Chapter I: Part 1

★GPO:1978-261-215/3
For sale by the
Superintendent of Documents,
U.S. Government Printing Office,
Washington, DC 20402.
Stock Number 024-005-00709-1.

Library of Congress Cataloging In Publication Data

Beaumont, Greg, 1943-
Many-storied mountains.

(Natural history series)
1. Natural history—Montana—Glacier National Park.
2. Glacier National Park. I. Title. II. Series: Natural history series
(Washington, D.C.)
OH105 M9B43 500.9′786′52 78-606071

Many-storied Mountains
The Life of Glacier National Park

Written and
photographed by
Greg Beaumont

1978
Natural History Series
Division of Publications
National Park Service
U.S. Department of the Interior

About This Book

This natural history of the mountain wilderness called Glacier National Park is not a guidebook, but provides an overview of the ecology of the region. At the same time, it is a personal statement, revealing one individual’s response to this rugged, delicate land.

For their consistent cooperation and helpfulness, I wish especially to thank Chief Naturalist Ed Rothfuss and his capable staff. Technical and field assistance came from many; for special thanks, I would like to single out Art Sedlack, Francis Singer, Bert Gildart, Walt Martin, Craig Kuchel, and Danny On. The manuscript profited greatly from the criticism of Douglas Chadwick, to whom I am deeply grateful.

—G.B.

The National Park Service Division of Publications gratefully acknowledges the financial support given this book project by the Glacier Natural History Association, Inc., West Glacier, Mont.

Contents

Song of the High Peaks 1
Cycles and Seasons 5
Bedrock: The First Story 6
The Rising of the Sun and the Running of the Deer: A Glacier
Year 39
Plant-and-Animal Communities 43
Over Going-to-the-Sun Road 44
Groves and Grasslands: The Prairie Sea 46
The Forest 70
Scrub Forest 105
Tundra 109
Water Communities 114
Shooting Stars 121
Appendix 125
Pictorial Features
The Mountains of Glacier 10
The Forests of Glacier 48
The Vital Predator 78
Protective Coloration 84
_Ursus arctos horribilus:_ The Vulnerable King 88
Bald Eagles and Kokanee Salmon: A Recent Gathering 92
A Triumph of Many Colors 96
Fire Succession: Key to Continuity 100

Illustrations by Celia Strain/Morgan-Burchette Assoc.

Song of the High Peaks

April again and the wind turns on the Great Plains. Wedges of geese, high and determined, began this storm of spring, their voices sharp as the morning frost. Sicklebills cry to claim the land, sandhill cranes wheel and talk overhead, and everywhere the killdeer shout. Pasqueflowers push the bleak soil aside, beginning the westward rush that I must join, seeking again the sight of mountains.

In Glacier National Park the land is folded up. On the east, Chief Mountain, Curly Bear, and Rising Wolf break the prairie’s hold. When the early French fur trappers saw these peaks glistening in the distance with summer-long snows and perpetual ice, they named this region “the land of shining mountains.” But for all the ice and snow that reflect the summer sun, the park’s present glaciers are but snowflakes compared to the mighty rivers of ice that carved this land. Glaciation, the magnificent sculptor, left its bold signature everywhere, and this park honors with its name the force that shaped it.

But the essential excitement of this land is more than cliff face, spire, and sudden storm. It comes to you when you realize that here is an aggregation of dramatically differing life zones, where a day’s walk can easily take you from prairie and forest to treelimit and tundra; where a dense forest of redcedar and hemlock, similar to the rain forests of the Pacific coast, exists a score of kilometers from the great prairie sea.

Or it comes when you discover that these mountains—young and sharp with shadows, snow-jeweled and newly gowned with forests—are chiseled from the oldest unaltered sedimentary rocks on earth.

I come from the prairie and love its broad strokes; I’ve learned to hear the singing in the grass and to see those long, slow seasons soar the level horizons like gliding hawks. But here I learned to match my days against a wild earth, and in me grew the mysterious need to know a mountain from its every side. Mountains that wear the dawn like yellow hats, repeated in the named and nameless lakes. Mountains that stretch the storms between them and balance rainbows ridge to ridge.

I must see again the secret forest places, where the paleflowered wood-nymphs hover like a breath, and know once more the endless meadows painted camas blue.

I need the perfect freedom of this land, to be able to say, _today I will climb Siyeh_: to stand, for a time, on the rugged shoulders of this upright earth.

Cycles and Seasons

Bedrock: The First Story

On the trail that connects the Logan Pass visitor center to Hidden Lake overlook there is a shallow pond. Near Hidden Pass, it collects its meltwater from the Continental Divide and sends it down the shallow gorge that drains the Hanging Gardens; as a waterfall it plunges into the upper St. Mary Valley where it becomes Reynolds Creek; joined by other tributaries, it continues its long journey to Hudson Bay.

The surface of this pond is seldom still, for the wind treats it like a sea. Because the water is shallow, the wave action wrinkles the bottom mud into ripple patterns, mimicking the churning waves.

I like to come here early in the morning. Sometimes, arriving before the wind awakes, I catch reflections of the surrounding mountains. Beyond the low bench of Logan Pass the Garden Wall begins, running northward with the Divide. In the eastern valley the pitched peak of Going-to-the-Sun hunkers in the morning light like a tensed warrior. To the south, the incisor Bearhat, beautiful cloud cutter of Hidden Lake Valley, juts above the nearby saddle of the pass. But over this place, standing as fresh monuments to an age of ice, tower the cliffs of Clements and the pyramid Reynolds.

I am sitting on a wedge of red rock. Its surface exhibits a wrinkled pattern identical to the ripples in the soft mud of the shallow pond. The distance is not great; with a stick I could reach out and touch the mud. Yet this represents a gulf no bird can fly, for between the ripples of this rock and the ripples of this mud lie billions of vanished mornings, a constellation of years.

These red, green, tan, white, black and purple bands of rock that layer Glacier’s mountains comprise the oldest unaltered sedimentary rocks on Earth. They were laid down in Precambrian time, more than a billion years ago, when life was just beginning, as the deposits of an inland sea.

