Winter storms blow snow through the canon in blinding drifts, and avalanches shoot from the heights.

Then are these sparkling tarns filled and buried, leaving not a hint of their existence.

In June and July they begin to blink and thaw out like sleepy eyes, the carices thrust up their short brown spikes, the daisies bloom in turn, and the most profoundly buried of them all is at length warmed and summered as if winter were only a dream.
Red Lake is the lowest of the chain, and also the largest.

It seems rather dull and forbidding at first sight, lying motionless in its deep, dark bed.

The canon wall rises sheer from the water's edge on the south, but on the opposite side there is sufficient space and sunshine for a sedgy daisy garden, the center of which is brilliantly lighted with lilies, castilleias, larkspurs, and columbines, sheltered from the wind by leafy willows, and forming a most joyful outburst of plant-life keenly emphasized by the chill baldness of the onlooking cliffs.
After indulging here in a dozing, shimmering lake-rest, the happy stream sets forth again, warbling and trilling like an ouzel, ever delightfully confiding, no matter how dark the way; leaping, gliding, hither, thither, clear or foaming: manifesting the beauty of its wildness in every sound and gesture.
One of its most beautiful developments is the Diamond Cascade, situated a short distance below Red Lake.