The Mountain that was 'God' Part 7

Going to the summit by this route, the important thing is to pa.s.s Gibraltar early, before the sun starts the daily shower of icicles and rocks from the cliff over the narrow trail (see p. 83). This is the most dangerous point, but no lives have been lost here. Everywhere, of course, caution is needed, and strict obedience to the {p.117} guide.

Once up the steep flume caused by the melting of the ice where it borders the rock (p. 85), the climber threads his way among the creva.s.ses and snow-mounds for nearly two miles, until the crater is reached (pp. 86, 88, 89).

[Ill.u.s.tration: Coasting in Moraine Park in the August suns.h.i.+ne.]

The east-side route (p. 100) involves less danger, perhaps, but it is a longer climb, with no resting places or wind-breaks. It has been used less, because it is farther from Paradise Valley. Starting from a night's encampment on the Wedge (p. 97), parties descend to White glacier, and, over its steep incline of dazzling ice, gain the summit in eight or nine hours.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Sunset on Crater Lake, north of Spray Park, with the Mountain in distance.]

The first attempt to scale the Mountain was made in 1857 by Lieutenant (later General) A. V. Kautz. There is no foundation for the claim sometimes heard that Dr. W. F. Tolmie, Hudson's Bay Company agent at Fort Nisqually, who made a botanizing trip to the lower slopes in 1833, attempted the peak. Lieutenant Kautz, with two companions from fort Steilacoom, climbed the arete between the glacier now named after him and the Nisqually glacier, but fearing a night on the summit, and knowing nothing of the steam caves in the crater, he turned back when probably at the crest of the south peak. Writing in the _Overland Monthly_ for May, 1875, he says that, "although there were points higher yet, the {p.120} Mountain spread out comparatively flat,"

having the form of "a ridge perhaps two miles in length, with an angle about half-way, and depressions between the angle and each end of the ridge, which gave the summit the appearance of three small peaks."

[Ill.u.s.tration {p.118}: Copyright, 1909, By Asahel Curtis. Amphitheatre of Carbon Glacier, the most noteworthy example of glacial sculpture upon the Mountain. It is nearly three miles wide. No other glacier has cut so deeply into the side of the peak. The Carbon was once two glaciers, separated by a ridge, of which a remnant is still seen in the huge spine of rock extending down from Liberty Cap.]

[Ill.u.s.tration {p.119}: Photo By Lea Bronson. Copyright, 1909, By P. V.

Caesar. Avalanche falling on Willis Wall, at head of Carbon Glacier amphitheatre. The cliff, up to the snow cap on the summit, is more than 4,000 feet high and nearly perpendicular. Avalanches fall every day, but this picture of a big one in action is probably unique.

Willis Wall was named for Bailey Willis, the geologist.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Copyright, 1909, By A. H. Waite. Birth of Carbon River, with part of Willis Wall visible in distance. The great height of this ice front appears on noting the man near the river.]

It was not until August 17, 1870, thirteen years after Kautz's partial victory, that the Mountain was really conquered. This was by P. B. Van Trump of Yelm and Hazard Stevens, son of the first governor of Was.h.i.+ngton, who had distinguished himself in the Civil War, and was then living at Olympia as a Federal revenue officer. Each of these pioneers on the summit has published an interesting account of how they got there, General Stevens in the _Atlantic Monthly_ for November, 1876, and Mr. Van Trump in the second volume of _Mazama_. In Stevens's article, "The Ascent of Takhoma," his acquaintance with the Indians of the early territorial period, gives weight to this note:

Tak-ho-ma or Ta-ho-ma among the Yakimas, Klickitats, Puyallups, Nisquallys and allied tribes is the generic term for mountain, used precisely as we use the word "Mount," as Takhoma Wynatchie, or Mount Wynatchie. But they all designate Rainier simply as Takhoma, or The Mountain, just as the mountain men used to call it "Old He."

Sluiskin, an Indian celebrity whom they employed as a guide, led the young men the longest and hardest way, taking them over the Tatoosh mountains instead of directly up the Nisqually and Paradise canyons.

From the summit of that range, they at last looked across the Paradise valley, and beheld the great peak "directly in front, filling up the whole view with an indescribable aspect of magnitude {p.121} and grandeur." Below them lay "long green ridges projected from the snow belt, with deep valleys between, each at its upper end forming the bed of a glacier."

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Mountaineers building trail on the lateral moraine of Carbon Glacier. Without such trails, the "tenderfoot" would fare badly.]

Descending from the Tatoosh, the explorers camped near a waterfall which they named Sluiskin Falls, in honor of their guide. Sluiskin now endeavored, in a long oration, to dissuade them from their folly.