For millions of years, sand, mud and carbonates washed into the ancient sea, compressing the lower layers into mudstones and limestones, building up a sediment thickness that may have been as much as 10,000 meters (_see_ metric conversion table on page 136).

When we look at the sharp contours of Glacier’s mountains, we see the evidence of uplift, overthrust and glaciation. But on the geologic clock these are recent events, a mere eyeblink of time ago. For the vast majority of years, the rocks lay undisturbed and level beneath the sea and land.

To understand better the tremendous time scale these rocks represent, we need a way to visualize the vast collection of years. If we were to make a movie of these geologic events, we would first need to determine how many years each minute should represent. Since the Pleistocene lasted about 3,000,000 years (its four ice ages sculpting the present muscle of this land), let us make each minute portray a million years. To chronicle these rocks we will then need a film 60 hours long!

Not until the fifty-seventh hour of our film will the Mesozoic lowlands begin to bulge with the coming Rocky Mountain chain. During the long preceding hours we would have seen little else but sea—withdrawing, advancing, deep and shallow; yellow, green, and brown with great colonies of algae. Unseen below the water, lava has spilled out occasionally on the sea bottom; once, it intruded between the rock layers below, forming the conspicuous, 60-meter-thick band of black diorite that we see today on many mountain faces in Glacier.

During this time of initial uplift an amazing process is going on deep underground. A major fault has developed, fracturing the buckled layers of rock. A vast mountain plate begins to slide eastward, over-riding and submerging the rock layers to the east and opening the wide trench that is today the North Fork Valley. Known as the Lewis Overthrust, this gigantic earth-force has created an unusual situation: ancient rock strata lying atop recent rock strata.

Now less than 3 minutes of film remain. The arrival of the ice is imminent. We look at the landscape of featureless mountains and wonder at the dramatic difference that this last 3 million years will make. We do not see the familiar forests and lakes, the savage peaks, and the broad, deep valleys of this present land. These mountains are gentle, arid, and shallow-valleyed. The vague outlines are there; we recognize the general alignments of the drainage systems, the bloated domes from which sharp peaks will be cut. The mountains are connected to one another by blunt ridges and smooth saddles, and the shadows they cast are dull, dunelike.

Suddenly the ice is there, filling the landscape, with only the mountaintops protruding. Four times in these last 3 minutes of film the ice sheets advance and retreat, each time leaving an altered landscape. Strange lakes and forests fill the gaps between the glacial invasions. Then we see the mountains we now know come into being rapidly, as if the land were being hacked into shape by giant cleavers.

After this flicker of Pleistocene time, the film ends, the forests return, and familiar lakes shine beneath the sun again—these lakes and forests we had thought to be timeless.

■ Up springs the morning wind from Hidden Valley, making the nearby alpine fir branches whiz with its passing and shattering the perfect reflection of Bearhat Peak on the pond. From where I sit, it is a short distance to Hidden Pass; so I leave the pond and walk to the overlook to see again the fine basin quarried by an ancient glacier.

Hidden Lake, deep, far below, so blue, fits into its cliffed, crooked valley like a polished boomerang. Closely ringed by ridge and peak—distant Sperry Glacier and pointed Gunsight peering up from the southern jumble, and broad Bearhat impossibly close—this lovely lake is almost lost amid such sharp proclamations of rock. Its outlet gorge gives a narrow view across the angled, hidden valleys of Avalanche and McDonald, past the pyramid of Stanton, to the low, faraway undulations of the Whitefish Range.

Glaciation is a cruel master of mountains, biting deeply into their bulk and leaving sheer, spectacular contours when the glaciers disappear. The landforms here attest to their power, everywhere exhibiting the effects of glaciation.

In eating back the mountain headwall, alpine glaciers formed rounded depressions, called cirques. Unlike the narrow clefts left by running water, these broad, deep basins look as though they were made by ice-cream scoops gouging into the rock. Hidden, Ptarmigan, Iceberg, and Avalanche Lakes sit in well-developed cirque basins, and many mountains are dimpled by the beginnings of other cirques—the conspicuous amphitheater on the south shoulder of Heaven’s Peak, for example.

Occupying all major drainage systems, glaciers modified the contour of the valleys, changing them from their narrow, stream-cut V-shapes into broad U-shapes. Into these wide main valleys, waterfalls plunge from higher, smaller valleys. Like rivers, flowing glaciers have tributaries. Lacking the ice mass and cutting power of the main glaciers, these tributary ice fingers could not bite as deeply into the bedrock. When the ice melted, hanging valleys were left stranded high above the main valley floor. Hidden Lake sits in one of these hanging valleys, and from it Hidden Creek plunges 750 meters into Avalanche Basin toward McDonald Creek.

On my many previous visits to this pass I have been too busy enjoying the wildflowers, the weather, or the scenery to realize what an open textbook of glaciation is everywhere displayed.

I stand here on a small saddle of a pass. Wherever glaciers met, passes, or cols, were created. A high, notched pass like this one (or Swiftcurrent or Gunsight) reveals recent connections. Broad, lower passes, such as Logan, resulted where the ice early overran the mountain ridge and had a chance to work longer.

Where two glaciers worked on opposing sides of a ridge and failed to meet, they formed an arête—a thin, steep-walled remnant resembling a saw blade. Another ice age would probably consume the park’s many thin arêtes, such as the Garden Wall and Ptarmigan Wall; but it would also create new ones from existing ridges.

Further testimony to the sculpting power of ice is presented by Mt. Reynolds, looming to the east. The most dramatic feature of a glaciated landscape is the pyramid-shaped mountain called a horn—and Reynolds is a perfect example. Horns were formed when three or more glaciers cloaked the mountain, excavating its sides toward its core and gradually transforming its original domed shape into a sheer-sided peak. Glacier has many remarkable horns, from the sleek spire of St. Nicholas in the south to exquisite Kinnerly in the northern Kintla valley.

