The Columbia River: Its History, Its Myths, Its Scenery, Its Commerce

by William Denison Lyman

Doubtful Lake, Cascade Range, Washington, near Lake Chelan.
Photo. by T. W. Tolman, Spokane.

There is great strife among the Chelan people as to which is the grander section, the Stehekin or Railroad Creek. As a matter of fact, both are so superlatively magnificent that whichever place one is in, that he thinks the finer. But there is one feature of the case, and this is that the grandest part of Railroad Creek is seldom visited. Few have ever been to Glacier Lake, North Star Park, and Cloudy Pass, at the extreme head of the creek, and these are the central features of the scenery. They are about twenty-five miles from Lake Chelan, and the road and trail are mainly good, so that the journey to the head of the creek and return can be made very comfortably in four days.

Neither words nor pictures are adequate to convey any true conception of Glacier Lake and its surroundings. Imagine a park of four or five thousand acres, set with grass and flowers, filled with ice-cold streams of water clear as crystal, and dotted here and there with trees of the most exquisite beauty. On every side except the one down which the creek descends, stupendous, glacier-crowned, and pinnacled peaks penetrate the blue-black sky at an elevation of ten or eleven thousand feet. At the south side of the park lies Glacier Lake, a mile long and half as wide, margined with vivid grass, brilliant flowers, and trees of the Alpine type, clear as crystal, unless darkened by some sudden scud from the heights. At the southern end of the lake is a bold bluff of five hundred feet, over which fall the waters of Railroad Creek, a white band across the darkness of the bluff. Above may be seen the source of this stream. It issues from a smaller lake, which lies in the very end of a vast glacier, a mass of ice two miles wide and about four miles long.

Passing west of Glacier Lake through the enchanted North Star Park, a veritable land of Beulah (at least when the sun is shining), we climb a thousand or twelve hundred feet higher, and find ourselves at one of those thrilling points in the mountains, a “divide.” We are on the crest of the Cascade Mountains. To the east the water flows to Lake Chelan, thence to the Columbia, and thence to the Pacific by a journey of six hundred miles. To the west the water descends through the Sauk and the Skagit to Puget Sound, only a hundred and fifty miles away. This pass is almost always wrapped in clouds, and it is fittingly known as Cloudy Pass. The masses of warm vapour rising from the Pacific are hurled against the icy crowns of Glacier Peak, Mt. Nixon, Mt. Le Conte, North Star Peak, Bonanza Peak, and the rest of the wintry brotherhood, most not yet even named, and make of them a genuine “patriam nimborum,” in Virgil’s phrase.

Horseshoe Basin through a Rock Gap, Stehekin Cañon.
Photo. by T. W. Tolman.

This is the breeding place of tempests. We had just reached the pass on one occasion, with a smiling sky below, and were just getting our cameras ready to catch the westward maze of peaks, when almost instantly there began to wheel and whirl above us great cloud-masses, seemingly from nowhere, formed right there, in fact, and before we had time to think, we were wrapped in a furious blizzard. With difficulty, benumbed, drenched, and exhausted, we managed to pick our way to camp, four miles below. This was in the early part of August. To be caught in a Chelan snowstorm is a serious matter at any time, and later in the year, may be all a man’s life is worth.

But the greatest sight, the crowning feature, of all this panorama of sublimities is Glacier Peak seen from Cloudy Pass. This is pre-eminently the storm-king, the “Cloud-Compeller” (Nephelegereta, in the sounding word of Homer), and rarely can one catch an unobstructed view of its glistening cone. After much watching and waiting we caught the base and part of the double crown of the mighty mass. Glacier Peak is the “Great Unknown” among our Washington peaks. Every one has heard of Rainier, most people know of Adams, St. Helens, Baker, and Stewart, but Glacier Peak, alone in its solitary grandeur, not visible from the cities or routes of travel, is little known even to the people of the State. As its name denotes, it is the centre of a vast glacial system. To any tourist with a taste for adventure, Glacier Peak affords the finest field, while it offers an almost untouched mark for the scientist.

Lake Chelan.
Photo. by W. D. Lyman.