. They see the outlines of mountains, but know not whether they are near or distant, nor whether their scale is measured in yards or miles; they see the water of the lake, but not the reflections in it, the ever changing effects of light and shade, sun and shadow, ripple and calm. There are trees tall and slender, but whether they be spruce or pine, larch or hemlock, is all the same; and as to the flowers—some are differently colored from others.