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Ambitious climbers, seeking
adventures and opportunities to test their strength and skill, occasionally
attempt to penetrate the wilderness on the west side of the Sound, and push
on to the summit of Mount Olympus. But the grandest excursion of all to be
made hereabouts is to Mount Rainier, to climb to the top of its icy crown.
The mountain is very high, [A careful re-determination of the height of
Rainier, made by Professor A. G. McAdie in 1905, gave an altitude of 13,394
feet. The Standard Dictionary wrongly describes it as "the highest peak
(13,363 feet) within the United States." The United States Baedeker and
railroad literature overstate its altitude by more than a hundred feet.
Editor.] fourteen thousand four hundred feet, and laden with glaciers that
are terribly roughened and interrupted by crevasses and ice- cliffs. Only
good climbers should attempt to gain the summit, led by a guide of proved
nerve and endurance. A good trail has been cut through the woods to the base
of the mountain on the north; but the summit of the mountain never has been
reached from this side, though many brave attempts have been made upon it.
Last summer I gained the
summit from the south side, in a day and a half from the timber-line,
without encountering any desperate obstacles that could not in some way be
passed in good weather. I was accompanied by Keith, the artist, Professor
Ingraham, and frye ambitious young climbers from Seattle. We were led by the
veteran mountaineer and guide Van Trump, of Yelm, who many years before
guided General Stevens in his memorable ascent, and later Mr. Bailey, of
Oakland. With a cumbersome abundance of campstools and blankets we set out
from Seattle, traveling by rail as far as Yelm Prairie, on the Tacoma and
Oregon road. Here we made our first camp and arranged with Mr. Longmire, a
farmer in the neighborhood, for pack and saddle animals. The noble King
Mountain was in full view from here, glorifying the bright, sunny day with
his presence, rising in godlike majesty over the woods, with the magnificent
prairie as a foreground. The distance to the mountain from Yelm in a
straight line is perhaps fifty miles; but by the mule and yellow- jacket
trail we had to follow it is a hundred miles. For, notwithstanding a portion
of this trail runs in the air, where the wasps work hardest, it is far from
being an air-line as commonly understood.
By night of the third day we
reached the Soda Springs on the right bank of the Nisqually, which goes
roaring by, gray with mud, gravel, and boulders from the caves of the
glaciers of Rainier, now close at hand. The distance from the Soda Springs
to the Camp of the Clouds is about ten miles. The first part of the way lies
up the Nisqually Caņon, the bottom of which is flat in some places and the
walls very high and precipitous, like those of the Yosemite Valley. The
upper part of the caņon is still occupied by one of the Nisqually glaciers,
from which this branch of the river draws its source, issuing from a cave in
the gray, rock-strewn snout. About a mile below the glacier we had to ford
the river, which caused some anxiety, for the current is very rapid and
carried forward large boulders as well as lighter material, while its savage
roar is bewildering.
At this point we left the
caņon, climbing out of it by a steep zigzag up the old lateral moraine of
the glacier, which was deposited when the present glacier flowed past at
this height, and is about eight hundred feet high. It is now covered with a
superb growth of Picea amabilis; [Doubtless the red silver fir, now
classified as Abies amabills. Editor.] so also is the corresponding portion
of the right lateral. From the top of the moraine, still ascending, we
passed for a mile or two through a forest of mixed growth, mainly silver
fir, Patton spruce, and mountain pine, and then came to the charming park
region, at an elevation of about five thousand feet above sea-level. Here
the vast continuous woods at length begin to give way under the dominion of
climate, though still at this height retaining their beauty and giving no
sign of stress of storm, sweeping upward in belts of varying width, composed
mainly of one species of fir, sharp and spiry in form, leaving smooth,
spacious parks, with here and there separate groups of trees standing out in
the midst of the openings like islands in a lake. Every one of these parks,
great and small, is a garden filled knee-deep with fresh, lovely flowers of
every hue, the most luxuriant and the most extravagantly beautiful of all
the alpine gardens I ever beheld in all my mountain-top wanderings.
We arrived at the Cloud Camp
at noon, but no clouds were in sight, save a few gauzy ornamental wreaths
adrift in the sunshine. Out of the forest at last there stood the mountain,
wholly unveiled, awful in bulk and majesty, filling all the view like a
separate, newborn world, yet withal so fine and so beautiful it might well
fire the dullest observer to desperate enthusiasm. Long we gazed in silent
admiration, buried in tall daisies and anemones by the side of a snowbank.
Higher we could not go with the animals and find food for them and wood for
our own camp-fires, for just beyond this lies the region of ice, with only
here and there an open spot on the ridges in the midst of the ice, with
dwarf alpine plants, such as saxifrages and drabas, which reach far up
between the glaciers, and low mats of the beautiful bryanthus, while back of
us were the gardens and abundance of everything that heart could wish. Here
we lay all the afternoon, considering the lilies and the lines of the
mountains with reference to a way to the summit.
