TOURING IN THE CANADIAN ROCKIES 



267 



pack ropes ; the fuel is wet ; the fire will 

 not burn; the ground is damp; everyone is 

 swearing mad. There is no more wretched 

 or melancholy task on earth than making 

 camp in the rain ; but all the hardships 

 and discomforts of wet weather are more 

 than made up by jcy at the return of tne 

 sun and warmth. What more delightful 

 after a hard day's journey and a good meal 

 than to stretch oneself out on the soft grass 

 and allow the rays of the sun to permeate 

 into one's very soul ! 



Leaving Laggan, we strike out on the 

 trail. A few miles we follow along the 

 railroad embankment and then turn sharply 

 North up the valley of the glacier-fed Bow 

 river, on which Laggan is situated. There 

 we leave the railroad to twist its way West- 

 ward over the Great Divide and on through 

 the wonderful Kicking Horse canyon. This 

 pass ranks high among the engineering 

 feats of the world. The railroad creeps 

 through a rugged defile, little more than a 

 cleft in the mountains, through which boils 

 a roaring torrent. Just as farther progress 

 seems cut off, the road turns sharply to the 

 left, crosses the canyon on a trestle at a 

 giddy height, and then for seven miles 

 cuts its way down the side of the mountain, 

 at a 6 or 7 per cent grade, to the floor of 

 the canyon at Field; but that is off the line 

 of our march. 



The season has been late and the moun- 

 tains are covered with snow. All around 

 us tower the great peaks of the Rockies. 

 Behind us Victoria and Temple stand with 

 their ice-crowned peaks against the sky. 

 On our left is Mt. Hector? with a tip not 

 unlike the Matterhorn ; while an endless 

 chain of mountains and snowy peaks unfold 

 before us. The trail for the first 15 miles 

 leads through fallen timber and a kind of 

 swampy land called "muskeg." The sur- 

 face is a thick mat of roots and grass, over 

 which a man may sometimes pass, but be- 

 low are thick mud and water. Some of 

 these muskegs are dangerous, apparently 

 having no bottom ; but for the most part 

 they cause nothing more serious than the 

 annoyance occasioned by the horses floun- 

 dering about up to their bellies and be- 

 spattering themselves, and all their friends 

 with mud. Every few miles a brook tum- 

 bling down the sides of the mountain joins 

 the more sedate stream flowing along the 

 valley. About 20 miles North of the rail- 

 road is Lower Bow lake and 10 miles above 

 that is Upper Bow lake. These little 

 sheets of water are marvels of beauty 

 nestled in among the great mountains whose 

 rugged sides rise abruptly from their 

 shores. They remind one strongly of the 

 fjords of Norway, The upper lake is 

 about 2 miles long, apple green and cold as 

 ice. On 3 sides are mountains rising thou- 



THE FALLS OF THE SASKATCHEWAN. 



sands of feet and crowned with snow. The 

 other side is timbered, with here and there 

 a little park of green verdure. There, 

 amid the pines, we pitch our camp, on a 

 carpet of velvet moss. A few miles to the 

 West a great glacier creeps down from 

 among the mountains and spurns the val- 

 ley with its frozen toe. 



Leaving this lovely spot, we push on up 

 the valley of the Bow. The stream grows 

 smaller, and finally is a mere sluggish 

 brook creeping through a plateau meadow, 

 at the North end of which is a thickly 

 wooded forest country. Except for the 

 bracing air and the view of the surround- 

 ing peaks one would never dream that the 

 altitude is over 6,000 feet. A short dis- 

 tance more and we are over the watershed 

 and are descending into the Saskatchewan 

 valley. The trail leads down a steep grade, 

 winding in and out among the great pines 

 and firs over a carpet of foot-deep moss. 

 In the afternoon we camp in a forest of 



