Below the snow and glaciers, the landscape of temperate rainforest is incredibly lush with wall-to-wall carpets of deep green spruce covering the steep slopes and plunging river valleys.
But you can enjoy wild nature right without leaving town where the Frame Lake offers a gloriously rugged five-mile elliptical hike through what is known as a boreal forest of deep green spruce and other trees on a carpet of wonderfully emerald mosses and yellow-green lichen.
Frederick Spruce, who designed the original Spruce deep bed filter, explains.
Standing beside a shallow pool, shimmering in the sun, we gazed on one of the Cheshire commons at its very best; in front were the young spruces, deep green, with here and there the graceful birches in striking contrast, and as a background the ancient Scots pines, almost black beside the tender green of the youthful foliage of slender larches.
Every few yards a spruce was scarred with deep, truly terrifying, gouge marks.
Finally, it is important to note that the seeds of certain other conifer species (yellow cypress, western white pine and white bark pine) exhibit much deeper dormancy at maturity than white spruce seeds.
Both species studied grow on a variety of soils, ranging from shallow and rocky to deep loamy sands and heavy clays; black spruce can also grow on organic soils.
Land that cost 27,000 Canadian dollars an acre at the turn of the millennium had reached 1 million Canadian dollars (about $775,000), while new housing developments ate ever deeper into the surrounding woods of black spruce.
With its deep, cold waters and isles of dense Blue Spruce, it promised to be a visual symphony in glorious technicolor.
Softwoods of loblolly pine, shortleaf and white pine, spruce, and hemlock cover the mountain slopes, deep gorges, and other scattered areas.