At noon next day we left camp
and began our long climb. We were in light marching order, save one who
pluckily determined to carry his camera to the summit. At night, after a
long easy climb over wide and smooth fields of ice, we reached a narrow
ridge, at an elevation of about ten thousand feet above the sea, on the
divide between the glaciers of the Nisqually and the Cowlitz. Here we lay as
best we could, waiting for another day, without fire of course, as we were
now many miles beyond the timber-line and without much to cover us. After
eating a little hardtack, each of us leveled a spot to lie on among
lava-blocks and cinders. The night was cold, and the wind coming down upon
us in stormy surges drove gritty ashes and fragments of pumice about our
ears while chilling to the bone. Very short and shallow was our sleep that
night.; but day dawned at last, early rising was easy, and there was nothing
about breakfast to cause any delay. About four o'clock we were off, and
climbing began in earnest. We followed up the ridge on which we had spent
the night, now along its crest, now on either side, or on the ice leaning
against it, until we came to where it becomes massive and precipitous. Then
we were compelled to crawl along a seam or narrow shelf, on its face, which
we traced to its termination in the base of the great ice-cap. From this
point all the climbing was over ice, which was here desperately steep but
fortunately was at the same time carved into innumerable spikes and pillars
which afforded good footholds, and we crawled cautiously on, warm with
ambition and exercise.
At length, after gaining the
upper extreme of our guiding ridge, we found a good place to rest and
prepare ourselves to scale the dangerous upper curves of the dome. The
surface almost everywhere was bare, hard, snowless ice, extremely slippery;
and, though smooth in general, it was interrupted by a network of yawning
crevasses, outspread like lines of defense against any attempt to win the
summit. Here every one of the party took off his shoes and drove stout steel
caulks about half an inch long into them, having brought tools along for the
purpose, and not having made use of them until now so that the points might
not get dulled on the rocks ere the smooth, dangerous ice was reached.
Besides being well shod each carried an alpenstock, and for special
difficulties we had a hundred feet of rope and an axe.
Thus prepared, we stepped
forth afresh, slowly groping our way through tangled lines of crevasses,
crossing on snow bridges here and there after cautiously testing them,
jumping at narrow places, or crawling around the ends of the largest,
bracing well at every point with our alpenstocks and setting our spiked
shoes squarely down on the dangerous slopes. It was nerve-trying work, most
of it, but we made good speed nevertheless, and by noon all stood together
on the utmost summit, save one who, his strength failing for a time, came up
later.
We remained on the summit
nearly two hours, looking about us at the vast maplike views, comprehending
hundreds of miles of the Cascade Range, with their black interminable
forests and white volcanic cones in glorious array reaching far into Oregon;
the Sound region also, and the great plains of eastern Washington, hazy and
vague in the distance. Clouds began to gather. Soon of all the land only the
summits of the mountains, St. Helen's, Adams, and Hood, were left in sight,
forming islands in the sky. We found two well-formed and well-preserved
craters on the summit, lying close together like two plates on a table with
their rims touching. The highest point of the mountain is located between
the craters, where their edges come in contact. Sulphurous fumes and steam
issue from several vents, giving out a sickening smell that can be detected
at a considerable distance. The unwasted condition of these craters, and,
indeed, to a great extent, of the entire mountain, would tend to show that
Rainier is still a comparatively young mountain. With the exception of the
projecting lips of the craters and the top of a subordinate summit a short
distance to the northward, the mountain is solidly capped with ice all
around; and it is this ice-cap which forms the grand central fountain whence
all the twenty glaciers of Rainier flow, radiating in every direction.
The descent was accomplished
without disaster, though several of the party had narrow escapes. One
slipped and fell, and as he shot past me seemed to be going to certain
death. So steep was the ice-slope no one could move to help him, but
fortunately, keeping his presence of mind, he threw himself, on his face and
digging his alpenstock into the ice, gradually retarded his motion until he
came to rest. Another broke through a slim bridge over a crevasse, but his
momentum at the time carried him against the lower edge and only his
alpenstock was lost in the abyss. Thus crippled by the loss of his staff, we
had to lower him the rest of the way down the dome by means of the rope we
carried. Falling rocks from the upper precipitous part of the ridge were
also a source of danger, as they came whizzing past in successive volleys;
but none told on us, and when we at length gained the gentle slopes of the
lower ice-fields, we ran and slid at our ease, making fast, glad time, all
care and danger past, and arrived at our beloved Cloud Camp before sundown.
We were rather weak from want
of nourishment, and some suffered from sunburn, notwithstanding the partial
protection of glasses and veils; otherwise, all were unscathed and well. The
view we enjoyed from the summit could hardly be surpassed in sublimity and
grandeur; but one feels far from home so high in the sky, so much so that
one is inclined to guess that, apart from the acquisition of knowledge and
the exhilaration of climbing, more pleasure is to be found at the foot of
mountains than on their frozen tops. Doubly happy, however, is the man to
whom lofty mountain-tops are within reach, for the lights that shine there
illumine all that lies below. |
