A Group of Wasatch Lakes

1042 IMPROVEMENT ERA Lake Blanch in the Hidden Valley of the Wasatch contains, is in the past quite near to the half-century mark. The Three Lakes Fork, so was known to the United States Geological Survey that steep and narrow gorge which leads into the Hidden. Valley — a great mountain hollow perhaps it would be better to call it — held near to the sky on the north side of that mighty ridge or riven stone which separates the depths of the Big and the Little Cottonwood canyons in the central mass of the Wasatch range. My Reader, let us establish a bit of confidence between us: for years and then more years, this writer has been blessed or troubled — as you please — with a dream. Not that to be so possessed with a dream is anything of singularity; life, sleeping or waking, being so largely made up of dreams. Only this dream is so persistent in coming and so reluctant in going. Up! Up! Up! Ever upward — alone and in eager haste and expectancy, we climb the Wasatch gorge. O, So many times we have thus climebd it, so many times, indeed, that when we have again climbed the gorge in reality, as many times we have done, we can hardly tell the actuality from the dieam. Need one add that our dream is of our first climb to the Hidden Valley? But, pshaw! We are led from dream to dream by some over- worked convolution of the brain. "Dreams," says a medical friend of ours and one whom we love, "are generally of a troubled nature because they are mostly produced by a disturbance below the dia-

A GROUP OF WASATCH LAKES 1043 phragm." Sure! Little this human knows about the result of action while we sleep either above or below the thorax, the midriff, only he knows that there was a dream within his dream and that it ended in trouble. He could nor, although he attempted to do so in the dream, convey to others an understanding of the wonder and reality of that beautiful upper world and no doubt he will experience the same dif- ficulty in this, his waking hour. How marvelous are the senses! Seeing, tasting, feeling, smelling, hearing — for each one and all of the senses we are truly thankful! A sensuous pleasing in nature? Yes, and of the gift we are proud. O nature, we know, can be Puritanical; nature that can be seductive in beauty can be also aggressive in sternness; through the senses it can terrify, it collects our debts with interest. Yet in this matter of the senses we are filled with gratitude; the senses appeal to our religious sentiment and let the world class us with what sect it may, in our soul is a paeon of praise. Upon the Wasatch heights, then, what rapture to pamper the senses! How delicious for the summer climber to lave his wrists in the sun-fed waters; to press his brow to the chill of the stainless and gleaming granite. How sweet the songs of the mountain birds; how rich upon the tongue the taste of the wild fruit! There is the frag- rant, the pungent ordor of the pines, the gorgeous colors of the alpine flowers! It was a splendid day — that day nearly fifty years ago! It was a day never while life lasts to be forgotten by me. No one shared that climb with the artist explorer, not a human being met his sight. Is it not true that a man may be known by the game that he follows? Thus we may judge of Columbus, a Cornwell, a Napoleon, a Tyndall or a Darwin. Cosmos — the Order of Things! The great games are easy to understand, yet one must rest content if it be his fate in achievements in a lesser scale. We have known the explorer's zeal — a love for lake-hunting led us to the Hidden Valley, the consum- mation of the quest was to place in our sketch-book the first pictorial record of the hidden lakes. Not then had we read the words of the geologist, we were led upward by our desire and the ever-increasing lonely loveliness and grandeur of the scene. Remember, Reader, this was in the years ago; we know not what man has lately done to those scenes. "The Wasatch are the result of a profound break in the earth's crust. The western half of the range has been carried down beneath the level of the present plains leaving the summit of the wall in the form of a series of sharp, towering peaks. The range is for the most part composed of quartzite and limestone, although the center and nucleous of the immense curvature is a body of arch- aean rock composed of a great mass of granite, having its head ex- posures in the Cottonwood cayons which mass was once a veritable island, first to rise above the waves of the primeval ocean of all these

1044 IMPROVEMENT ERA The Gnomon of the Great Sun Dial, Waterfall above Lake Florence, Hidden Hidden Valley of the Wasatch Valley of the Wasatch western heights — co-existent with the ancient continent of far—away Labrador." Upward, upward we climbed; at last we stood in the Hidden Valley. Before us were the Lakes; beyond still higher, above the groves of pines, was the naked granite — the great peak that was once an island, now the home of the eagles, though then the haunt of aquatic birds that looked at the sun through the mist of the world's morning. After these almost fifty years, then, this is my recalling of the Hidden Valley and the Three Sister Lakes — sisters in themselves, be it understood — they never met, those three fair young ladies after whom the lakes were named. Unbroken solitude! In tender violet the upper heights; of ruddy gold, with purple shadows, the nearer crags and mighty walls; coldly green the lakes, each one lying still in its glacial basin. Like motley velvet the chaparral, like clouds the clustered aspens, dusky brown the groves of pine! Flowers, countless in kind, endless in hue, opened in the mountain gardens, the stillness would sometimes be broken by the cry of the marmot, the American ground squirrel, the badgers, with that strange squat motion of theirs ran across the debris of the cliffs; a screech, rasping and infernal, came once from a cluster

