The Mountain that was 'God' Part 4

This recommendation has been indorsed by Major Chittenden's successor, Maj. C. W. Kutz, and may be taken as expressing the conviction of the government {p.070} engineers as to the minimum of work needed in the Park at once. For the necessary surveys and the building of the trails, Mr. Ricksecker informs me that $50,000 will probably be enough. This is so insignificant in comparison with the good sought and the value of the national property to be protected and made accessible that its immediate appropriation by Congress should be beyond question. Nevertheless, half that amount has twice been asked for in measures introduced by Senator S. H. Piles, but in neither case did the appropriation pa.s.s both houses. It is to be hoped that the present Congress will give the full amount of $50,000, which will enable the surveys to be completed over the entire route, and trails to be built on most, if not all, of that route. Their widening into permanent roads will follow in due time, when the wonders of glacier, canyon and forest which they make accessible are once known.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Suns.h.i.+ne." View of the Mountain from above Sluiskin Falls at 3 P.M.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Storm." View near the same point an hour later.]

The road recently completed to Paradise Valley should be widened, by all means, and made safer by retaining walls at every danger point.

But it is doubtful whether automobiles will ever be permitted above the bridge at the Nisqually glacier. Some automobile owners regard the Park as an automobile-club preserve, and insist that nothing more be done toward the opening of its {p.072} scenery or the conservation of its forest until it is made safe for them to run their touring cars into Paradise. This is unfortunate, because it betrays ignorance of the purpose of Congress in creating the National Parks, namely, the education and enjoyment of all the people, not the pleasure of a cla.s.s. Moreover, no matter how wide or well-guarded the road may be above the bridge, it can never be wide enough to prevent a reckless chauffeur from causing a terrible fatality. It is necessarily a very crooked road, hung upon the high ledges of precipitous cliffs. While the road is safe for coaches drawn by well-broken horses and driven by trustworthy drivers, it would be criminal folly to open it to the crowd of automobiles that would rush to Paradise Valley. If automobiles are permitted to go beyond the Nisqually glacier, it should be only when in charge of a park officer.

[Ill.u.s.tration {p.071}: Looking down on Nisqually Glacier from top of Gibraltar Rock, with storm clouds veiling the Mountain.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Measuring the Ice Flow in Nisqually Glacier. In 1905 Prof. J. N. Le Conte of Berkeley, Cal., established the fact that this glacier has an average flow, in summer, of 16.2 inches a day. The movement is greater at the center than on the sides, and greater on the convex side of a curve than on the concave side. It thus is a true river, though a slow one. The measurements are taken by running a line from one lateral moraine to the other with a transit, setting stakes across the glacier at short intervals, and ascertaining the advance they make from day to day.]

Even from the older and wider roads of the Yellowstone automobiles have been excluded, although there are no large cities near by, as there are here, to send hundreds of cars into that park on any pleasant day. The automobilists will be wise to accept their privilege of access to the foot of the glacier, and use it with care, too.

Several serious accidents have already occurred, and if greater care is not exercised, the Interior Department will apply the Yellowstone rule, at least to the extent of stopping all cars at Longmires.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Copyright, 1897, By E. S. Curtis. Miss Fay Fuller exploring a creva.s.se.]

[Ill.u.s.tration {p.073}: Copyright 1906, By A. H. Barnes. Ice Cave, Paradise Glacier.]

Questions like this, involving conflict between the interests of a cla.s.s and the vital needs of the Park as a public inst.i.tution, {p.075} give especial emphasis to the recommendation made by Secretary Ballinger on his last annual report. Owing to the great number and extent of the National Parks, and the inefficiency of the present "perfunctory policy" in their administration, Mr. Ballinger asked Congress to put the management of these inst.i.tutions under a Bureau of National Parks, conducted by a competent commissioner, and organized for efficient field administration and careful inspection of all public work and of the conduct of concessionaries. Regarding the need of such a systematic and scientific organization for the development of the parks, he says:

A definite policy for their maintenance, supervision and improvement should be established, which would enable them to be gradually opened up for the convenience of tourists and campers and for the careful preservation of their natural features.

