AN ALPINE PARADISE

OTWITHSTANDING 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.

THE SUPREME GLORY OF THE GLACIER NATIONAL PARK IS ITS LAKES A glimpse of beautiful St. Mary Lake and Going-to-the-Sun Mountain Photograph by Fred H. Kiser, Portland, Oregon

ST. MARY CHALET, TYPICAL OF GLACIER ARCHITECTURE Photograph by H. T. Cowling

YOU SEEM MENACED BY GLACIERS AND WATERFALLS UPON EVERY SIDE Avalanche Lake lies in a cirque whose precipices rise thousands of feet Photograph by Fred H. Kiser, Portland, Oregon

AT THE VERY END OF THE WORLD So at least it seems until you find your way out over the new Dawson Pass Trail Photograph by H. T. Cowling

The Glacier National Park lies in northwestern Montana, abutting the Canadian boundary. It incloses the continental divide of the Rocky Mountains at that point; in fact, from one spot known as the Triple Divide, waters flow into the Pacific Ocean, Hudson Bay and the Gulf of Mexico.

It is interesting that Glacier's peculiarly rugged topography is practically limited to the park's boundaries. To the north, in Canada, the mountains subside into low, rounded ridges. To the south and west, though still fine, they lose the quality of majesty. Easterly lie the plains.

The transcontinental railway traveler skirts the park without hint of the supreme beauty so near at hand. But let him stop at Glacier Park station or at Belton and, after swift rides in auto-stages, see something of the beauties of Lake St. Mary, Lake McDermott, Bowman Lake, or Lake McDonald, and he will instantly understand the attractive force which draws thousands across the continent, and will some day draw thousands across the seas, to stand spellbound before these awe-inspiring examples of nature's noblest handiwork.

FAMOUS GRINNELL LAKE WITH THE PICTURESQUE GRINNEL GLACIER ABOVE, WHENCE IT DERIVES ITS PARTLY MILKY GLACIAL WATERS Camping at the head of the lake you see the glacier above you thrusting over the rocky shelf like the eaves of a house Photograph by Fred H. Kiser, Portland, Oregon

CLIMBING THE UPPER REACHES OF THE BLACKFEET GLACIER Photograph by Fred H. Kiser, Portland, Oregon