Sperry Glacier stares back at me from the flank of Gunsight. Glaciers found in the park today are not remnants of the last ice phase, which ended here about 8,000 years ago, but are newly formed, having come into existence some 4,000 years ago. They reflect a cooling trend in the present climate.

Shrinking steadily from their period of greatest extent in the middle of the last century, these modern glaciers finally stabilized in the late 1940s and since then have shown only a slight increase in area.

Movement distinguishes glaciers from icefields, and the movement of ice is a force on as well as a feature of a landscape. A glacier excavates by abrading and plucking at the rock. Alternately melting and freezing, ice at the headwalls plucks out blocks of rock. Ultimately the rocks are deposited along the sides or at the feet of the glacier as moraine debris. But as they move in the grip of the ice, they constantly abrade the rock surfaces they encounter. Polished rock beds of past glaciers show striations—grooves gouged by rock fragments imbedded in the moving ice.

Flow rate of a glacier depends upon the thickness of the ice and the degree of slope. Under tremendous pressure, ice becomes plastic, like thick taffy. Unlike kilometer-thick continental glaciers, which may move a hundred meters a day, small alpine glaciers seldom progress more than two or three centimeters per day.

Although a glacier moves, it gets nowhere if in a state of equilibrium—when annual melting equals annual accumulation. Snow mass gained at the sun-shielded headwall is usually lost as melt at the exposed snout. Glaciers such as Sexton or Weasel Collar, whose snouts perch on cliff edges, also lose mass by calving. Thunder you hear on a late-summer day near such a glacier may actually be the sound of ice pushed off from the lip of a cliff.

Walking back to the visitor center, I suddenly stop where the trail skirts the steep moraine of Mt. Clements. From the opposite side of the moraine five mountain goats have appeared. Spotting me on the trail below, they also halt. But before I can get to my camera they are off in a stiff-legged gallop, running in single file along the crest of the moraine to the distant safety of the mountain face.

Moraines are ridges of rock debris piled up along the edges and terminuses of glaciers. Like a bracelet lying against the wall of this mountain, the circle of steeply piled debris marks the extent of a small, recently vanished glacier. Ghost of the power that once resided here, a stagnant icefield lies beneath the confining walls of the moraine. The recent accumulation of these rock fragments is a mighty accomplishment, attesting to the force of moving ice.

_continued on p. 38_

Lying astride the Continental Divide in the Northern Rockies,
Glacier is above all else a mountain park. The special beauty of its
lakes, streams, and forests derives from the microclimates and
varied topography and soil produced by mountain-building and
mountain-eroding forces.]

1 A hypothetical block of the Earth’s crust in the region of Glacier
National Park as it existed more than 60 million years ago. The two
layers shown actually represent many strata of sedimentary rocks.

2 Lateral pressure begins to force the rock layers to buckle.

3 A large fold has been created, forcing the rock strata to double
over and overturning some layers. A break, or _fault_, is forming at
the plane of greatest stress.

4 The break has been completed and the strata west of the fault have
slid eastward, up and over the rocks east of the fault.

5 The Glacier landscape today. Throughout the millions of years
during which the folding, faulting, and overthrusting have been
taking place, the process of erosion has continued; a thousand
meters of stratified rocks have been worn away, so that only a
remnant of the overthrust layers can be seen today. Because
Glacier’s eastern slope represents the eroded face of the overthrust
block, the mountain range rises precipitously from the prairie, with
no foothills breaking the abrupt transition from open prairie to
mountain valley.]

1 This is how the landscape in this region might have appeared
before the onset of the Pleistocene, millions of years ago. Note the
stream-eroded, V-shaped valleys. The climate at that time was dry.

2 Glaciers began to form high on the peaks, crept downward, and
joined to form larger glaciers.

3 After many centuries of glaciation, tributary glaciers have cut
back into the peaks, forming basins called _cirques_. Thick
glaciers, moving rapidly and carrying rock fragments, have abraded
the main valleys’ floors and sides, widening and deepening the
valleys into characteristic U-shapes.]

V-shaped Valley
Tributary Glacier
Unglaciated Peak
Headwall
Meltwater Stream
Nose of Glacier
Crevasse

During all this time, all parts of the terrain not buried under ice
and snow have been weathered and eroded by nonglacial forces. Thus
the contours of the jagged peaks and sheer cliffs have been
softened.]

Unglaciated V-shaped Valley
U-shaped Valley
Hanging Valley
Cirque
Tarn
Alluvial Cone
Moraine
Morainal Lake

Because of an eastward flow of cool, moist Pacific air masses, the
climate of northwestern Montana, including the western portion of
Glacier National Park, differs from that of other portions of
Montana. As a result of increased precipitation, Glacier’s western
valleys support a rich flora, more typical of the Pacific Northwest.

West

Moist Pacific air

As the moisture-laden Pacific winds are pushed up the windward
slopes of Glacier’s mountains, the air cools and water vapor
condenses, forming fog or clouds. Rain or snow begins to fall as the
air continues to rise and cool. By the time the air mass reaches the
crest and flows down the leeward slopes, most of the moisture has
been lost.

Western slopes average about 70 cm. of precipitation at elevations
between 900 and 1,100 m. Upper elevations average 200 to 250 cm.,
mostly in the form of snow; and 300 to 500 cm. is common.

East

Dry chinook winds

Eastern slopes, under the influence of Continental air masses,
receive less annual precipitation. West Glacier’s annual average is
66.5 cm. Babb, a small town east of the park, averages 49.3 cm.
Frequent high winds east of the Divide further reduce moisture
through evaporation.

Exposed to Arctic air masses flowing down from Canada, locations
east of the Divide also suffer more severe winter conditions than do
protected western valleys. Average January temperature is -5°C at
West Glacier, -8° at Babb.

Moreover, 80 percent of the winter days in the western portion of
the park are overcast, a condition almost identical to that of
Seattle, Wash. This serves to moderate winter temperatures and to
minimize evaporation.]

Two species of hummingbirds—the rufous and the calliope—are found in
Glacier. Pictured is a female rufous (which weighs about the same as
a dime) landing on its lichen decorated nest to feed its two young
on a protein-rich mixture of nectar and small insects.]

