Specialized and severe, the alpine world is sparsely populated. Here eagles and weasels hunt for bird nestlings, marmots, pikas, pocket gophers, deer mice, and voles. The heartbeat of the extremely fragile tundra is slow by necessity. That any plants have adapted to this environment seems incredible. Yet alpine laurel fills rock crevices. Spring beauty blooms in pockets of soil. Mats of moss campion carpet slopes of shattered rock. White columbine nod in the wind shadows of larger rocks. Alpine sunflowers blaze like a galaxy of equal suns, their disproportionately large flowers awkwardly seated on abbreviated stalks. The process of developing from bare rock to fully developed alpine vegetation might require thousands of years. By contrast, it is estimated that 100 years are required to form one inch of soil on the plains. On alpine heights the rate is many times slower. The first plants to colonize bare mountain rock might be lichens, multi-colored crustose plants adapted to extreme conditions. Lichens are tough. They grow on rocky outcrops near the South and North Poles. They also thrive on desert rocks that are too hot to touch. Lichen plants can first be dried in air and then in a dessicator and then exposed to 514°F for up to seven hours and yet, upon return to room temperatures, they will resume normal metabolism. And lichens regulate, to some extent, water flow at high elevations. On dry days their water content may be from two to ten percent of dry weight. On rainy days that may soar to more than 300 percent. Mats of lichen hold so much moisture that even a rise in barometric pressure may press some water out to resume its tortuous trip toward the Pacific Ocean. Seven Teton peaks exceed 12,000 feet and one, the Grand Teton, pushes above 13,000 feet to 13,770 feet in elevation. At such heights, conditions support mountain glaciers. The Teton Glacier is one of about a dozen small alpine glaciers cradled in shaded east- or north-facing cirques among the high peaks. Teton Glacier occupies a spectacular cirque that faces east between the north face of the Grand and Mount Owen. It is partially fed by avalanches from the cliffs around it. Some of these cliffs are more than 3,000 feet high. The glacier’s terminus has retreated markedly since 1929, but the rate of loss was less between 1954 and 1963 than it was between 1929 and 1954. The mountain glaciers in today’s Tetons are not left over from the Ice Age. They began forming about 500 to 1,000 years ago, during the so-called Little Ice Age. As insignificant as these glaciers are compared to the colossal sheets that repeatedly lumbered through the Tetons and Jackson Hole, they slowly exact a toll on this hard rock, continuing to carve, etch, and abrade the range. They host life too: algae of a reddish hue that give rise to the phenomenon called watermelon snow. The Teton Range [Illustration: Teton Range panorama]