The timber-line in the Park is one of the most picturesque and interesting in the world. It is strangely appealing and thought-compelling. This is the forest-frontier. Its average altitude is about eleven thousand five hundred feet above the sea. Timber-line in the Alps is only about sixty-five hundred feet. Thus it will be seen that the climate of this Rocky Mountain section is far more friendly to wood growth than that of the Alps. The trees persistently try to climb upward, and their struggle for existence becomes deadly. The wind blows off their arms, and cuts them with flying sand. The cold dwarfs them, and for nine months in the year the snow tries to twist and crush the life out of them. Many have limbs and bark on one side only; others are completely stripped of bark. They seldom grow over eight feet high, and numbers grow along the ground like vines. In the drier places at timber-line the limber pine has sole possession, while in the moister places the Engelmann spruce predominates, and is sometimes accompanied by dwarfed aspen, birch, subalpine fir, and willow. Above the timber-line are crags, snow-piles, and alpine-flower meadows. Traveling along the eastern slope of the Park, one encounters a number of prominent attractions. In the south, Wild Basin, a splendidly glaciated realm of several square miles, almost completely surrounded with high peaks, contains lakes, forests, moraines, and gorges. It retains many wild glacial records of peculiar interest. North of it is the Long's Peak group, consisting of Long's Peak, Mount Meeker, Mount Lady Washington, Chasm Lake and Gorge, and Mills Moraine. This moraine is one of the most interesting in the park. Chasm Lake, at the foot of the precipitous eastern slope of Long's Peak, has the wildest setting of all the many Park lakes. To the east of Long's Peak lies Tahosa Valley, and just beyond this rise the Twin Sister Peaks. Between Long's Peak and the Range is Glacier Gorge, a deep glaciated cañon. At the end of this, in the Continental Divide, is the Loch Vale region. Here the terraced floor is varied with tarns, waterfalls, flowery meadows, grassy spaces, and storm-battered trees. Around it and rising above it are stupendous cliffs and precipices of glaciated rock. Above it to the west is Andrews Glacier. Eastward from it lies the Bierstadt Moraine, named after Albert Bierstadt, whose pictures gave fame to the region. A trail crosses the Continental Divide from Flat-Top Mountain, which is approximately in the center of the Park. To the north of Flat-Top Mountain lie Fern and Odessa Lakes. They are the best-known and most popular lakes in the Park, but there are a number of others of somewhat similar character and with equally scenic surroundings. Beyond these is Sprague's Glacier; also Forest Cañon, above which extends the scene-commanding Trail Ridge. Again beyond, the Fall River automobile road crosses the Continental Divide.