Plant-and-Animal Communities (continued)

Scrub-Forest

The crowning beauty of Glacier—the high, cirqueheld meadows that scent the wind with wildflower and waterfall—belongs to the zone of scrub-forest.

At Logan Pass you are introduced to the highlands. Here an exquisite upland basin holds the Hanging Gardens, a wild flower-clothed gradient laced with stair-step bogs and lines of wind-bent subalpine fir. In the dawn sun, before the first engine noise, it shines unbroken, dewbright and sagging like a spider web secured to the circle of surrounding peaks.

This is the region the hiker remembers best. The tall mountains wear this zone close to the cliffs, and the trails encounter it near the passes or follow it for long, level stretches, as along the Garden Wall. I remember Preston Park and Fifty Mountain, the fire-touched bench of Granite Park and the first sight of Sperry chalet, built on a brow of rock at the upper reach of trees. But most of all I remember the terrible waterfall that becomes Bowman Creek, the plunge of nearly a kilometer that drains the magnificent upland bench called Hole-in-the-Wall.

Hole-in-the-Wall

September. The season is growing late, the meadow-rue dying and the leaves of the wild strawberry failing at last. Everywhere the red contagion of autumn surrounds the vital green. The lower valleys have lost the whistle of ground squirrels. They sun themselves no longer these late, mild days. Ripe, sluggish, and hawk-vulnerable, they sensed the need of hibernation.

It has been eight years since I last visited Hole-in-the-Wall, but I retain its dimensions and hear its dozen waterfalls at will. Once you have seen this basin you have a measure by which to judge the high country and a thirst for the meadows at tree-line.

In Glacier, treelimit ranges between 1,850 and 2,300 meters, depending on local conditions. The upper limit of tree growth—rarely an even, horizontal line—is generally an indistinct band running erratically across a mountain's face: a tension zone reflecting variations in wind and sun exposure, degree of slope, snowpack accumulations, and the presence of adequate soil and water.

Subalpine fir, whitebark pine, and Engelmann spruce do not relinquish easily their upward climb; where conditions become severe, their growth is retarded and their stature dwarfed. Deformed and pruned by wind, their leaders winter-killed when they outreach the protection of the winter snow pack, trees become shrubs, forced to hug the ground. Size belies age in these elfin forests, or krummholz, where the growing season is painfully brief and progress is always uncertain. A twisted, gnarled little bush, more snag than live branch, bearing a single cone or two, may be senior by a century to the giants of its race in the valley below, which yearly shower the ground with an abundant crop of cones.

This time I will come from Goathaunt, passing Lakes Janet and Francis, reaching Brown Pass from the east, and camp in the spectacular garden between Brown and Boulder Passes.

Meadows and rock slides break the forest as the trail gains elevation and distance through the valley. The spruce and fir thin out rapidly at the valley head, the trail climbing the grassy slope to low, broad Brown Pass. Below the pass is Thunderbird Pond, which receives the meltwater from a glacier high on a shelf of Thunderbird Mountain and is bordered by a low jungle of willow. In the water stands a bull moose, its heavy, fully formed antlers ready for the season's impending business.

I was hoping again to see Cassin's finches and Audubon's warblers on the pass; but the fir grove is quiet. Sitting down to rest and listen, I become aware of a strange silence. No birds sing or flit among the trees, no alarms pass back and forth among alert ground squirrels. There is no wind—an odd condition for the Continental Divide. This place seems to be holding its breath. High overhead, a veil of cirrus cloud arranges long spears across the sky.

Moving off the pass, along the dome of Mt. Chapman, I experience anew the old excitement of this high country. Abruptly the gorge of Bowman valley opens up, revealing the twisting blue snake of Bowman Lake far down the narrow, cliff-imprisoned valley. Here again are the northern titans—Numa, Peabody, Boulder, Thunderbird, and \ Rainbow; and Carter, with its high glacier baring blue ice teeth to the sun.

It is not the climb that makes your heart pound now; the trail is suddenly narrow and cliff-defiant, cut by the plunging waters of snowbanks far above. These are splendid peaks, unmatched in a land of muscled, brutal earth. Even the air seems to retain the scent of glacier work.

At last the view of Hole-in-the-Wall, a staircase cirque excavated between the gigantic spread ribs of Mt. Custer. The slopes of beargrass are seed-spotted and gaunt now, the white fullness gone. Western pasqueflowers have accomplished their magic transformation; known in this season as old man's beard, they nod their tufts of grizzled seedhead silk in the wind. Red and yellow monkeyflowers bloom yet, crowding along the many stream courses, and waterloving sedges and mosses surround pools of collected water on the broad horseshoe tiers.

