Page:The Selkirk mountains (1912).djvu/156

138 ablaze with the yellow adder's tongue (Erythronium), the globe flower (Trollius), the Indian paint-brush and painted-cups (Castilleias), the Harebell (Campanula), the Anemone and myriads of wild flowers that delight the eye of the traveller and warm the heart of the botanist.

At the heads of many of the valleys (and this is notable) are emerald and blue lakes like those that are a distinctive feature of the Rockies. As everywhere else in the Selkirks, the whistler (Arctomys Columbianus), and the Parry marmot abound. The Rocky Mountain goat (Haplocerns Mountanus), caribou and smaller deer are found in the valleys, and bear may be seen almost any time on the "slides," those avalanche tracks down the mountain sides where grows the succulent vegetation so toothsome to Bruin.

The Canyon Creek trail could readily be extended to Grizzly Creek and so connect with the trail up the Beaver Valley from Bear Creek Station. A similar trail can be taken over the pass to the head of Quartz Creek and down its valley to Beavermouth Station on the C. P. Railway. A trail now branches from the maine one up Canyon Creek which it crosses and leads up the south-east branch to the head of its valley. Here a pass is found which makes access easy to the trail leading up the north branch of the Spillimacheen Valley, but it needs a continuation of the trail through this pass and down the western slopes beyond it. The Spillimacheen trail leads to Bald Mountain and to the head of the west branch of Grizzly Creek, up which there is a prospector's trail, now sadly out of repair. From Bald Mountain may be had splendidly spectacular views of the Selkirk eastern escarpment and its long array of ice-cascades that break from every hollow and through every cleft.

Again south of Canyon Creek, Twelve-Mile Creek enters the Columbia above Golden. A trail leads up this stream to a "prospect" that at one time gave much promise. It is in a splendid amphitheatre or rather series of amphitheatres, a place of bright sun shine and crisp air for health-seekers and nature-lovers. From the heights of the Dogtooth Mountains, one may obtain a comprehensive view of the wonderful flat trough of the Columbia River a distinctive feature of the Canadian Rocky Mountains:

"River, lake, lagoon, pond, marsh, forest-tract, railway, village, are all laid out between the hills as on a map; now bright in the sunshine, the streams glistening like silver, and anon hidden by swirling clouds with only a glimpse here and there shining through a rift, giving the whole an eerie 'unco' look as from another world, a world of snowy heights above the clouds; where trees are dwarfed and distorted where rocks are queer shapes, and birds are snowy white. I have often sat and watched these cloud-blankets swirl and roll silently below, disclosing glimpses of what seemed to be a nether region."

As yet the peaks of the Dogtooth Mountains have not been named and consequently, it is not possible to refer to them individually. At the heads of many of the deep indentations running into the group from the Columbia and Spillimacheen Valleys, are charming little lakes of beautiful blues and greens, and some very picturesque waterfalls; nearly all the major valleys have trails leading into them, which will be fit for travel when the fallen timber is cleared away.