w is no great conquest.

The gorges of the Wild Gardens are most enjoyed from below. Trails of no
difficulty lead from the settlements to Fern and Odessa Lakes in a
canyon unsurpassed; to Bear Lake at the outlet of the Tyndall Gorge; to
Loch Vale, whose flower-carpeted terraces and cirque lakelets, Sky Pond
and the Lake of Glass, are encircled with mighty canyon walls; and to
Glacier Gorge, which leads to the foot of Longs Peak's western
precipice. These are spots, each a day's round trip from convenient
overnight hotels, which deserve all the fame that will be theirs when
the people come to know them, for as yet only a few hundreds a summer of
Rocky Mountain's hundred thousand take the trouble to visit them.

To better understand the charm of these gray monsters, and the valleys
and chasms between their knees, we must pause a moment to picture what
architects call the planting, for trees and shrubs and flowers play as
important a part in the informal architectural scheme of the Front Range
as they do in the formality of a palace. It will be recalled that the
zones of vegetation from the equator to the frozen ice fields of the far
north find their counterparts in altitude. The foothills bordering the
Rocky Mountain National Park lie in the austral zone of our middle and
eastern states; its splendid east-side plateau and inter-mountain
valleys represent the luxuriance of the Canadian zone; its mountains
pass rapidly up in a few thousand feet through the Hudsonian zone,
including timber-line at about 11,500 feet; and its highest summits
carry only the mosses, lichens, stunted grasses, and tiny alpine
flowerets of the Arctic Zone.

Thus one may walk waist deep through the marvellous wild flower meadows
of Loch Vale, bordered by luxuriant forests of majestic Engelmann
spruce, pines, firs, junipers, and many deciduous shrubs, and look
upward at the gradations of all vegetation to the arctic seas.

Especially interesting is the revelation when one takes it in order,
climbing into the range. The Fall River Road displays it, but not
dramatically; the forest approach is too long, the climb into the
Hudsonian Zone too short, and not typical. The same is true of the trail
up beautiful Forest Canyon. The reverse is true of the Ute Trail, which
brings one too quickly to the stupendous arctic summit of Trail Ridge.
The Flattop Trail is in many respects the most satisfying, particularly
if one takes the time to make the summit of H