Complete and comprehensive plans for roads, trails, telegraph and telephone lines, sewer and water systems, hotel accommodations, transportation, and other conveniences should be made before any large amount of money is expended. The treatment of our national parks, except as regards the Yellowstone, has not heretofore had the benefit of any well-considered or systematic plans. In all of them the road and trail problems for public travel and convenience to enable tourists to obtain the benefits of scenic beauties are primary, but sewage, water, and electric-power problems are after all of equal importance.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fairy Falls in Goat Lick Basin, below Stevens Glacier.]

In line with Secretary Ballinger's report, Senator Flint of California introduced a bill authorizing the creation of such a bureau in the Interior Department. The bill failed to get through at the last session, but I am informed by Senator Jones that it will be reintroduced. Its purpose is of great public importance, and the indors.e.m.e.nt of the very intelligent directors of the Sierra Club in California argues well for its form. Every person interested in the development of our National Parks to fullest usefulness and the proper conservation of their natural beauty should work for the pa.s.sage of the bill.

[Ill.u.s.tration {p.076}: Copyright, 1897, By E. S. Curtis. Gibraltar and its Neighbors, showing a mile of the deeply creva.s.sed ice-field inside the angle of which the great crag is the apex. On the left are Cowlitz Cleaver and the Bee-Hive; on the right, Cathedral Rocks.]

{p.077} [Ill.u.s.tration: Crossing Carbon Glacier. On the ice slopes, it is customary to divide a large party into companies of ten, with an experienced alpinist at the head of each. Note the medial moraines on the glacier.]

III.

THE STORY OF THE MOUNTAIN.

I asked myself, How was this colossal work performed? Who chiseled these mighty and picturesque ma.s.ses out of a mere protuberance of earth? And the answer was at hand. Ever young, ever mighty, with the vigor of a thousand worlds still within him, the real sculptor was even then climbing up the eastern sky.

It was he who planted the glaciers on the mountain slopes, thus giving gravity a plough to open out the valleys; and it is he who, acting through the ages, will finally lay low these mighty monuments, * * * so that the people of an older earth may see mould spread and corn wave over the hidden rocks which at this moment bear the weight of the Jungfrau.--_John Tyndall: "Hours of Exercise in the Alps."_

The life of a glacier is one eternal grind.--_John Muir._

Our stately Mountain, in its youth, was as comely and symmetrical a cone as ever graced the galaxy of volcanic peaks. To-day, while still young as compared with the obelisk crags of the Alps, it has already taken on the venerable and deeply-scarred physiognomy of a veteran. It is no longer merely an overgrown boy among the hills, but, cut and torn by the ice of centuries, it is fast a.s.suming the dignity and interest of a patriarch of the mountains.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Copyright, 1897, By E. S. Curtis. Reflection Lake, below Pinnacle Peak and the Mountain.]

To some, no doubt, the smooth, youthful contours of an active volcano seem more beautiful than the rugged grandeur of the Weisshorn. The perfect cone of Mt. St. Helens, until recently in eruption, pleases them more than the broad dome of Mt. Adams, rounded by an explosion in the unknown past. But for those who love nature and the story written upon its {p.079} face, mountains have character as truly as men, and they show it in their features as clearly.

[Ill.u.s.tration {p.078}: Looking up from Cowlitz Chimneys to Gibraltar and the summit. 1, Crater and Columbia's Crest. 2, Peak Success. 3, Upper snow fields of Nisqually Glacier. 4, Gibraltar Rock. 5, Cowlitz Cleaver. 6, Cathedral Rocks. 7, Little Tahoma. 8, Cowlitz Glacier. 9, Ingraham Glacier, emptying into the Cowlitz.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Divide of Paradise and Stevens Glaciers. Once probably separated by a chine of rock, they are now one save for a slight elevation in their bed, which turns them respectively toward Paradise Valley and Stevens Canyon.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Old Moraine of Stevens Glacier. Now comparatively small and harmless, this glacier did heavy work in its prime. Witness, Stevens Canyon (p. 66) and this huge pile of debris, showing that some time ago the glacier, finding a cliff in its way, cut it down and dumped it here.]

