CHAPTER XXIII. GLEN ALPINE SPRINGS
The earliest of all the resorts of the Tahoe region away from the shores of Tahoe itself, Glen Alpine Springs still retains its natural supremacy. Located seven miles away from Tallac, reached by excellent roads in automobile stages, sequestered and sheltered, yet absolutely in the very heart of the most interesting part of the Tahoe region, scenically and geologically, it continues to attract an increasing number of the better class of guests that annually visit these divinely-favored California Sierras. John Muir wrote truthfully when he said:
The Glen Alpine Springs tourist resort seems to me one of the most delightful places in all the famous Tahoe region. From no other valley, as far as I know, may excursions be made in a single day to so many peaks, wild gardens, glacier lakes, glacier meadows, and Alpine groves, cascades, etc.
The drive from Tallac around Fallen Leaf Lake under trees whose boles form arch or portal, framing pictures of the sunny lake, is a memorable experience; then on past Glen Alpine Falls, Lily Lake, and Modjeska Falls, up the deep mountain glen, where the road ends at the hospitable cottages, log-houses and spacious tents of Glen Alpine.
Here is the world-famous spring, discovered in the 'fifties by Nathan Gilmore (for whom Gilmore Lake is named). Mr. Gilmore was born in Ohio, but, when a mere youth, instead of attending college and graduating in law as his parents had arranged for and expected, he yielded to the lure of the California gold excitement, came West, and in 1850 found himself in Placerville. In due time he married, and to the sickness of his daughter Evelyn, now Mrs. John L. Ramsay, of Freewater, Ore., is owing his discovery of Glen Alpine. The doctor ordered him to bring the child up into the mountains. Accompanied by an old friend, Barton Richardson, of the James Barton Key family of Philadelphia, he came up to Tallac, with the ailing child and its mother. Being of active temperament he and Mr. Richardson scaled Mt. Tallac, and in returning were much entranced by Fallen Leaf Lake. Later Mr. Gilmore came to Fallen Leaf alone, wandering over its moraines and lingering by its shores to drink in its impressive and growingly-overpowering beauty. In those days there was no road at the southern end of Fallen Leaf and the interested explorer was perforce led to follow the trails of bear, deer and other wild animals. Rambling through the woods, some two miles above the lake he came to a willow-surrounded swampy place, where the logs and fallen trees were clearly worn by the footprints of many generations of wild animals. Prompted by curiosity he followed the hidden trail, saw where a small stream of mineral-stained water was flowing, observed where the deer, etc., had licked the stones, and finally came to the source in what he afterwards called Glen Alpine Springs. Scientific observation afterwards showed that the water had an almost uniform temperature, even in the hottest days of summer, of 39.6 degrees Fahr., and that there was free carbonic acid gas to the extent of 138.36 cubic inches. The analysis revealed that each U.S. gallon contained grains as follows:
Sodium Chloride ............ 21.17 Sodium Carbonate ........... 32.75 Potassium Carbonate ........ Trace Ferrous Carbonate........... 1.8 Alumnia .................... 1.43 Borates .................... Trace Magnesium Carbonate ......... 9.96 Calcium Carbonate ........... 45.09 Calcium Sulphate ............ 4.10 Silica ...................... 2.50 Organic Matter............... Trace - - - Total Solids................ 118.80
The water is pleasant to the taste, and, as has been shown, highly charged with carbonic acid gas; its action is diuretic, laxative and stimulative to the entire digestive tract. Eminent physicians claim that it is beneficial in dyspepsia, torpid liver, kidney and bladder irritation, and is also a tonic.
Whether this be true or not I cannot say, but I do know that every time I go to Glen Alpine I drink freely and abundantly of the water, to my great physical pleasure and satisfaction. It is one of the most delicious sparkling waters I have ever tasted, as gratifying to the palate and soothing to the fevered mucous membranes as Apollinaris or Shasta Water, and I am not alone in the wish I often express, viz., that I might have such a spring in my backyard at home.
One result of this discovery was that Mr. Gilmore decided to locate upon the land. As soon as the first claim was made secure a rude one-roomed cabin was built and Mr. Richardson was the first guest. Preparatory to bringing his family, Mr. Gilmore added two more rooms, and to render ingress easier he built a road to intersect with the Tallac road at the northern end of Fallen Leaf Lake. As this had to be blasted out with black powder, - it was before the days of dynamite, - Mr. Gilmore's devotion to the place can be well understood.
