Page:The Selkirk mountains (1912).djvu/155

Rh branch of the Spillimacheen River, Grizzly Creek (west branch), and Beaver River. They embrace the serrated line of peaks seen up and down the Columbia from Golden, and the so-called Prairie Hills along the Beaver River. Directly to the south lie the Spillimacheen Mountains whose outlying northern spur is Bald Mountain.

Looking from the railway train, the Dogtooth Mountains present a series of pointed summits isolated by hazy blue valleys reaching far back into the shadows. And the appellation exactly suits these sharp fangs whose ragged tops are white with snow. In the valleybottom north of Golden, the river flows lazily in great loops broken into channels by little islands and bars; south, are lagoons of many shapes and sizes set in the broad, low marshes through which the river winds serpentwise, either margin fringed with the deciduous cottonwood and willows, its course showing from above like a tortuous canal. From the river-bottom the valley rises in a series of benches thickly timbered with fir. spruce, cedar and hemlock of giant size—a deep, dark forest sweeping backward and up the mountains to the trees' limit, broken only by the emerald-green strips of alder, willow and devil's club, those speedy growths with which Nature covers the ravages of the avalanche.

The valleys of three principal streams intersect the Dogtooth group. Near the centre. Canyon Creek flowing to the Columbia some six miles above Golden, cuts diagonally across its axis, the valley being connected by a low pass with that of Grizzly Creek flowing nearly due west to the Beaver River, three miles south-east of Bear Creek Station on the Railway. The northern face of the group is cleft by (Quartz Creek Valley which gives access by an easy pass to Grizzly Creek. Quartz Creek joins the Columbia at Beaver Mouth. The main line of travel across this range is by way of Canyon Creek, so called from the deeply cut rift through which it flows for several miles where it debouches from the hills. Unfortunately there is no bridge at Golden, and access to the Canyon Creek trail is only possible by swimming horses opposite the mill, a mile from the town. From this point a miner's trail cuts across the spur of the mountain and joins Canyon Creek Valley at the head of the gorge, whence it follows the creek to its source. In the upper portions of the valley it needs clearing and remaking.

All through these mountains are found trails made by prospectors and miners. They lead up the valleys of the larger streams and zig-zag up almost impossible slopes to the "prospects," where may be found a hole in the mountain and a pile of ore on a "dump" outside. In some places the work has been more extensive and a log cabin with stove and bunks is found on a nearby crag, commanding a wide circle of alpine scenery "worth a king's ransom," doubtless unheeded and possibly unseen by the man of the ore-pile. And yet in some dumb-fashion he may have felt the majesty of high mountains. These trails give access to the upper valleys where the real attractions are. They are grandly alpine; open grass-lands with great shapely unbrageous spruce trees, brilliant flowers and lakelets, silver streams meandering everywhere, the green slopes rising gently to bold bare cliffs and steep slopes of scree, crowned by snowy heights, glacier-hung and showing long connecting arêtes such as the explorer loves. In spring and early summer the valleys are