THE MOUNTAINEER. 



other forms of volcanic rock covered 

 the earlier formations, rising in 

 places to the magnificent isolated 

 cones which now compose our great 

 snow-peaks, of which it is the main 

 purpose of this article to speak. 



After the age of fire there came on 

 an age of ice. The great mountain 

 chain having by successive upheavals 

 assumed essentially its present out- 

 lines, the glacial age covered the 

 ragged crests and pinnacles of dis- 



there was one of flood. It would 

 seem that the slowly rising Cascade 

 Range imprisoned a vast sea, occu- 

 pying all the middle parts of the 

 present Columbia Valley. This sea, 

 first salt, then brackish, finally fresh 

 through the influx of rivers, at last 

 cleft the range asunder and made its 

 way to the ocean. The Columbia 

 River now occupies the channel made 

 by the excavation of that great sea. 

 The fantastic Indian myth of Wish- 



SUMMIT or MOUNT BAKER. 

 Altitude 10,827 feet. Summit first reached toy E. T. Coleman 1868. 



located granite and intruding lava 

 with sheets of ice many times greater 

 than any now" in existence here and 

 comparable to those of Greenland in 

 magnitude. Those immense masses 

 of ice moving toward the lowlands 

 planed off the crags and plowed out 

 the valleys, leaving the profound 

 chasms and abysmal lake beds of 

 Methow and Chelan and other mar- 

 vels of the Cascade range. 



Besides the eras of fire and ice 



poosh, the great beaver of Lake 

 Kichelos, seems to be based on that 

 idea of a flood and at the same time 

 explains the origin of the Indian 

 tribes. According to that tale the 

 beaver inhabited that lake, now the 

 head of the Yakima River, but a 

 lake vastly larger than now. En- 

 raged by the theft of Speelyi, the 

 coyote god of the Klickitats (though 

 that was before any Indians lived, 

 the world being inhabited solely by 