When his daughters grew up, they and their friends came here to spend their summers, and by and by, almost unconsciously, but pleasantly and agreeably, the place became a public resort. Though Mr. Gilmore has long since passed on, having died in Placerville, Calif., in the year 1898, Glen Alpine Springs is still in the ownership of his family, and its management and direction is entirely in their hands.
As in the beginning they have ever sought to preserve its character of simplicity. It is their aim that everything should be as primitive as possible, consonant with healthfulness, privacy and comfort. While no sanitary precautions are neglected, and water, hot and cold, is extravagantly provided, with free shower baths, there are none of the frills and furbelows that generally convert these - what should be - simple nature resorts into bad imitations of the luxurious hotels of the city. There are positively no dress events. Men and women are urged to bring their old clothes and wear them out here, or provide only khaki or corduroy, with short skirts, bloomers and leggings for the fair sex. Strong shoes are required; hob-nailed if one expects to do any climbing. Wraps for evening, and heavy underwear for an unusual day (storms sometimes come in Sierran regions unexpectedly), are sensible precautions.
Sleeping out-of-doors is one of the features of the place, an invigorating, rejuvenating joy, which Mark Twain affirmed was able to destroy any amount of fatigue that a person's body could gather. Visitors are given their choice of a comfortable bed in the open, in a cottage, tent, or one of the main buildings. There are practically no rules at Glen Alpine save those that would operate in any respectable home. No liquors are sold, and visitors are frankly told that "If they must have liquid stimulants they must bring them along." In order that those who desire to sleep may not be disturbed by the thoughtlessness of others, music is prohibited after ten o'clock. One of the delights of the place is the nightly camp-fire. Here is a large open space, close to the spring, surrounded by commodious and comfortable canvas seats, that will easily hold eight or ten persons, the blazing fire is started every evening. Those who have musical instruments - guitars, banjos, mandolins, flutes, cornets, violins, and even the plebeian accordion or the modest Jew's-harp - are requested to bring them. Solos, choruses, hymns and college songs are indulged in to the heart's content. Now and again dances are given, and when any speaker arrives who is willing to entertain the guests, a talk, lecture or sermon is arranged for.
Three things are never found at Glen Alpine. These are poison-oak, rattlesnakes and poisonous insects. The rowdy, gambling and carousing element are equally absent, for should they ever appear, they speedily discover their lack of harmony and voluntarily retire.
While the Glen Alpine resort is not situated directly on one of the lakes, it owns over twenty boats on eight of the nearby lakes, and the use of these is freely accorded to its guests. That it is in close proximity to lakes and peaks is evidenced by the following table, which gives the distance in miles from the hotel:
Miles 2-1/2 Angora Lake 4 American Lake 6 Avalanche Lake 3-1/4 Alta Morris Lake 7 Azure Lake 5 Center Lake 5-1/2 Crystal Lake 5-3/4 Crater Lake 6 Cup Lake 4-3/4 Cathedral Lake 5-1/2 Echo Lake 2 Fallen Leaf Lake 5-1/4 Floating Island Lake 4-1/4 Forest Lake 6 Fontinalis Lake 1-1/4 Glen Alpine Falls 1-1/4 Grass Lake 4-3/4 Grouse Lake 3-1/2 Glmore Lake 3-1/4 Heather Lake 3-1/4 Half Moon Lake 5 Kalmia Lake 1 Lily Lake 2-1/4 Lucile Lake 3-3/4 LeConte Lake 2-1/2 Margery Lake 1/4 Modjeska Falls 3-1/2 Observation Point 4-1/4 Olney Lake 4-1/4 Pit Lake 6 Pyramid Lake 4-3/4 Rainbow Lake 2-3/4 Susie Lake 3-1/2 Susie Lake Falls 2-3/4 Summit Lake 6 Snow Lake
Miles 4-1/4 Tamarack Lake 6 Tallac Lake 7 Tahoe Lake 6-1/2 Velma Lakes 3-1/4 Woods, Lake of the 3-1/2 Angora Peak 5-1/4 Dicks Peak 5-1/2 Jacks Peak 2-1/2 Keiths Dome 7 Pyramid Peak 6-1/2 Ralston Peak 3-3/4 Richardsons Peak 5 Upper Truckee River 4-3/4 Mt. Tallac 7 Mt. Agassiz 3 Cracked Crag
As the proprietors of Glen Alpine ask: "Where else outside of Switzerland is there a like region of lakes (forty-odd) and world of Sierran grandeur, such air with the tonic of altitude, mineral-spring water, trout-fishing, and camaraderie of kindred spirits!"