Avalanches and winds, he said, would sweep them from the peak, and even if they should reach the summit, the awful being dwelling there would surely punish their sacrilege. Finding his oratory vain, he chanted a dismal dirge till late in the night, and next morning took solemn leave of them.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Mountaineers lunching in a creva.s.se on White Glacier, 13,000 feet above the sea, on their ascent in 1909. Even Little Tahoma, on the left, is far below.]

Stevens describes their ascent by the now familiar path, over Cowlitz Cleaver and past Gibraltar. From the top of that "vast, square rock embedded in the side of the Mountain," they turned west over the upper snow-fields, and thus first reached the southern peak, which they named "Peak Success," to commemorate their victory.

This is a long, exceedingly sharp, narrow ridge, springing out from the main dome for a mile into mid-air. On the right, the snow descended in a steep, unbroken sheet into the tremendous {p.124} basin which lies between the southern and the northern peaks, and which is enclosed by them as by two mighty arms.[6]

Sheltered behind a pinnacle of ice, we fastened our flags upon the Alpine staffs, and then, standing erect in the furious blast, waved them in triumph with three cheers.

[Footnote 6: See ill.u.s.tration, page 14.]

[Ill.u.s.tration {p.122}: Looking southeast from Mt. Rose, above Eunice Lake, with Mother Mountains on left, and Spray Park in distance on right of center. Shows outposts of alpine firs and hemlocks on the timber line.]

[Ill.u.s.tration {p.123}: Looking south from Mt. Rose, across Crater Lake to North Mowich Glacier and Mowich Ridge. This was taken from near the same place as the preceding view, and eight miles from the Mountain.

Eagle Cliff, a celebrated view point, is on the right, overlooking Mowich canyon.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Copyright, 1909, By Asahel Curtis. Looking up Mowich Valley. One of the densely wooded regions in the National Park that need trails as a means of protection against fires.]

It was now five o'clock. They had spent eleven hours in the ascent, and knowing it would be impossible to descend before nightfall, they saw nothing to do but burrow in the loose rock and spend the night as best they could. The middle peak, however, was evidently higher, and they determined first to visit it. Climbing the long ridge and over the rim of the crater, they found jets of steam and smoke issuing from vents on the north side.

Never was a discovery more welcome! Hastening forward, we both exclaimed, as we warmed our benumbed extremities over one of Pluto's fires, that here we would pa.s.s the night, secure against freezing to death, at least.... A deep cavern extended under the ice. Forty feet within its mouth we built a wall of stones around a jet of steam. Inclosed within this shelter, we ate our lunch and warmed ourselves at our natural register. The heat at the orifice was too great to bear for more than an instant. The steam wet us, the smell of sulphur was nauseating, and the cold was so severe that our clothes froze stiff when turned away from the heated jet. We pa.s.sed a miserable night, freezing on one side and in a hot steam-sulphur bath on the other.

In October of the same year, S. F. Emmons and A. D. Wilson, of the Geological Survey, reached the snow-line by way of the Cowlitz valley and glacier, and ascended the peak over the same route which Stevens and Van Trump had discovered and which has since been the popular path to Crater Peak. The Kautz route, by the cleaver between Kautz and Nisqually glaciers, has recently been found {p.125} practicable, though extremely difficult. In 1891 and again the next summer, Mr. Van Trump made an ascent along the ridge dividing the Tahoma glaciers. In 1905, Raglan Glasc.o.c.k and Ernest Dudley, members of the Sierra Club party visiting the Mountain, climbed the Kautz glacier, and finding their way barred by ice cascades, reached the summit by a thrilling rock climb over the cliff above the South Tahoma glacier. This precipice (see p. 37) they found to be a series of rock terraces, often testing the strength and nerve of the climbers. In _Sunset Magazine_ for November, 1895, Mr. Glasc.o.c.k has told the story of their struggle and reward.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Copyright, 1909, By Asahel Curtis. Spray Falls, a splendid scenic feature of the north side, where it drops more than five hundred feet from the Spray Park table-land into the canyon of North Mowich Glacier.]

Here the basalt terminated, and a red porous formation began, which crumbled in the hand. This part of the cliff lay a little out from the perpendicular, and there was apparently no way of surmounting it. I looked at my watch. It was 4:15. In a flash the whole situation came to me. It would be impossible to return and cross the creva.s.ses before dark. We could not stay where we were.

Already the icy wind cut to the bone.

"We must make it. There is no going back," I said to Dudley. I gave him the ice ax, and started to the ascent of the remaining cliff. I climbed six feet, and was helpless. I could not get back, nor go forward. One of my feet swung loose, and I felt my hands slipping. Then I noticed above me, about six or eight inches to my right a sharp, projecting rock. It was here or never. I gave a swing, and letting go my feet entirely, I reached the rock. It held, and I was swinging by my hands over a two-hundred-foot void. I literally glued myself to the face of the rock, searching frantically for k.n.o.b or creva.s.se with my feet. By sheer luck, my toe found a small projection, and from here I gradually worked myself up until I came to a broken cleft in the cliff where it was possible to brace myself and lower the rope to Dudley. This last ascent had only been fifteen feet, and, in reality, had taken but three or four minutes, but to me it seemed hours.

