As the proprietors of Glen Alpine ask:  “Where else outside of Switzerland is there a like region of lakes (forty-odd) and world of Sierran grandeur, such air with the tonic of altitude, mineral-spring water, trout-fishing, and camaraderie of kindred spirits!”

While the foregoing list gives a comprehensive suggestion of the wide reach of Glen Alpine’s territory there are several especial peaks and lakes that are peculiarly its own.  These are Pyramid, Agassiz, Dicks, Jacks, Richardsons, Ralston, and the Angora Peaks, Mount Tallac, Mosquito Pass, and Lakes Olney, LeConte, Heather, Susie, Grass, Lucile, Margery, and Summit with Lake of the Woods and others in Desolation Valley, Gilmore, Half Moon, Alta, Morris, Lily, Tamarack, Rainbow, Grouse, and the Upper and Lower Echo.  Desolation Valley and all its surroundings is also within close reach.  This is some four miles westward of Glen Alpine Springs, and is reached by way of easy mountain trails under sweet-scented pines and gnarled old junipers; besides singing streams; across crystal lakes, through a cliff-guarded glade where snowbanks linger until midsummer, ever renewing the carpet of green, decking it with heather and myriad exquisite mountain blossoms.  On, over a granite embankment, and lo! your feet are stayed and your heart is stilled as your eyes behold marvelous Desolation Valley.  Greeting you on its southern boundary stands majestic Pyramid Peak, with its eternal snows.  Lofty companions circling to your very feet make the walls forming the granite cradle of Olney, the Lake of Mazes.  The waters are blue as the skies above them, and pure as the melting snows from Pyramid which form them.  He who has not looked upon this, the most remarkable of all the wonder pictures in the Tahoe region, has missed that for which there is no substitute.

The whole Glen Alpine basin,—­which practically extends from the Tallac range on the north, from Heather Lake Pass (the outlet from Desolation Valley) and Cracked Crag on the west and southwest, Ralston Peak and range to the south and the Angora Peaks on the east,—­is one mass of glacial scoriations.  Within a few stone-throws of the spring, on a little-used trail to Grass Lake, there are several beautiful and interesting markings.  One of these is a finely defined curve or groove, extending for 100 feet or more, above which, about 11/2 feet, is another groove, some two to four feet wide.  These run rudely parallel for some distance, then unite and continue as one.  Coming back to the trail—­a hundred or so feet away,—­on the left hand side returning to the spring, is a gigantic sloping granite block, perfectly polished with glacial action, and black as though its surface had been coated in the process.  Near here the trail ducks or markers are placed in a deep grooving or trough three or four feet wide, and of equal depth, while to the right are two other similar troughs working their winding and tortuous way into the valley beneath.