Nowhere is this better exemplified than in the monarch of the Cascades. No longer the huge conical pimple which a volcano erected on the earth's crust, it bears upon it the history of its own explosion, which scattered its top far over the landscape, and of its losing battle with the sun, which, employing the heaviest of all {p.080} tools, is steadily destroying it. It has already lost a tenth of its height and a third of its bulk. The ice is cutting deeper and deeper into its sides. Upon three of them, it has excavated great amphitheaters, which it is ceaselessly driving back toward the heart of the peak. As if to compensate for losses in size and shapeliness, the Mountain presents the most important phenomena of glacial action to be seen in the United States.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Climbers preparing for a night at Camp Muir (alt.i.tude 10,000 feet), in order to get an early start for the summit. This is on the Cowlitz Cleaver, below Gibraltar. John Muir, the famous mountain climber, selected this spot as a camp in 1888. A stout cabin should be built here to shelter climbers.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Bee-Hive, a landmark on Cowlitz Cleaver, below Gibraltar.]

In its dimensions, however, it is still one of the world's great peaks. The Rainier National Park, eighteen miles square--as large as many counties in the East--has an elevation along its western and lowest boundary averaging four thousand feet above sea level. a.s.suming a diameter for the peak of only twenty miles, the {p.081} area occupied by this creature of a volcano exceeds three hundred square miles. Of its vast surface upwards of 32,500 acres, or about fifty-one square miles, are covered by glaciers or the fields of perpetual snow which feed them. A straight line drawn through from the end of North Tahoma glacier, on the west side, to the end of White glacier, on the east, would be thirteen miles long. The circ.u.mference of the crest on the 10,000-foot contour is nearly seven miles. Its glacial system is, and doubtless has long been, the most extensive on the continent, south of Alaska; it is said by scientists to outrank that of any mountain in Europe. The twelve primary glaciers vary in length from three to eight miles, and from half a mile to three miles in width.

There are nearly as many "interglaciers," or smaller ice streams which gather their snow supply, not from the neve fields of the summit, but within the wedges of rock which the greater glaciers have left pointing upward on the higher slopes.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Mazama Club on Cowlitz Chimneys, looking across the ice-stream of the Cowlitz Glacier.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Climbing Cowlitz Cleaver to Gibraltar. This hacked and weather-worn spine left by the glaciers forms one wing of a great inverted V, with Gibraltar as its apex. On the other side of it is a drop of several thousand feet to Nisqually Glacier.]

The geological story may be told in a few untechnical words. As those folds in the earth's crust which parallel the coast were slowly formed by the lateral pressure of sea upon land, fractures often occurred in the general incline thus {p.082} created. Through the fissures that resulted the subterranean fires thrust molten rock. In many cases, the expulsion was of sufficient amount and duration to form clearly defined volcanic craters. The most active craters built up, by continued eruptions of lava and ashes, a great series of cones now seen on both sides of the Cordillera, that huge mountain system which borders the Pacific from Behring sea to the Straits of Magellan.

Tacoma-Rainier is one of the more important units in this army of volcanic giants.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Mazamas rounding Gibraltar--a reminiscence of the ascent by the Portland club in 1905. The precipice rises more than 1000 feet above the trail which offers a precarious footing at the head of a steep slope of loose talus.]

Unlike some of its companions, however, it owes its bulk less to lava flows than to the explosive eruptions which threw forth bombs and scoriae. It is a ma.s.s of agglomerates, with only occasional strata of solid volcanic rock. This becomes evident to one who inspects the exposed sides of any of the canyons, or of the great cliffs, Gibraltar Rock, Little Tahoma or Russell Peak. It is made clear in such pictures as are on this page and the next.