A GROUP OF WASATCH LAKES 1045 of spruce — the wild bob-cat; there were the tracks of the brown bear and the grizzly. In the shadow of the northern side of the Wasatch wall yet lay a mass of snow — strewn with wreckage of the pines — the depth of which one might hardly imagine. The slopes were fairly a-glitter with the thousand rills. High above one's head all that could be seen perhaps, of a mile of hurrying waters, were flashings as of falls of diamonds, successions of miniature catatacts. When the wind came down from the heights it brought with it a soothing sound almost like the hum of bees. Nor must be forgotten the big damask-winged butterflies, nor the songs of the meadow-lark, the hermit-thrush, the purple-finch and the vesper-sparrow. Perhaps at this hour the scene appears the same. If so, then would that again mine eyes might look upon it! Truly we are a believer in the psychology of names; that is, one may be affected through life by his own name; he may be through the name of another. And so of the naming of places. The Hidden Valley, Lake Blanch, Lake Florence, Lake Lillian, are not those beautiful names? For whom were those lakes named — why know? Or if one knows, why tell? There is a charm in the unknown, in mystery. There, for our part we let it rest. The Three Sister Lakes, in the Hidden Valley — that for us will suffice. The Hidden Valley is glacier made. A thousand feet or more above the lakes and back of the Hidden Valley proper there is a huge hollow wherein the head of the glacier once rested. Below it the ledges are sloped and smoothly polished and the valley contains giant boulders which were dropped from the grasp of the ice-monster as it moved along and its lower part rested where now the streams from the gorge joins the main canyon torrent. Lake Lillian, Lake Florence. Lake Blanch — so lie the lakes, one back and above the other, all three joined by the mountain stream. Standing upon the causeway between the two upper lakes, Florence and Blanche, upon the day of our first visit we became aware of a singular fact. Looking up the Hidden Valley and beyond, the heights are pyramidal in form; looking down the valley the reverse is true, the view is then bounded by dome forms the interior lower shelves crescent so that some of the cliffs appear as vast flights of steps, each step curve-fronted. Above the lakes stands a mighty gnomon— a jut of quartzite five hundred feet in height, a wonderful sight, as with its moving shadow upon the snow it measures as upon a dial the passing moments of the untold centuries. Some exaggerations? We hope not. And yet there is a glamor thrown over one's memory of the past. Since our initial visit we have climbed that gorge many times. We have passed through that narrow passage, gouged through the porphyry by tha g'.acier of long ago, that is the secret entrance to the Hidden Valley and we have climbed the granite slopes above, but not of late years. Short are the seasons —

1046 IMPROVEMENT ERA spring, summer, autumn, in the Hidden Valley, yet they are beauti- fully marked by the alpine tide of flowers. In midsummer the Hidden Valley with its urcuo of high lakes is a poem, a nature romance told in flowers, in snow and pine- groves, in water and stone. Flowers of the Wasatch The Grand Canyon of Arizona Well have they named thee, Canyon of the Grand! For nowhere else on earth's extended land Can such tremendous wonders e'er be found. Though search be made all this vast world around. The mighty pyramids, by Cheops raised, Have caused the world to stand in awe amazed; Yet were this massive pile dashed into thee 'Twould seem as a drop of water thrown in sea. Her mighty walls were ancient Babylon's pride — Upon whose tops her chariots did ride — Compared to thee are as the ocean's spray That dashes on the rocks and fades away. The mighty coliseum — Rome's proud boast — That held of people an enormous host — Placed by thy side would fade as does the dew When morning sun comes upward into view. Truly this canyon has been named the Grand, For here the Father, with his lavish hand, Has gathered on such vast, tremendous scale. Such wonders, that all others fade and pale. Of all earth's marvels thus far found by man None have eclipsed thee — still thou'rt in the van; Nor is it likely that we on earth shall see Such wonders as alone abide in thee! Salt Lake City, DAVID R. LYON.