35 
RAMBLES AMONG THE CANADIAN ROCKIES 
A. H. Brinkman 
Traveling westward from Calgary along the Bow River valley, we notice a 
different appearance in the country, hitherto flat or undulating, almost or quite 
treeless, and uninteresting save for its vastness. The land becomes more rolling; 
low, irregularly placed hills are frequent; trees come into view occasionally, 
usually in patches, but at times singly, and then taller, looking gaunt in their 
loneliness, with dead branches save at the top, where a tuft of leafy branches still 
proclaims the life within them. We wonder whether they are the scouts of the 
advancing forest, or a rearguard still showing where, but for the fires, the forest 
still would be. Continuing westward, we are among the foothills of the Rockies. 
Trees are now not infrequent, though too often only the standing skeletons 
remain, mute reproofs to our struggle after the material and our sorry loss of 
the love of nature. Before long the irregularities in the plain become valleys, 
the hills close in on the river, the trees, now more often living, fill the valleys 
and extend well up on the mountain sides. Mountains are everywhere; we look 
up the valleys to see only mountains and yet more mountains. 
From Banff onward, we meet a succession of valleys appearing at first much 
alike, except that some are deeper and longer than otheis. All are narrow, deep 
valleys of trees, squeezed in between mountains which seem to close right in on 
them as if grudging space for the stream bed. We rarely see any sign of the 
wide flat lands and marshes that largely form the Bow River valley to the summit 
of the pass and beyond. But after a time three types of valley stand out clear. 
Of the first are the Spray valley near Banff, and farther west the Sundance and 
Brewster Creek valleys. Wide near their mouths, with a gradual rise, they 
narrow rapidly until in the distance the mountains leave only room for the rivers 
between them. Farther west, against Hector Station, O’Hara and Sherbrooke 
valleys differ materially from those described above. From the train one sees 
little more than a break in the mountains. The rise is sharp and hilly, but on 
reaching the top the valley is seen to widen, with meadows, swamps, and lakes, 
though the stream is distinctly smaller. These are hanging valleys, common 
throughout the Rockies. The third type is composed of the real mountain 
valleys. They are short, at times little more than depressions, run rapidly into 
the mountains, and are often traceable directly to the snowfields and glaciers. 
With rock-bottomed streams, waterfalls, old and new moraines, and rocky sides, 
they form part of the mountains themselves. The streams at times run under- 
ground among the heaps of broken rock; glacier-fed brooks come tumbling over 
the sides to be lost in the mass of stones and debris they themselves have carried 
down. These mountain valleys and beautiful mountain lakes may be called 
the gems of the Rockies. 
To the botanist these valleys make a very strong appeal. In the higher 
reaches the mountains will have their way, and interest in the plants is divided 
with that in the mountain scenery. The moraines and the rocks seem so bare,. 
