Typical of western mountain lakes is Cultas, which nestles on the eastern flanks of the Cascades not far from the summit. A wooded mountain of its own name rises from its southern rim, and elsewhere it is bordered by sandy strands as white as Cape Cod beaches, by stretches of marsh and meadow and by higher banks studded with giant pines, whose trunks nature painted golden copper and the sun burnishes each day. There we cast adrift from civilization; the trail ended and our riding horses took to the water at the lakeside, knee-deep wading over round, slippery rocks being preferable to battling through the thickets of lodgepole pine which cluttered the bank.
[Illustration: On the trail in the highlands of the Cascades]
[Illustration: "A sky blue lake set like a sapphire in an emerald mount"]
A lake of trout and sky-blue water is Cultas, where the leisurely may pitch permanent camp to their hearts' content, and revel in the luxuries of perfect outdoor loafing, tempered to suit the taste with fly-casting excursions 'round on rafts, and hunting tramps through the timber, where one need go no great way to spy the tracks of deer and occasional bear, or surprise grouse perched fatally low. Further westerly, though, the grouse-shooting is better, and an average rifle-shot can bag a plenty of the big fat birds in September. Poor grouse! "The good die first," said Wordsworth, and so with birds; for the good are the fat, who, through an excess of avoirdupois, lag in flight and alight on lower branches and are easiest shot.
From Cultas there was no trail other than such a one as mother sense advised and the compass indicated was properly directioned. Our objective point was the north and south trail reputed to follow the summit of the Cascade Range, up whose eastern flanks we were laboring. Finally we found it, though of trail worthy of the name there was none; a scattered line of aged blazes alone indicated where the trail itself once had been. With some floundering over down logs, many a false start and mistaken way, and a deal of patient diligence, we contrived to hold to the blazes, winding beneath a fairy forest of giant fir, tamarack, spruce, and pine, here and there skirting a veritable gem of a sky-blue lake set like a sapphire in an emerald mount, and occasionally tracking across a gay little mountain meadow, until at last we hunted out tiny Link Lake, where we camped beneath trees whose trunks were streaked with age wrinkles long before Astor pioneered his way down the Columbia.
