Page:Canadian Alpine Journal I, 2.djvu/182

292 Cataract Creek to the Kootenai Plains. Here we rested and revelled in those golden valleys, visited the Indians, and found life a very pleasant matter in that peaceful sunshine after the snows and storms among the more northern valleys.

Yet even here the late September days were stealing. They were coming with the yellowing poplars, and with the laggard dawn. We knew the winter's snows must soon sweep across the higher passes, but begged a few days' respite to visit one spot which beckoned us with its beguiling name. This was the "Valley of the Lakes." James Outram speaks of seeing it from the summit of Mt. Lyell, and says in his book (In the Heart of the Canadian Rockies): "It appeared as a deep enshadowed trough, jewelled with a host of little lakes." The description fascinated us, appealed to our imagination, and we were to have the pleasure of stealing the first secrets of a primeval wilderness. From the camp at the junction of the North Fork and the main Saskatchewan River, we travelled up the east bank of the North Fork for about 13 miles; here, being low water, we easily found a crossing, and followed the west shore for a mile more, when an old Indian trail led directly to the unknown valley. As far as the red man is concerned, it is many years since his moccasined foot has trodden that moss-covered way. The trail remains beaten and worn, but overgrown and impeded with huge fallen trees, and only the blaze of a white man's axe seven or eight feet above the ground showed that a hunter had gone that way in the dead of winter to test his fortune with traps and rifle.

No sooner had we left the river than we plunged into a thick growth of spruce, climbing constantly for two hours. Reaching comparatively level ground, we plodded on amidst closely grown and exasperating pines, so thick and so nearly impregnable that even our now depleted packs could not be forced through until the