I Noticed Three Species Of
Dwarf Willows, One With Narrow Leaves, Growing At The Very Summit Of
The Mountain In Cracks Of The Rocks, As Well As On Patches Of Soil,
Another With Large, Smooth Leaves Now Turning Yellow.
The third
species grows between the others as to elevation; its leaves, then
orange-colored, are strikingly pitted and reticulated.
Another alpine
shrub, a species of sericocarpus, covered with handsome heads of
feathery achenia, beautiful dwarf echiverias with flocks of purple
flowers pricked into their bright grass-green, cushion-like bosses of
moss-like foliage, and a fine forget-me-not reach to the summit. I
may also mention a large mertensia, a fine anemone, a veratrum, six
feet high, a large blue daisy, growing up to three to four thousand
feet, and at the summit a dwarf species, with dusky, hairy
involucres, and a few ferns, aspidium, gymnogramma, and small rock
cheilanthes, leaving scarce a foot of ground bare, though the
mountain looks bald and brown in the distance like those of the
desert ranges of the Great Basin in Utah and Nevada.
Charmed with these plant people, I had almost forgotten to watch the
sky until I reached the top of the highest peak, when one of the
greatest and most impressively sublime of all the mountain views I
have ever enjoyed came full in sight - more than three hundred miles
of closely packed peaks of the great Coast Range, sculptured in the
boldest manner imaginable, their naked tops and dividing ridges dark
in color, their sides and the canyons, gorges, and valleys between
them loaded with glaciers and snow. From this standpoint I counted
upwards of two hundred glaciers, while dark-centred luminous clouds
with fringed edges hovered and crawled over them, now slowly
descending, casting transparent shadows on the ice and snow, now
rising high above them, lingering like loving angels guarding the
crystal gifts they had bestowed. Although the range as seen from this
Glenora mountain-top seems regular in its trend, as if the main axis
were simple and continuous, it is, on the contrary, far from simple.
In front of the highest ranks of peaks are others of the same form
with their own glaciers, and lower peaks before these, and yet lower
ones with their ridges and canyons, valleys and foothills. Alps rise
beyond alps as far as the eye can reach, and clusters of higher
peaks here and there closely crowded together; clusters, too, of
needles and pinnacles innumerable like trees in groves. Everywhere
the peaks seem comparatively slender and closely packed, as if Nature
had here been trying to see how many noble well-dressed mountains
could be crowded into one grand range.
The black rocks, too steep for snow to lie upon, were brought into
sharp relief by white clouds and snow and glaciers, and these again
were outlined and made tellingly plain by the rocks. The glaciers so
grandly displayed are of every form, some crawling through gorge and
valley like monster glittering serpents; others like broad cataracts
pouring over cliffs into shadowy gulfs; others, with their main
trunks winding through narrow canyons, display long, white finger-like
tributaries descending from the summits of pinnacled ridges. Others
lie back in fountain cirques walled in all around save at the lower
edge over which they pour in blue cascades. Snow, too, lay in folds
and patches of every form on blunt, rounded ridges in curves, arrowy
lines, dashes, and narrow ornamental flutings among the summit peaks
and in broad radiating wings on smooth slopes. And on many a bulging
headland and lower ridge there lay heavy, over-curling copings and
smooth, white domes where wind-driven snow was pressed and wreathed
and packed into every form and in every possible place and condition.
I never before had seen so richly sculptured a range or so many
awe-inspiring inaccessible mountains crowded together. If a line were
drawn east and west from the peak on which I stood, and extended both
ways to the horizon, cutting the whole round landscape in two equal
parts, then all of the south half would be bounded by these icy
peaks, which would seem to curve around half the horizon and about
twenty degrees more, though extending in a general straight, or but
moderately curved, line. The deepest and thickest and highest of all
this wilderness of peaks lie to the southwest. They are probably from
about nine to twelve thousand feet high, springing to this elevation
from near the sea-level. The peak on which these observations were
made is somewhere about seven thousand feet high, and from here I
estimated the height of the range. The highest peak of all, or that
seemed so to me, lies to the westward at an estimated distance of
about one hundred and fifty or two hundred miles. Only its solid
white summit was visible. Possibly it may be the topmost peak of St.
Elias. Now look northward around the other half of the horizon, and
instead of countless peaks crowding into the sky, you see a low brown
region, heaving and swelling in gentle curves, apparently scarcely
more waved than a rolling prairie. The so-called canyons of several
forks of the upper Stickeen are visible, but even where best seen in
the foreground and middle ground of the picture, they are like mere
sunken gorges, making scarce perceptible marks on the landscape,
while the tops of the highest mountain-swells show only small patches
of snow and no glaciers.
Glenora Peak, on which I stood, is the highest point of a spur that
puts out from the main range in a northerly direction. It seems to
have been a rounded, broad-backed ridge which has been sculptured
into its present irregular form by short residual glaciers, some of
which, a mile or two long, are still at work.
As I lingered, gazing on the vast show, luminous shadowy clouds
seemed to increase in glory of color and motion, now fondling the
highest peaks with infinite tenderness of touch, now hovering above
them like eagles over their nests.
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