Reaching the mountain wall, the goats scramble upward to a ledge, sending scree streams pouring from several clefts. Encountering a narrow, steep snowbank, they do not hesitate but continue across the slope. Above the rock fingers of this peak the gathering clouds grow black. A sudden crack of thunder hurries me down the trail.

Although geologically young, the Rocky Mountains in Glacier are composed of soft sedimentary rocks that are easily assailed by the many agents of weathering and erosion. If not rejuvenated by continual uplift, these magnificent peaks will glimmer but briefly in the long memory of the planet.

Already the sharp countenance of this land is being softened by the ongoing forces of erosion. Chief among these is water, which attacks the mountains everywhere. In addition, frost action continually exploits rock fractures, breaking down blocks of rock into talus and scree. Avalanche and rockfall sweep down the slopes. Layers of softer rock erode quickly, undercutting more resistant rock and creating overhangs which gravity, in time, will collapse.

The lashing rain catches me on this sun-and-storm-contested pass. Ice, gravity, wind, and especially water—all attack a land that dares the clouds.

The Rising of the Sun and the Running of the Deer: A Glacier Year

As if to make up for the days-long darkness of this last blizzard, the peaks today wear snow plumes—long, graceful trails of white, curving up into an ice-blue sky. Yesterday the snow-mad wind raced through the forest. Today the motionless trees are cloaked in heavy, glistening robes, the leafless aspen and young larch bent down.

Moderate snowfall helps many plants and animals survive the winter. For ground dwellers it provides insulation from the wildly fluctuating winter temperatures encountered east of the Divide, protecting the hibernators and providing cover for the many small mammals that remain active during the winter. Wind-swept ground freezes deep; but under a mantle of snow life-sustaining heat is trapped, permitting many animals to survive and allowing the work of decomposers to continue.

But this has been a winter of too much snow and too many temperature extremes. The heavy snowpack has forced the sharp-hoofed deer to yard up in great numbers; unable to range freely in deep snow, they are forced into smaller and smaller confines where their numbers allow them to break and maintain trails. But in time they exhaust the food supply. Younger deer, unable to reach the increasingly higher browse line, starve first. Then the does, heavy with unborn fawns, grow weak and fall to predators. So the imprisoned herds dwindle quickly this year, sometimes less than a kilometer from plentiful browse.

Deep snow is also death for many seed-eating birds. As they are unable to scratch for food, their body furnaces quickly fail, and during a night of cold wind their fluffed corpses drop into the snow.

Exposed to the noon sun, the snow surface thaws; when refrozen, it is restructured to crystalline ice. If snow repeatedly thaws and freezes, an ice barrier is formed, shutting off vital air exchange. Plants are then subject to rot, and micro-animal life is smothered. Travel beneath the snow is made more difficult for mice and shrews and they are deprived of food and cover. Under such conditions their numbers rapidly decline.

But while many starve in a winter of deep snow, others benefit. The exposed traffic of small mammals is to the owl’s advantage. Foxes and coyotes more easily run down rabbits and hares on crusted snow. Deer and, to a lesser extent, wapiti and moose—their hoofs punching through the snowpack—swiftly tire in deep snow and become helpless before cougar or wolf, whose lighter weight is supported by the crust.

Grim as this winter’s toll becomes, enough will survive to begin the process of renewal in spring. Last winter, a season of light snow, was a time of hardship for predators. The deer remained strong, the wapiti remote on high, windswept ridges, and the small mammals hidden.

Only the water ouzel, winter after winter, seems not to notice the hardships of the season. Lord of his small world of open water, he sings in February, wading and swimming his diminished stream to find a never-failing supply of water insects and small fish. It is a voice of spring—glad, wild, continual as the moving water—an incongruous song in this winter-shrouded land.

But with the growing stature of the sun, the grip of winter softens. The firs and spruce send their loads of snow sliding to the ground. Streams begin to sing again and soon the lakes increase, the booming of splitting ice breaking the silence of the valleys. Avalanches thunder down the steeper slopes, carrying trees to the swollen streams. Rivers hiss and rage, speeding the debris along. A spring that comes too suddenly will bring flood to lower elevations.

Snow geese thread through the valleys, and ground squirrels tunnel up through snow to find invasions of birds returning from the south. Soon the three-petaled wakerobins appear, chasing the snowline up the ridges. Glacier lilies and Calypso orchids are next, and with the shooting stars spring arrives.

The melting snow releases a new group of animals to populate the winter-thinned land. Up come chipmunks. Bears reappear. Young red squirrels, helpless and blind, squirm in their nest holes. Hidden dens rustle with pups and kits. Soon warm days will bring them out and the business of learning to cope with their world will begin.

All life responds irresistibly to the growing strength of the Sun. Cottonwood, willow, and maple come into flower and unfold new leaves; green needle clusters spot the limbs of larches that in winter had seemed lifeless snags among the other conifers. Beneath the soil of prairie, meadow, and forest, in the mud of lakes and ponds, other life stirs; armies of insects, spiders, crustaceans, amphibians, and fish will strive to complete their life cycles against the formidable odds of a predatory world.

Spring reaches higher up the mountains, the lowlands passing into summer. Wapiti and mountain sheep follow the rising tide of succulent browse up to the high meadows. In forest, grove, and meadow and along the stream new fledglings appear—thrush, vireo, hummingbird, waxwing, harlequin duck, bluebird, osprey, and flicker—as holes, nests, and cavities brim with begging mouths.

In the alpine meadows, where snow overlaps the spring and winter follows hard behind the summer, the growing season is short and the climate unstable. Sensing the stronger light, flowers push up impatiently through the snow and hasten into bloom. Pikas and marmots scurry and sunbathe among the rocks of scree slopes.

Summer matures in ripening huckleberries, and the bears that grazed the spring grasses now gorge themselves fat. Dry days of August bring probing lightning, threatening the forests with fire.

