Mountain Country
A compilation of 5 vignettes:
- High Country
A forbidding Arctic-like environment exists on the Rockies’ summit. An amazing variety of plants and animals grow and survive there despite the winter cold, incessant winds and harsh sunlight. Lichens grow on bare rockfaces and tenacious alpine flowers find a precarious roothold. We find caribou seeking out lichen as food, as well as the timid “rock-rabbit” called the pika and the monarch of the Rockies, the grizzly bear. The sure-footed, seclusive mountain goat also adapts to these hostile surroundings.
- Timberline
A meeting place of two contrasting environments lies at the timberline. A mingling of plant zones is found where the high country tundra meets mountain forest. Brightly coloured tundra flowers like monkshood, paintbrushes and monkey flowers bloom beside solitary spruce and pine. From clumps of spruce, the blue grouse booms out its low-pitched territorial claim. Mountain sheep seek lush feeding places, and the least chipmunk is occupied with his search for food. From spring to fall, the spectacle of colour is forever changing. It is a place of unforgettable beauty.
- Glacier Country
Ice from slow-moving glaciers has carved many of the valleys and peaks of the Rockies, giving them their general shape, laying huge deposits of rock debris and creating river systems with beautiful turquoise lakes. Toads emerge in spring to court in the melting ice-water, while birds like loons and Barrow’s goldeneye plumb the chilly waters. Young hoary marmots wrestle on the rock ridges. The glaciers have helped shape the mountains and the destiny of the plants and animals that live there.
- River of the Rockies
Water is the chief agent of mountain erosion. Rivers also provide attractive habitats for a remarkable number of creatures. We see the dipper, a land-bird, making itself at home in the most turbulent of mountain streams. Equally at home is the Harlequin duck with its bizarre plumage. A wary mountain lion drinks; mountain sheep graze on the plant life along the riverbanks. Nearby, the osprey patrols the river in search of fish to feed its young. While the soil high in the mountain is not very fertile, the river valley nourishes a long chain of life the lower it descends.
- Mountain Forests
Mountain forests stretch from the straggling spruce of the timberline down to the dense stands of trees on the valley floor. They harbour the greatest number of plant and animal species to be found in the Rockies, like the black bear, elk, moose, red squirrel, the kinglet and the hummingbird. These creatures help make mountain forests dynamic places, which are constantly being changed by forces such as fires, avalanches and floods, and by the creatures themselves.
- Timberline
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Video Length: 75 min
Closed Captioning
Video Price (NTSC format): $19.95
Video Price (PAL format): $24.95