Although it may well seem to the tourist who has attained the head of Lake Chelan that nature has reached her acme of grandeur, and that it would tax his powers of belief to be informed that there is grander yet, we shall run the risk of saying just that, and bid him join us on side journeys up the mighty canyons of the Stehekin River and Railroad Creek. Lake Chelan being, as already indicated, in the very heart of the Cascade Mountains, and these mountains here attaining an average elevation of seven or eight thousand feet, with dozens of peaks of ten thousand or more, and the countless impetuous streams from those snowy heights having cut their way deep down toward the lake level, it follows as a matter of course that the entire Chelan region, for an area of probably ten thousand square miles, is perfectly gridironed with canyons. Many of them have never been explored or even entered. In them are myriads of lakes, waterfalls, parks, glaciers, and, in fact, every species of mountain attraction. There is no question that within this vast cordon of mountains there are more glaciers than in all the rest of the United States combined, and, with the exception of the Sierras and the Canadian Rockies, there is certainly no other region on this continent that can for a moment enter into competition with it. Travellers have assured the author that the Alps in no respect except historical association, surpass, and some say, do not equal this crowning glory of our great North-west State. [Illustration: Head of Lake Chelan--Looking up Stehekin Canyon. Photo. by W. D. Lyman.] Amid the bewildering profusion of great canyons radiating from the lake, the two most accessible are those of the Stehekin River and Railroad Creek. The former enters the head of the lake, after a course of probably fifty miles from Skagit Pass. To ascend this canyon we must commit our lives and fortunes to cayuse ponies and a mountain trail, which, though good enough to the initiated, is a terror to the "tenderfoot."