Sweeps of beargrass reach their climax now in the highest meadows. In dizzy succession wildflowers set seed. Fat and sluggish, marmots and ground squirrels disappear beneath the rocks. The golden eagle must search longer each day to find prey within its vast domain.

Autumn lingers in the valleys and on the flanks of low ridges. The morning sun glints on hoarfrost, firing the yellow leaves of larch, aspen, birch, maple, and cottonwood, and shines on the blood-red berries of mountain-ash. Soon a night of killing frost will bring down the corpses of insects and spiders by the millions. The reptiles and amphibians, being cold-blooded animals, seem out of place in this long-wintered land. Unable to maintain body temperatures appreciably above their surroundings, they are the first to seek the protection of hibernation, collecting in dens or burying themselves beneath the ooze of pond bottoms.

Songbirds gather and leave the valleys. The harsh cries of jays sound ominous now in the forest. Only the chickadees seem to ignore the long tree shadows; their ceaseless conversations carry through the leafless underbrush as they busily search for seed.

Velvet has gone to bone, and in these final noon-warm days the rut runs through the land. It begins in the valleys in September with the joustings of deer and moose and the buglings of bull wapiti puncturing the forest silence. By November the higher meadows ring with the collisions of bighorn rams who compete for ewes by smashing together their massive, curled horns. On high slopes mountain goat billies posture and swagger; head to tail, they circle, threatening each other with dagger-like horns.

From Flathead Lake, 100 stream kilometers to the south, kokanee salmon return to spawn in the clear, cold shallows of McDonald Creek. Gathering bald eagles surround the stream, again and again lifting vulnerable fish from pool and riffle. Perched by the hundreds along the stream course, their white heads and tails glistening against the dark trees, they stand out like lanterns strung for a banquet.

Now the stinging wind comes down from the peaks and shuts the lakes. Life slows or sleeps. Ptarmigan, snowshoe hare, and longtail weasel, all wearing winter white, seek shelter and food in a silent land where spring and yellow lilies seem forever lost.

■ All life faces one ultimate challenge: to survive or not, to reproduce or fail, to bring one’s kind to tomorrow’s sun or vanish forever. This land is harsh. To survive in nature demands skill in the individual, excellence in the species, and a chance from the environment.

Plant-and-Animal Communities

Over Going-to-the-Sun Road

I like to begin with St. Mary, a lake the whitecaps love to run. From the far passes the several winds gather and collect, arranging long lines of white waves for the race downlake. Past the purple scree of Mahtotopa and Little Chief they go, white as the headdress of Going-to-the-Sun Mountain, colliding, collapsing along the promontory snares about the Narrows. Onward they press, spreading out and setting sail for the straight rush to the final shore where a line of cottonwoods sings with a sound like applause.

Across the lake the timbered ridge starkly contrasts the finger of prairie that claims the north shore. This is a flower-glad place, a meeting-ground for mountain and prairie plants. Along the road the grassland holds the conifers back, allowing only scattered clumps of aspens.

Finally, at Rising Sun, beneath the shadow of Goat Mountain, the prairie ends and wind-seasoned Douglas-firs announce the coming forest.

There’s excitement now, with the prairie heat gone, the wind scent raw with fir and high meadows, honed by waterfall and tall, dank rock. Our mountain thirst is never extinguished, and a road that tightens down to cliff face and sudden turn brings back to our blood the ancient need to go to the highest place.

There is sword-edged Citadel, and the snow-flanked spike of Fusillade holding court like a queen in this valley of peaks; then the dome of Jackson and the Gunsight notch. Our eyes are kept high, transfixed at last by looming Heavy Runner and the distant promise of Reynolds.

Looking for mountain goats, we scan the walls around the sweep of Siyeh Bend, catching a glimpse of the trail that crosses the scree to hidden Piegan Pass.

Beargrass heads lean out above the road like old men conferring on the view. The purple trumpets of penstemon crowd the rocks, and spots of Indian paintbrush lead like a blood-trail to the higher slopes.

Intoxicated now, feeling the fresh full force of the wind from Logan Pass, we race on. We hardly notice the struggle of the forest in Reynolds Creek far below, how it thins and loses strength in its own hard climb. We sweep past it on the broad magnificence of this pass.

Level but a moment, the road dips to a shelf on the headwall above Logan Creek and swings over the great sculptured cliff of the Garden Wall. For several kilometers this masterpiece of a road glides down a constant grade, squeezed between rock face and space, twisting into tight drainages—a road for storm lovers, wet with spray and snow-seep, its quick turns concealing sudden winds.

Mighty, snow-robed Heaven’s Peak appears, taking our attention from the Pass-group mountains and the hanging valley that spills Birdwoman Falls. Northward is the great array of peaks encircling distant Flattop, jumbles of mountains and glaciers. How are we to notice the forest far below?

Not until we have passed the Loop and are moving past the blackened snags of a recent burn do we realize the stature of this forest. The long road down will take us into a valley much deeper than any on the eastern side. Near Avalanche Creek are trees we have seen nowhere else in the park—giant western redcedars, western hemlocks with their nodding tops, monstrous black cottonwoods with bark so deeply furrowed that it looks hewn by hatchet.

We take a long ride down the valley, past the low pyramid of Mt. Stanton, final peak in the Livingston Range. Near the outlet end of Lake McDonald, birch and aspen again appear in numbers, and the road enters a crowded stand of lodgepole pine.

Our memories cluttered with mountains, waterfalls, and snowfields, we do not quite realize the significance of this 80-kilometer journey. We have crossed the boundaries of several different plant-and-animal communities, spanning a range of climate that would be encountered on a 5,000-kilometer north-south journey at sea level.

At first glance the various trees, wildflowers, and animals seem randomly distributed, scattered about like the distant mountains. But mountainous terrain represents an organized high-rise approach to life. From the lowest, most protected valley to the highest wind-and-ice-cut summit, the life-forms align themselves, each according to its own climatic tolerance.

Here too can be seen the great cycles of nature: fire and regrowth, the building of soil and its erosion, the incessant duel of the eaters and the eaten.

In the following sections we will spend some time in these various communities, from prairie to tundra.