This looseness of structure accounts for the rapidity with which the glaciers are cutting into the peak, and carrying it away. Most of them carry an extraordinary amount of debris, to be deposited in lateral or terminal moraines, or dropped in streams which they feed. They are rivers of rock as well as of ice.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Under the walls of Gibraltar.]

{p.083} That the glaciers of this and every other mountain in the northern hemisphere are receding, and that they are now mere pygmies compared with their former selves, is well known. What their destructive power must have been when their volume was many times greater than now may be judged from the moraines along their former channels. Some of these ridges are hundreds of feet in height. As you go to the Mountain from Tacoma, either by the Tacoma Eastern railway or the Nisqually canyon road, you find them everywhere above the prairies. They are largest on the north side of the Mountain, because there the largest glaciers have been busy. Many of them, on all sides, are covered with forests that must be centuries old.

Even now, diminished as they are, the glaciers are fast transporting the Mountain toward the sea. Wherever a glacier skirts a cliff, it is cutting into its side, as it cuts into its own bed below. From the overhanging rocks, too, debris falls as a result of "weathering." The daily ebb and flow of frost and heat help greatly to tear down the cliffs. Thus marginal moraines built of the debris begin to form, on the ice, far up the side of the peak. As the glacier advances, driven by its weight and the resistless ma.s.s of snow above, it is often joined by another glacier, bringing its own marginal moraines. Where the two meet, a medial moraine results. (See ill.u.s.trations, pp. 68 and 77.) Some medial moraines are many feet high. Trees are found growing on them. In Switzerland houses are built upon them. Often the debris which they transport, as the ice carries them forward, includes rocks as big as a s.h.i.+p.

[Ill.u.s.tration: One of the bedrooms at Camp Muir.]

[Ill.u.s.tration {p.084}: A perilous position on the edge of a great creva.s.se. Cowlitz Glacier, near end of Cathedral Rocks.]

A glacier's flow varies from a hundred to a thousand feet or more a year, depending upon {p.085} its volume, its width, and the slope of its bed. As the decades pa.s.s, its level is greatly lowered by the melting of the ice. More and more, earth and rocks acc.u.mulate upon the surface, as it travels onward, and are scattered over it by the rains and melting snow. At last, in its old age, when far down its canyon, the glacier is completely hidden, save where creva.s.ses reveal the ice.

Only at its snout, where it breaks off, as a rule, in a high wall of ice, do we realize how huge a volume and weight it must have, far above toward its sources, or why so many of the creva.s.ses on the upper ice fields seem almost bottomless.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Climbing the "Chute," west side of Gibraltar. Here the guides cut steps in the ice.]

These hints of the almost inconceivable ma.s.s of a glacier, with its millions of millions of tons, suggest how much of the Mountain has already been whittled and planed away. But here we may do better than speculate. The original surface of the peak is clearly indicated by the tops of the great rocks which have survived the glacial sculpturing. These rise from one to two thousand feet above the glaciers, which are themselves several thousand feet in depth. The best known of them is the point formed by Gibraltar and the ridges that stretch downward from it, Cowlitz Cleaver and Cathedral Rocks, making a great inverted V. Eastward of this, another V with its apex toward the summit, is called Little Tahoma; and beyond, still another, Steamboat Prow, forming the tip of "The Wedge."

Spines of rock like these are found on all sides of the peak. They help us to estimate its greater circ.u.mference and bulk, before the glaciers had chiseled so deep.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Looking from top of Gibraltar to the Summit. Elevation of camera, 12,300 feet. In distance is seen the rim of the crater. The route to this is a steady climb, with 2,000 feet of ascent in one mile of distance. Many detours have to be made to avoid creva.s.ses. Note the big creva.s.se stretching away on right--a "Bergschrund," as the Swiss call a break where one side falls below the other. The stratification on its side shows in each layer a year's snow, packed into ice.]