Friday, September 13, 2013

An Alpine Paradise

"Notwithstanding the sixty glaciers from which it derives its name, the Glacier National Park is chiefly remarkable for its picturesquely modeled peaks, the unique quality of its mountain masses, its gigantic precipices, and the romantic loveliness of its two hundred and fifty lakes.

Though most of our national parks possess similar general features in addition to those which sharply differentiate each from every other, the Glacier National Park shows them in special abundance and unusually happy combination. In fact, it is the quite extraordinary, almost sensational, massing of these scenic elements which gives it its marked individuality.

The broken and diversified character of this scenery, involving rugged mountain tops bounded by vertical walls sometimes more than four thousand feet high, glaciers perched upon lofty rocky shelves, unexpected waterfalls of peculiar charm, rivers of milky glacier water, lakes unexcelled for sheer beauty by the most celebrated of sunny Italy and snow-topped Switzerland, and grandly timbered slopes sweeping into valley bottoms, offer a continuous yet ever changing series of inspiring vistas not to be found in such luxuriance and perfection elsewhere.

And this rare scenic combination is not alone of one valley of the park, but is characteristic of them all; so that it is difficult to single out any part of these fifteen hundred square miles that is more beautiful, more remarkable, or more strikingly diversified than any other."

-- From the National Parks Portfolio brochure from 1916.





Jeff
Hiking in Glacier.com

No comments: