Show MARCH 1903 MOUNTAIN LAKES There is no other one thirg that can add so much to the beauty of mountain scenery as the small lakes which we find in the heads of nearly all large canyons of the Wasatch and Uinta Mountains Every mountain resort must be located near some lake The aim of the mountain pleasure seeker in his every side journey is to visit some small lake and the artist classes the small lake of high cultivation with trees and cliffs around it as his ideal for a beautiful picture Lakes may be regularly classed under five heads: (1) Diastropiiic lakes are those formed when the Earth’s crust is faulted cr wrinkled forming depressions in which the water is collected (2) Coulee lakes are those formed when a canyon or channel of a stream is dammed by flowing lava (3) Crater lakes are these formed by the collection of water in old volcanic craters (4) Bayou lakes are those formed by streams when in the time of high water they are diverted thus leaving their old channel to be filled with water (5) Glacial lakes are formed in the basins carved out of the solid rock by a glacial action or behind the great morainic dams formed across the canyons or in the depressions of the drift itself Probably without exception everyone of the small lakes in the Wasatch or Uinta mountains belongs to the fifth class and the greater number of them belong to the tpye in solid rock basins As the glaciation of the region was most active near the crest line these lakes have an elevation of 8000 to 12 00-- feet and if one wishes to visit a place where lakes are most abundant and most beautiful he must go where glaciation has been most 3 In the Wasatch mountains this includes Big and Little Cottonwood American Fork and many of the side canyons and heads of others In the Uinta Mountains it includes every iarge canyon that heads at the crest line of the range The places where glaciation has been most active however are at the beads of the Weber Rock Duchesne and Provo Rivers and of the three forks of the Bear Ri ver All of these head within a radius of ten miles from Mt Baldy one of the highest mountains of the The basins forming the heads of range these canyons have an elevation of about 10000 to 11000 feet The basins of the Provo and Duchesne are especially heavily timbered while those on the north side of the crest contain many large patches of polished rock entirely devoid of vegetation There are many lakes in the heads of each of these canyons varying in size from small ponds to two or three miles in diameter These lakes have every sort of surrounding from precipitous cliffs a thousand feet high to fiat polished borders and from sparse vegetation to dense forests The best point in the region from which to view these lakes as a whole is the top of Mt lakes can Baldy From this point thirty-on- e be seen in the head of the Provo canyon alone and from the same position at least twenty can be counted in the basin forming the head waters of the Duchesne Several lie m the basin s at the of the Weber Seventy-tw- o of these beautiful mountain lakes can be counted from one position on the top of Mt Baldy This is probably not more than two-thir-ds the actual number there for the timber is so dense that often a lake is entirely invisible until you reach its shore The lakes are generally quite head-water- |