Groves and Grasslands: The Prairie Sea

There is something about spring on the prairie that gets me up before dawn. I like to watch the seasons change their guard over the landscape, from the wintry cold of pre-dawn dark to the spring-scented morning air to the hot summer-foretaste of the noon May sun.

Hoarfrost surrounds these patches of pasqueflowers, blue goblets on downy stems. On this windless night, frost has formed everywhere, reclaiming for a time its vast winter range, sparkling over the green handiworks of spring.

But the god of the growing grasslands is the sun, and it now proclaims itself, stretching out to make the mountains shine. With its assault the frost collapses, becoming bright beads on grass tip and leaf joint by which a beetle might refresh itself.

Spring is best perceived ant-level, at its ground beginnings, where the bright yellow-green tips of new grass shoots reclaim the winter-blighted land. I look closely at a drag line of spider silk; a necklace of dewdrops slides down, collects to a moment’s greatness, in which I briefly see a curved horizon, the morning sunburst, and myself, before it falls away.

Getting up from my prone position, my belly damp from the prairie earth, I startle a whitetail jackrabbit; bounding high, it zigzags off. The commotion disturbs a distant badger, which faces about from its diggings to confront danger in whatever form it might take. It swings its snout to scent the air. Somewhat uncertainly, it returns to the business of hunting, then hesitates, swings about once more and waits, myopic, patient.

Satisfied at last, the spurt of the now distant rabbit lost in its brain, the creature snorts a defiance at the mystery and resumes its morning gopher hunt.

Overhead a marsh hawk skims past, its flight erratic as a butterfly’s. Far away a magpie rattles at the passing hawk and takes flight, briefly flashing black and white.

■ It is easy to see only pieces in the natural puzzle—a badger throwing dirt, horned larks dipping into wind, black ants dragging the rosette of a dead spider—and be satisfied with the scattered scenes. But at last, to make it meaningful, we must complete the picture. There is that special joy in discovering larger schemes: green plants utilizing sunlight; a rabbit building its days at the plants’ expense; the falcon tearing the rabbit meat for its young; magpies picking at the fallen falcon; and then, in the end, all returning to the earth.

Here on the prairie, as in every plant-and-animal association, the ancient drama repeats itself over and over; the distant tundra is a drastically different stage with different actors, but the cycle is the same. Life depends upon the interaction of all its many forms. Unseen bacteria are as necessary to the land as green grass; the meadow vole and the coyote are as much a part of the prairie as the grasses.

The secret of life rests in the wonder of photosynthesis. Only green plants can manufacture food from the earth’s raw minerals. This is the vital first step upon which the great pyramid of animal and plant life is built. Using energy from the sun, green plants combine water and carbon dioxide to synthesize sugar, and give off oxygen as a by-product. The caterpillar takes its energy from the plant tissue, converting to protein the sugar and minerals in its body. The caterpillar is then food for a spider or other predator. A yellow warbler may take the spider and in turn be ambushed by the prairie falcon. Thus the energy produced by the plant travels through the food chain. When the prairie falcon dies, scavengers—including insects and other invertebrates, birds, and mammals—redistribute its wealth among themselves; the rest is decomposed by bacteria. Thus, eventually, the nutrients on which the plants depend return to the soil.

When we look at any living organism, whether it is plant, herbivore, carnivore, parasite, scavenger, or decomposer, we are soon made aware of its associations with other living things, each puzzle piece leading us to another and another. We begin to see a picture whole—the fox, meadow mouse, grasshopper, bunchgrass, and sparrow hawk—all interlocked.

Geologically speaking, grasslands are a recent development. As the Rocky Mountains were being uplifted, the prevailing warm, moist climate began to change. The rising mountain mass intercepted moisture-laden winds that blew in from the Pacific, creating a rain shadow that lengthened eastward as the mountains rose higher. A continental climate, characterized by severe winters and dry, wildfire summers gradually took shape, extinguishing the great forests that had grown across the continent’s interior. Herbaceous plants, which had been evolving amid the forests, inherited the land.

Unlike trees, grasses die back to the ground each winter, hoarding their life-germ beneath the protecting soil. Growing not from the tip but from the joints, grasses regenerate quickly after fire or grazing. Suspension of the normal metabolic processes enable the grasses to go dormant and thus survive periods of severe heat and drought.

Although the great prairie sea washes up against Glacier’s eastern boundary, with estuaries probing into the mountain valleys on the drier, south-facing slopes, the grassland community comprises less than 5 percent of the land area of Glacier National Park. This includes the puddles of prairie west of the Divide that interrupt the dense coniferous forests along the North Fork of the Flathead River.

From the pasqueflowers that bloom in early May to the asters and goldenrod of September, these summer-long gardens of grasses and flowers lean with the wind. Here are timothy, oatgrass and the bunchgrasses—rough fescue, bluebunch fescue, and bluebunch wheatgrass. Among the grasses bloom bitterroot, blue camas, lupine, gaillardia, balsamroot, cinquefoil, sticky geranium, and wild rose.

_continued on p. 68_

From the lush redcedar-hemlock forest in the McDonald Valley to the
subalpine fir, whitebark pine, and Engelmann spruce struggling for
existence near treeline, the forests of Glacier reflect the
conditions of temperature, exposure, soil, and drainage prevailing;
and each forest has its characteristic association of understory
trees and shrubs, herbaceous ground cover, and vertebrate and
invertebrate animal life.]

Many physical and climatic factors determine the range of Glacier’s
plant-and-animal communities. Boundaries between communities are
seldom sharply defined, but rather merge together in broad zones of
transition.

With elevation gain, average daily temperature drops at the rate of
5° per 900 meters. Precipitation, wind velocity, and evaporation
loss increase. Soil thins. These factors, along with others such as
fire frequency, north or south exposure, and availability of
moisture, combine to determine the range of each community.

In the forest community below 1,800 meters, Douglas-fir, lodgepole
pine, and western larch predominate. In the valleys, Engelmann
spruce and subalpine fir are found. The somewhat lower and much
better watered western valleys of the park support western redcedar
and western hemlock.