While the foregoing list gives a comprehensive suggestion of the wide reach of Glen Alpine's territory there are several especial peaks and lakes that are peculiarly its own. These are Pyramid, Agassiz, Dicks, Jacks, Richardsons, Ralston, and the Angora Peaks, Mount Tallac, Mosquito Pass, and Lakes Olney, LeConte, Heather, Susie, Grass, Lucile, Margery, and Summit with Lake of the Woods and others in Desolation Valley, Gilmore, Half Moon, Alta, Morris, Lily, Tamarack, Rainbow, Grouse, and the Upper and Lower Echo. Desolation Valley and all its surroundings is also within close reach. This is some four miles westward of Glen Alpine Springs, and is reached by way of easy mountain trails under sweet-scented pines and gnarled old junipers; besides singing streams; across crystal lakes, through a cliff-guarded glade where snowbanks linger until midsummer, ever renewing the carpet of green, decking it with heather and myriad exquisite mountain blossoms. On, over a granite embankment, and lo! your feet are stayed and your heart is stilled as your eyes behold marvelous Desolation Valley. Greeting you on its southern boundary stands majestic Pyramid Peak, with its eternal snows. Lofty companions circling to your very feet make the walls forming the granite cradle of Olney, the Lake of Mazes. The waters are blue as the skies above them, and pure as the melting snows from Pyramid which form them. He who has not looked upon this, the most remarkable of all the wonder pictures in the Tahoe region, has missed that for which there is no substitute.
The whole Glen Alpine basin, - which practically extends from the Tallac range on the north, from Heather Lake Pass (the outlet from Desolation Valley) and Cracked Crag on the west and southwest, Ralston Peak and range to the south and the Angora Peaks on the east, - is one mass of glacial scoriations. Within a few stone-throws of the spring, on a little-used trail to Grass Lake, there are several beautiful and interesting markings. One of these is a finely defined curve or groove, extending for 100 feet or more, above which, about 11/2 feet, is another groove, some two to four feet wide. These run rudely parallel for some distance, then unite and continue as one. Coming back to the trail - a hundred or so feet away, - on the left hand side returning to the spring, is a gigantic sloping granite block, perfectly polished with glacial action, and black as though its surface had been coated in the process. Near here the trail ducks or markers are placed in a deep grooving or trough three or four feet wide, and of equal depth, while to the right are two other similar troughs working their winding and tortuous way into the valley beneath.
In Chapter VIII an idea is given of the movements of the great glaciers that formed Desolation Valley and all the nearby lakes, as well as Glen Alpine basin. These gigantic ice-sheets, with their firmly-wedged carving blocks of granite, moved over the Heather Lake Pass, gouging out that lake, and Susie Lake, in its onward march, and then, added to by glacial flows from Cracked Crag, the southern slopes of the Tallac range, and the Angora Peaks, it passed on and down, shaping this interestingly rugged, wild and picturesque basin as we find it to-day. How many centuries of cutting and gouging, beveling and grooving were required to accomplish this, who can tell? Never resting, never halting, ever moving, irresistibly cutting, carving, grinding and demolishing, it carried away its millions of millions of tons of rocky debris in bowlders, pebbles, sand and mud, and thus helped make the gigantic moraines of Fallen Leaf Lake. The ice-flow itself passed along over where the terminal moraine now stands, cutting out Fallen Leaf Lake basin in its movement, and finally rested in the vast bowl of Lake Tahoe.
To the careful student every foot of Glen Alpine basin is worthy of study, and he who desires to further the cause of science will do well to make a map of his observations, recording the direction, appearance, depth, length and width of all the glacial markings he discovers. On the U.S. Government maps the stream flowing through Glen Alpine basin is marked as Eau Claire Creek. To the proprietors of Glen Alpine, and the visitors, the French name is absurd and out of place. No Frenchman has ever resided here, and if it was desired to call it Clear Water Creek, why not use good, understandable, common-sense English. At the request of those most intimately concerned, therefore, the name has been changed on the map that accompanies this volume, to Glen Alpine Creek, a name that "belongs" and to which no one can possibly have any objection.