At 7:45, we reached the summit of the south peak. Here we stopped to look down on Camp Sierra. Long shadows spread their mantle across the glaciers, and in the east lay the phantom {p.126} mountain--the shadow of Rainier. A flash of light attracted our attention. We saw that our companions had been watching our progress.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A rescue from a creva.s.se.]

The White glacier route on the east side was first used in 1885 by a party from Snohomish. The same glacier was traversed by the Willis-Russell party in 1896. The first woman to make the ascent was Miss Fay Fuller, of Tacoma, in 1890, over the Gibraltar route.

The north and northwest sides, as I have said, are as yet unconquered.

Some members of the Mountaineers have a theory that the summit can be reached from Avalanche Camp by climbing along the face of Russell Peak, and so around to the upper snowfield of Winthrop glacier. They have seen mountain goats making the trip, and propose to try it themselves. Whether they succeed or not, this trail will never be popular, owing to daily landslides in the loose rock of the cliff.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Returning from the summit. The Mountaineers ending a memorable outing in 1909. Winthrop Glacier in foreground, Sluiskin Mountains in distance.]

In 1897 and 1905, the Mazama Club of Portland sent parties to the Mountain, each making the ascent over the Gibraltar route. The Sierra Club of California was also represented in the latter year by a delegation of climbers who took the same path to the summit. In 1909, the Mountaineers Club of Seattle spent several weeks on the Mountain, entering the National Park by the Carbon trail, camping in Moraine Park on the north side, exploring Spray Park and the Carbon glacier, crossing Winthrop glacier to the Wedge, and thence climbing White glacier to the summit. Many members of the Appalachian Club and American Alpine Clubs and of European organizations of similar purpose have climbed to Crater Peak, either in company with the Western clubs named, or in smaller parties. Noteworthy accounts of these ascents have been printed in the publications of the several clubs, as well as in magazines of wider circulation, and have done much to make the Mountain known to the public. The princ.i.p.al articles are cited in a bibliographical note at the end of this volume.

[Ill.u.s.tration {p.128}: Looking down from Ptarmigan Ridge into the Canyon of the North Mowich Glacier and up to the cloud-wreathed Peak.]

{p.129} [Ill.u.s.tration: Copyright, 1909, By Asahel Curtis. View looking west across Moraine Park and Carbon Glacier to Mother Mountains.]

V.

THE FLORA OF THE MOUNTAIN SLOPES.

By PROF. J. B. FLETT.[7]

[Footnote 7: Prof. Flett knows the Mountain well. He has spent many summers in its "parks," has climbed to its summit four times, has visited all its glaciers, and has made a remarkable collection of its flowers. In addition to the chapter on the botany of the National Park, this book is indebted to him for several of its most valuable ill.u.s.trations.]

Of all the fire-mountains which, like beacons, once blazed along the Pacific Coast, Mount Rainier is the n.o.blest in form. Its ma.s.sive white dome rises out of its forests, like a world by itself. Above the forests there is a zone of the loveliest flowers, fifty miles in circuit and nearly two miles wide, so closely planted and luxuriant that it seems as if Nature, glad to make an open s.p.a.ce between woods so dense and ice so deep, were economizing the precious ground, and trying to see how many of her darlings she can get together in one mountain wreath--daisies, anemones, columbines, erythroniums, larkspurs, etc., among which we wade knee-deep and waist-deep, the bright corollas in myriads touching petal to petal. Altogether this is the richest subalpine garden I ever found, a perfect floral elysium.--_John Muir: "Our National Parks."_

No one can visit the Mountain without being impressed by its wild flowers. These are the more noticeable because of their high color--a common characteristic of flowers in alpine regions. As we visit the upland meadows at a season when the spring flowers of the lowlands have gone to seed, we find there another spring season with flowers in still greater number and more varied in color.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Senecio.]

The base of the Mountain up to an alt.i.tude of about 4,000 feet is covered by a somber forest of evergreens composed of the white and black pines; Douglas, Lovely and n.o.ble firs; the white cedar; spruce, and hemlock. There are found also several deciduous trees--large-leafed maple, {p.130} white alder, cottonwood, quaking aspen, vine and smooth-leafed maples, and several species of willows. Thus the silva of the lower slopes is highly varied. The forest is often interrupted by the glacial canyons, and, at intervals, by fire-swept areas.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A 14-foot Fir, near Mineral Lake.]