Treeline is the upper limit to which the tolerances of trees to
environmental conditions permit them to grow. Because there are so
many controlling factors (wind, temperature, exposure to sunlight,
snow cover, etc.) treeline in the diagram is only approximate. In
Glacier it averages 2,000 meters. Avalanche chutes or sheer cliff
walls may suppress it to below 1,500 meters; on protected slopes it
may be as high as 2,150 meters.

At the eastern edge of the park below 1,200 meters, the forest gives
way to the prairie community, composed mostly of soft-stemmed plants
adapted to the conditions of low precipitation that prevail here in
the rainshadow of the mountain range. Clumps of aspen, found in the
prairie in sheltered spots, occur here in the transition zone
between prairie and forest.]

This diagram represents the eastward-facing slope of a hypothetical
mountain near the eastern boundary of Glacier National Park. Its
life communities are somewhat different from those of mountain
slopes at the western edge, chiefly because of the differential in
annual precipitation.

Illustration: Here, above approximately 2,750 meters, in a realm of
ice, snow, and barren rock, there is little life.

Alpine tundra

Below 2,750 meters and above 2,000 meters, depending on other
factors such as exposure to sun and wind and steepness of terrain,
exists the alpine tundra community, with vegetation similar to that
of the vast, essentially level, treeless zones of the Arctic.

Scrub-forest

Roughly between 1,800 and 2,000 meters, the dominant vegetation is
scrub-forest. Trees here are stunted; except in sheltered spots they
are more or less prone rather than upright. Net growth is slow, not
only because of the short growing season but also because of the
pruning effect of icy mountain winds. Very few tree species can
survive in this harsh habitat.

Coniferous forest

In the forest community below 1,800 meters, Douglas fir, lodgepole
pine, and western larch predominate. In the valleys, Engelmann
spruce and subalpine fir are found. The somewhat lower and much
better watered western valleys of the park support western redcedar
and western hemlock. See page 54

Prairie

At the eastern edge of the park below 1,200 meters, the forest gives
way to the prairie community, composed mostly of soft-stemmed plants
adapted to the conditions of low precipitation that prevail here in
the rainshadow of the mountain range. Clumps of aspen, found in the
prairie in sheltered spots, occur here in the transition zone
between prairie and forest.]

A forest is organized vertically like an apartment house or office
building, with layers corresponding to stories. The _canopy_ is the
branches and foliage of tall trees that form a roof over the
community. Below the canopy are the _understory_ trees: young
individuals of the canopy species; and small, shade-tolerant trees
that will never become part of the canopy. Beneath the understory
branches is the _shrub layer_, occupied by knee-high-to-man-high
woody plants; beneath that is the _herb layer_, where most of the
ferns, wildflowers, grasses, and smaller woody plants grow. The
_forest floor_ is the zone of mosses, mushrooms, creeping plants,
and forest litter (leaves, twigs, needles, feathers, bits of bark,
animal droppings, etc.). The forest has a “basement,” too,
interlaced by plant roots, mycelia of fungi, and tunnels of myriad
animals.

Each layer of the forest has its characteristic animal species, but
most forage over more than one level. Some nest in one story and
feed in another. The red squirrel races back and forth from the
forest floor to the highest branches.

The forest community also has a socio-economic organization. Every
animal (and plant) takes up space and consumes a portion of the
available nutrients. Each has a place in the community food
chain—as, for example, _herbivore_, _carnivore_, or _scavenger_.
Each directly or indirectly affects all the other organisms.

The Forest Community

The role of a species in the community, like the job and social
function of a person, is its _niche_. Similar species of animals
have different niches, thus lessening competition for food and
living space. Thrushes hunt close to the ground; vireos and kinglets
hunt among the branches; flycatchers snap up airborne insects. The
flicker feeds upon insects, excavates nesting holes that are later
occupied by other species such as squirrels and owls, and is preyed
upon by the great horned owl; its niche is _insect exterminator /
food for carnivores / homebuilder_. The great horned owl, hunting
mammals, birds, and reptiles by night, preys on species different
from those hunted by the goshawk, and thus occupies a parallel
niche. When it dies, its remains, like those of other animals, are
decomposed and return to the soil.]

Canopy
Great Horned Owl
Yellow-bellied Sapsucker
Understory
Flying Squirrel
Shrub Layer
Ruffed Grouse
Herb Layer
Red Squirrel
Western Toad
Forest Floor
Shorttail Weasel
Scavenging Insects
Deer Mouse
Garter Snake
Soil Layer
Ground Squirrel
Earthworm
Masked Shrew

The sun is the source of energy for any plant-and-animal community.
Green plants draw nitrogen and minerals from the soil, and in a
process called photosynthesis use sunlight to convert raw materials
(carbon dioxide and water) into carbohydrates (sugar, starch,
cellulose), giving off oxygen as a by-product. Besides burning
oxygen, animals depend on plants for food.

Green Plants, trees and shrubs, grasses and sedges, wildflowers,
ferns, mosses, algae and lichens—are fed upon by animals, which are
unable to manufacture their own food.

The Redback Vole, like other rodents, pikas and hares, seed-eating
birds, grazing and browsing hoofed animals, and herbivorous insects,
derives its energy from the seeds and other parts of green plants
that it eats.

The Garter Snake, feeding upon the vole, is dependent upon plants
even though it does not eat them.

The Great Horned Owl, preying upon the garter snake, is one more
step removed from the green plants—but still dependent on them.

Scavengers such as carrion beetles feed upon the carcass of the owl;
the remains are then attacked by Decomposers, primarily bacteria,
that break down the animal tissues into basic organic compounds.

The Soil, enriched by the minerals and carbon and nitrogen compounds
added to it by the decomposers (and by other processes such as fire)
supports new green plant growth.

Thus energy derived from the sun flows through the ecosystem in a
food chain. A plant-and-animal community is a complex, interlocking
web of such food chains.]