A spur trail drops down into the campground on the last ledge. Through a cleft in its lip plummets the gathered water of the basin. From the valley below, the waterfall appears to be springing from a hole in the headwall, giving this basin its name. Down, down, down, roars the water where once a mighty glacier ground its teeth.

I leave until later the making of camp; by now the sharp shadows of Boulder Peak stab the valley forest and are beginning the upward assault of Thunderbird.

Around the basin headwalls, last winter's snowbanks remain formidable. Snow caves send out meltwater torrents. Glacier lilies and patches of spring beauty line their fringes. Pasqueflowers bloom in pockets. Here, among the asters of August, bloom also the first flowers of spring, shooting up as the snowbanks shrink, making these spots of snow-free ground a patchwork of May and July, August and June. The shrubs that line the furious water are willows, still bud-swollen this tenth day of September. The coming days will bring a sharp surprise.

Winter will soon stop the melting of this snow. Could it be that I am seeing the first year of a reawakening ice age? If so, each year the snowfields would grow thicker and broader, connecting the shelves into one ice mass again, lilies and willows entombed, the summer heat failing to rescue them, until the ice at last began to slide, stripping the soil and once more plucking at living rock.

Then these dwarfed fir, which cling precariously to the cliffs and hide behind the backs of boulders, would be in more danger than they were from their recent antagonists. Engulfed by ice, they would know the shearing wind no more. Their skeletons would rain down into the valley below, signalling another long forest retreat. But they have waited out the mountain ice before and would send their seeds again to this valley, changed however it might be, as they have always done.

Evening brings out two sleek mule deer does. As they graze, their large ears stand erect, sorting out the lesser sounds from the ceaseless roar of water. Both raise their heads and point their ears, statue straight, at the scuttle of a porcupine. A noise among the rocks draws a backward glance and focus of those ears. I would like the sensitivity of such fine equipment, to hear what deer have always heard.

Setting about the business of camp, I wonder about those animals that watched me for a while, then moved off, having seen a tent go up before. With the appearance of the moon the wind increases and they test the air more often now. Do they have visions of cougar or grizzly with every snap the wind delivers?

In summer these high meadows see a surprising variety of animal life. Briefly out of hibernation are marmots and the handsome golden-mantled ground squirrels. Mice, voles, shrews, and woodrats run among the shadows, feeding on the season's feast of seeds and insects. A nightmare for these are the fierce little weasels that haunt the rocks.

Tracks of cougar and wolverine are sometimes seen, often teasingly fresh; to glimpse either of these elusive predators is to taste the finest wine of wilderness.

Before the berry season, grizzlies grub the meadows for the tasty bulbs of glacier lilies and the tubers of spring beauty; often distracted by the scent of a ground squirrel in its burrow, they sometimes make a huge excavation for a small reward.

White-crowned sparrows sing in July from the low tops of the battered trees, though their nests are on the ground below. Grey-crowned rosy finches patrol the drier ground for seeds while water pipits hunt insects in the wet areas. High above, a golden eagle scans the basin again, circling slowly before following a ridge south to sight another likely slope in its 10,000-hectare territory.

The moon shines through the tent top. The wind, blowing more violently now, shivers the nylon and interrupts the voice of the waterfall. I have followed the pasqueflower run from the April prairies here to its highest bloom near treeline. I think about the triangular seed pods of the glacier lillies, colonies of steep-throated blue gentians, and the season's last glory of goldenrod. Indian paintbrush, from white to fire red, blazes the slopes that light the fringes of sleep.

I awake to a determined rain, the moon gone and the tent shuddering with wind-blast. I try not to think of the steel-cold air, and slip into a fitful sleep that seems an endless treadmill of rocky trail.

Stiff and unrefreshed, I look out into the dawnless morning. The tip of Thunderbird is detached from its base by grey clouds swirling at its throat. A wave of sleet slants down, dancing on the rocks, chanting triumph over the buried, bent, and broken flowers of yesterday.

So I must make my escape, short of Boulder Pass. Unattainable now, invisible above the cirque, that high pass grows in my memory. This testament to what a glacier can do, to the struggle of trees and the life-pioneers that invade such harsh places, is at my feet but shrouded with snow. My hands grow stiff and numb in the blunt work of packing up.

I had wished to see Kinnerly Peak again, rising from the western Kintla valley, and walk along black ledges of the lava that floors the pass. Beyond it grows a grove of subalpine larch, stately, seldom encountered, the least common tree species in Glacier. Confined to this narrow zone between forest and alpine, it reaches up tall and proud, impervious to the gruelling climate that makes cowering shrubs of other trees.

But all must wait another year, for this season comes down hard. And the will of winter is to erase whatever summer had devised.