The Mazama Club Outing to Glacier Park. 175 



us about five o'clock, but later the clouds parted giving a 

 lovely sunset glimpse of the snowy ranges beyond the 

 Stehekin River. Nightfall brought us to Stehekin and 

 the hospitality of the Field Hotel. 



Ten miles up the Stehekin River was Bullion, our first 

 night's camp. A good road leads thus far following the 

 easy grade of the river. The Stehekin Canon is not un- 

 like many California canons. Its granite walls rise from 

 four to six thousand feet above the river ; at their base lie 

 great talus piles covered with brush, a favorite haunt of 

 rattlesnakes as are the rocky moraines in the canon bot- 

 tom. The floor is in many places heavily wooded. Cot- 

 tonwoods and yellow pines are intermingled with the ever 

 present Douglas fir (Pseudotsuga taxifolia), some of the 

 latter superb specimens, giants of their kind, whose wide- 

 branching arms gave a grateful shelter from the shower 

 that closed the day. 



An early start was made next morning as seventeen 

 and a half miles of steady uphill trail separated us from 

 the next night's camp. We crossed the Stehekin River 

 on a high-hung bridge, crossed Agnes Creek and started 

 along the government trail leading up its eastern bank. 

 For several miles the trail follows along a dry mountain- 

 side where a forest of tamarack pines (Pinus contorta), 

 again suggests California. Then by a quick transition we 

 are in Washington again, trailing through a typical forest 

 of firs, hemlocks, cedars and white pines {Pinus monti- 

 cola) , a silent, dark, languorous place, deep carpeted with 

 a luxuriant growth of ferns, moss and tiny, creeping green 

 vines. Higher and higher the trail climbed, now up the 

 South Fork of Agnes Creek, where occasionally a granite 

 peak showed above the canon wall. But the clouds soon 

 closed in upon us, and as we reached the open parts of the 

 canon more than once a shower drove us to the shelter of 

 some overhanging fir. By five o'clock rain began in 

 earnest; the trail with each step became more miry and 

 difficult, and camp was finally made two miles below the 

 chosen site. 



