18 AB8AE0KA DIVISION OF TELLOWSTONE F0BE8T BESERVE. 



As a rule, lands of this class are difficult of access from the plains, from the 

 foothill regions, and from the bottom of the canyons which bound or cut into 

 them. They lie at altitudes varying from 9,500 to 12,000 feet, and the grazing 

 season on them is short. The various plateau areas which so largely compose 

 them are broad summits of the great Archean uplift of the, region, smoothed in 

 some localities, eroded and roughened in others. They are bordered by enormous, 

 cliff-bound canyons on most of their sides, and when they front directly on 

 the plains, as in the southeast corner of Beartooth Plateau, present extremely 

 steep slopes. In some places the surface is rolling, as on the summits of East 

 Boulder and the northern areas of the Beartooth Plateau; at other places it is 

 pitted with bowl-like or elongated depressions commonly partly filled with 

 water; at other points there are combs, ridges, and dome^like elevations of solid 

 rock or heaped-up masses of bowlder drift, resembling the "nunataks" described 

 as projecting above the surface of the arctic continental glaciers. Streams head 

 in the various tarns or in the springs with which the tracts are liberally supplied, 

 and become important feeders of the rivers and creeks in the reserve. 



Where not too closely sheeped in the past and where sufficient soil overlies 

 the rock or bowlder basement the land is covered with a close and very tough 

 sward of alpine and subalpine grasses and sedges, and in the height of the summei 

 is brilliantly bespecked with multitudes of many-hued flowers. Around the springs 

 and points of seepage and in crevices of rocks grow tangled thickets of frutescent 

 willows, while on the more level and drier ground the herbaceous arctic willow, 

 rising scarcely 2 or, at the most, 3 inches above the surface of the soil, spreads 

 its thin mats and twigs along the grassy sward. 



All the larger and more easily accessible of these tracts have been pastured, 

 none very closely except the Beartooth Plateau areas in Tps. 8 and 9 S., Rs. 18, 19, 

 and 20 E. , which have for many years been favorite sheeping grounds for flocks owned 

 in the vicinity of Red Lodge and in adjacent townships across the Wyoming line. 

 Everywhere throughout these sheep runs the land has been overgrazed, and coarse 

 alpine plants, worthless for pastijirage, have either wholly or in part supplanted the 

 former grassy turf, or where other species of vegetation have not usurped the 

 ground the grass remaining has been eaten so close that only mere stubs remain. 



Situated above timber line lands of this class are, of course, of no particular 

 importance in the forest economics of the reserve. They have, however, a large and 

 far-reaching value as conservators and retainers of the precipitation on the region 

 and as regulators of the run-off. Their lakelets and tarns are effective natural 

 reservoirs, and are so situated that by, means of low embankments across their outlets 

 their storage capacity can readily be increased tenfold or more. Where lakelets 

 and tarns are lacking, or where they have been drained by the erosion of the natural 

 dams at their outlets, marshes and springy ground have taken their place and sei-ve 