Sun
Green Plants
Redback Vole
Garter Snake
Great Horned Owl
Scavengers, Decomposers
Soil

Necessarily, the number of plants in an ecosystem far exceeds the
number of plant eaters, and the number of prey species must exceed
the number of predators. During its lifetime, a golden eagle will
consume a vast number of lesser animals. The combined mass of prey
animals necessary to sustain an eagle greatly outweighs the eagle
itself. Ecologists refer to this proportional relationship of mass
between each link in the food chain as the _pyramid of numbers_.

The diagram represents a numbers pyramid for the alpine zone.
Because of its limiting environment, the alpine zone supports a
lesser plant mass than the forest zone. As a result, the carrying
capacity of the alpine is less than that of the forest.

1 Kilo

_Tertiary_ (third-order) _consumers_ are the predators (Golden
Eagle, Swainson’s Hawk, etc.) that feed upon other predators.
Because of the 90% loss of energy at each level of the food chain,
there will be very few hawks and eagles in comparison to the numbers
of marmots.

10 Kilos

_Secondary consumers_ are the predators (weasels, shrews,
carnivorous insects and birds, etc.) that eat herbivores. The
animals at this level of the pyramid are often—though not
always—larger than the animals they feed upon. But they are much
less numerous, because it takes many prey animals to sustain one
predator.

100 Kilos

_Primary consumers_ (plant eaters, or herbivores) convert plant
tissue into animal flesh. In the process about 90% of the energy
stored as plant food is lost, mostly as heat energy. In the alpine
community the herbivores include pikas, marmots, ground squirrels,
and ptarmigan, as well as herbivorous insects.

1,000 Kilos

_Producers_ are the green plants at the base of the food pyramid,
manufacturing food for the animals of the alpine community. The
_biomass_ (total weight) of each level of the food chain is ten
times (more or less) the weight of the stage above it: 1,000 kilos
of green plants will produce only 100 kilos of primary consumers.]

As long as there is open water, the dipper suffers no hardship from
the mountain winter. Then, when the land is shut down and lakes are
frozen over, this little bird carries on in its mountain-stream
habitat, plunging into the cold water to find food, and pausing
occasionally to sing.]

Conspicuous also are many insects—including grasshoppers; flies; ants, wasps and bees; butterflies and moths; bugs; and beetles—which fulfill important roles as herbivores, carnivores, and scavengers while also acting as pollinators for flowering plants and providing an abundant food source for other animals.

Below the ground are the tunnels. Burrowing is an important means of survival on the open prairie, and life underground is extensive. Some of the animals are rarely seen—the northern pocket gopher, for example, with a diet of underground insects, grubs, worms, and roots, spends most of its life tunneling just below the surface. Others, like the badger, leave their burrows during the day to dig for rodents. Most conspicuous of the burrowing animals in the park’s grasslands is the Columbian ground squirrel. Its alert upright stance has earned it the nickname “picket pin.” When danger approaches from the air or on land, its shrill alarm whistle passes the warning to others of its kind.

Where prairie and forest meet, a never-ending struggle for dominion is waged. The isolated patches of prairie that dot the North Fork Valley near Polebridge hold the great forest of the park’s northwest region at bay.

This broad valley, floored with coarse glacial outwash and terraced downward to the deep channel of the North Fork River, presents a graphic battleground between grass and tree. Lining the upper terraces, from which they glower down on the dry, well drained grass flats like a line of warriors, are the Douglas-fir, western larch, and ponderosa pine. Seedling trees continually invade the prairie. But most perish early, their shallow roots no match for the extensive root systems of the fast-growing, moisture-greedy grasses. If encouraged by a series of wet summers, however, the young lodgepoles quickly gain stature. They had made significant inroads at Big Prairie when the disastrously dry summer of 1967 killed most of these 15-year-old pioneer trees.

These North Fork grasslands and the immediately surrounding lodgepole pine forests are an important spring range. Deer, wapiti, and grizzly—and, in the wetter areas, moose—graze or browse here. And here, low on the western slopes of the Livingston Range, are the park’s only stands of ponderosa pine, a tree that prefers warm, dry habitats. As a result, at low elevations it often merges with the prairie community.

Groves of aspen colonize the eastern prairies in areas where there is sufficient water and protection from wind. These aspen parklands are important havens for animals. Wherever two differing communities interact, a phenomenon known as “edge effect” occurs. Here wildlife exists in abundance; the animals that favor forest cover mingle freely with those that prefer open areas. Aspen groves—supporting grasses, herbs, and shrubs beneath their thin canopies—are favored haunts for grouse, varying hare, deer, and wapiti, all of which find among the trees abundant food, shelter and concealment. Populations of insects, small mammals, and birds, which are high for the same reasons, attract a wide range of predators.

Isolated aspen groves are characteristically dome-shaped. Because aspens are capable of reproducing themselves vegetatively, the grove slowly expands outward from the parent tree. As a result, most of these groves are either exclusively male or exclusively female.

Since quick-growing aspens provide a bountiful food source for beaver, streams near these trees are often dammed by the rodents flooding lowlands and creating additional habitat in the form of willow flats. Another “edge effect” is established, attracting animals found near water. Waterfowl, marsh birds, moose, mink, muskrat, skunks, amphibians, and many others find such areas to their liking.

■ Before the appearance of the white man, these eastern prairies were a paradise for animals. Once, on the summit of Rising Wolf, light-headed from the climb and the view of endless prairie, I fancied that I saw that vast, undisturbed animal panorama spread before me.

Principally there were the bison, darkening the uneven land. Pronghorn bands flashed white on ridgetops, and moose moved through the long fingers of willow that extended eastward with the rivers. Caribou and wolves inhabited the shadows. Among vast cities of prairie dogs, swift fox and grizzly roamed. There were the clamorings of sandhill crane, and white clouds of trumpeter swans.

This land, endowed with a wealth of wild grass, wore its wilderness well.

The Forest

On Gunsight Pass, the rain lancing down, I found a sharpedged rock that split the continent in two. On both sides the rain rivulets ran down, a fraction of an inch determining the stream’s destination: Pacific or Atlantic.