460 



AMERICAN FORESTRY 



NOOKSACK FALLS NEAR MT. BAKER 



A big water power plant utilizes the water of these falls to furnish trans- 

 portation and light for Bellingham, fifty miles away. 



and a half made us gasp, perspire and ache, and every 

 few rods drop upon the ground to enjoy the land- 

 scape. In the first mile the crowd broke up into twos 

 and threes according to the pace they wished to take. 

 Some of them made the trip in four hours, but we 

 didn't. We took eight. 



As we all started at T) :15 a. m. we slow ones had 

 the last mile and a half in the heat of the day. Most 

 of the women were dressed in the usual mountain 

 suit. While I expected to be at the tail of the pro- 

 cession, I looked the crowd over at the start and de- 

 cided that I, even I, would pass two of those girls laid 

 out by the trail, for they had on long heavy woolen 

 dresses. When, tired and hot, the last of the crowd, 

 we reached the camp, there by the fire, as fresh as a 

 daisy, sat the young lady of the heaviest skirt, tatting. 

 On the threshold of old Koma Kulshan, to sit and tat ! 

 I was shocked. But I couldn't afford to be for she 

 had already been in camp four hours. Time enough 

 to meet the mountain, the glaciers, the flowers and 

 get around to her tatting ! 



Heliotrope Ridge is probably a medial moraine in 

 the great Roosevelt glacier. It is too close to the 

 summit to give the most beautiful view of Mt. Baker, 



but is an intimate view. From here the long pre- 

 cipitous snow wall, one hundred and fifty feet high 

 can be seen very clearly. Our camp, under alpine firs 

 and mountain hemlock, was on a bluff about fifty feet 

 high that drops steeply down into glacial crevasses. 

 We could see the blue ice of their depths, but the sur- 

 face of the glacier here was brown with the boulders 

 and soil that had fallen on it from the bluff. When 

 night came we wrapped our blankets about us and lay 

 down beneath the hemlock trees to rest and slumber. 

 Those of us slumbered who had remembered hoods 

 and extra hose, but the breeze from those vast snow 

 fields drove the "foolish virgins" to the camp fire. 

 'J"he young people left the next morning. A packer 

 had brought up the blankets and food for the party 

 on two pack horses. As he was willing to carry our 

 blankets back when he brought up another party we 

 too decided to stay another day. On the ridge there 

 were masses of blue lupines, white heliotrope, pink 

 evening primroses and pink minulus and about twenty 

 varieties of other flowers. 



We slept another night upon the ridge, as com- 

 fortable and safe as the trees and blossoms among 

 their snow fields. Nine o'clock in the morning, with 

 a tin bucket of flowers to analyse and our lunch in 

 our packs, we started back to Glacier. We dawdled 

 on the trail, enjoyed every place of beauty to our fill, 

 falls, outlooks upon the mountain, trees and flowers 

 and reached the Glacier hotel in time for a hot bath 

 and six o'clock dinner. The next day we analysed our 

 flowers and made further plans. We decided to go 

 to Twin Lakes, twenty-one miles distant, and five 

 thousand and two hundred feet elevation, and after 

 our return to climb Sky-line ridge. We didn't realize 



LOWRV'S CABIN AT HERMAN 



The comfortable home of a miner at which the trampers stopped for a 

 night on their way to Mt. Baker. 



