To the west, however, was an entirely different scene.
Here the vertical rock of the valley headwall rises abruptly. These walls mark the starting point of the huge glaciers that gouged out these valleys tens of thousands of years ago.
Hiking beneath these shear cliffs that towered high above my head, I slowly began to get that perspective that I had come here for. As a tiny human being picking my way across this tremendous valley there is a visceral sense of the deep and ancient age of our planet.