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 pass 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.
[Illustration: "Sunshine." View of the Mountain from above Sluiskin
Falls at 3 P.M.]
[Illustration: "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
class. 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.
[Illustration {p.071}: Looking down on Nisqually Glacier from top of
Gibraltar Rock, with storm clouds veiling the Mountain.]
[Illustration: 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.
[Illustration: Copyright, 1897, By E. S. Curtis. Miss Fay Fuller
exploring a crevasse.]
[Illustration {p.073}: Copyright 1906, By A. H. Barnes. Ice Cave,
Paradise Glacier.]
Questions like this, involving conflict between the interests of a
class and the vital needs of the Park as a public institution,
{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 institutions 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.
[Illustration: 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
indorsement 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 passage of
the bill.
[Illustration {p.076}: Copyright, 1897, By E. S. Curtis. Gibraltar and
its Neighbors, showing a mile of the deeply crevassed 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}
[Illustration: 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 masses 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 assuming the dignity and
interest of a patriarch of the mountains.
[Illustration: 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.
[Illustration {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.]
[Illustration: 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.]
[Illustration: 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.
[Illustration: Climbers preparing for a night at Camp Muir (altitude
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.]
[Illustration: 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. Assuming
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 circumference 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 névé fields of the summit, but
within the wedges of rock which the greater glaciers have left
pointing upward on the higher slopes.
[Illustration: Mazama Club on Cowlitz Chimneys, looking across the
ice-stream of the Cowlitz Glacier.]
[Illustration: 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.
[Illustration: 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 mass 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.
[Illustration: 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 mass of snow above, it is often
joined by another glacier, bringing its own marginal moraines. Where
the two meet, a medial moraine results. (See illustrations, 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 ship.
[Illustration: One of the bedrooms at Camp Muir.]
[Illustration {p.084}: A perilous position on the edge of a great
crevasse. 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 pass, its level is greatly lowered by the
melting of the ice. More and more, earth and rocks accumulate 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 crevasses 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 crevasses on the upper
ice fields seem almost bottomless.
[Illustration: Climbing the "Chute," west side of Gibraltar. Here the
guides cut steps in the ice.]
These hints of the almost inconceivable mass 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 circumference and bulk, before the
glaciers had chiseled so deep.
[Illustration: 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 crevasses. Note the
big crevasse 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.]
{p.086} But they do even more. Wherever lava flows occurred in the
building of the Mountain, strata formed; and such stratification is
clearly seen at intervals on the sides of the great rocks just
mentioned. Its incline, of course, is that of the former surface. The
strata point upward--not toward the summit which we see, but far above
it. For this reason the geologists who have examined the arêtes most
closely are agreed that the peak has lost nearly two thousand feet of
its height. It blew its own head off!
Such explosive eruptions are among the worst vices of volcanoes. Every
visitor to Naples remembers how plainly the landscape north of
Vesuvius tells of a prehistoric decapitation, which left only a low,
broad platform, on the south rim of which the little Vesuvius that
many of us have climbed was formed by later eruptions, while a part of
the north rim is well defined in "Monte Somma." Similarly, here at
home, Mt. Adams and Mt. Baker are truncated cones, while, on the other
hand, St. Helens and Hood are still symmetrical.
Like Vesuvius, too, Rainier-Tacoma has built upon the plateau left
when it lost its head. Peak Success, overlooking Indian Henry's, and
Liberty Cap, the northern elevation, seen from Seattle and Tacoma, are
nearly three miles apart on the west side of the broad summit. These
are parts of the rim of the old crater. East of the line uniting them,
and about two miles from each, the volcano built up an elevation now
known as Crater Peak, comprising two small adjacent craters. These
burnt-out craters are now filled with snow, and where the rims touch,
a big snow-hill rises--the strange creature of eddying winds that
sweep up through the great flume cut by volcanic explosion and
glacial action in the west side of the peak. (See pp. 14, 27, and 52.)
[Illustration {p.087}: View South from Cowlitz Glacier: elevation,
8,000 feet. Seven miles away are the huge eastern peaks of the
Tatoosh. The Cascades beyond break in Cispus Pass, and rise, on the
left, to the glacier summits called Goat Peaks. The truncated cone of
Mt. Adams, more than forty miles away, crowns the sky-line.]
{p.088}
[Illustration: These views show the larger of the two comparatively
modern and small craters on the broad platform left by the explosion
which decapitated the Peak. Prof. Flett measured this crater, and
found it 1,600 feet from north to south, and 1,450 feet from east to
west. The other, much smaller, adjoins it so closely that their rims
touch. Together they form an eminence of 1,000 feet (Crater Peak), at
a distance of about two miles from North Peak (Liberty Cap) and South
Peak (Peak Success). At the junction of their rims is the great snow
hill (on right of view) called "Columbia's Crest." This is the actual
summit. The volcano having long been inactive, the craters are filled
with snow, but the residual heat causes steam and gases to escape in
places along their rims.]
[Illustration {p.089}]
This mound of snow is the present actual top. Believing it the highest
point in the United States south of Alaska, a party of climbers, in
1894, named it "Columbia's Crest." This was long thought to be the
Mountain's rightful distinction, for different computations by experts
gave various elevations ranging as high as 14,529 feet, with none
prior to 1902 giving less than 14,444 feet. Even upon a government map
published as late as 1907 the height is stated as 14,526 feet. In view
of this variety of expert opinion, the flattering name, not
unnaturally, has stuck, in spite of the fact that the government
geographers have now adopted, for the Dictionary of Altitudes, the
height found by the United States Geological Survey in 1902, 14,363
feet. That decision leaves the honor of being the loftiest peak
between Alaska and Mexico to Mt. Whitney in the California Sierra
(14,502 feet).
[Illustration: Steam Caves in one of the craters. The residual heat of
the extinct volcano causes steam and gases to escape from vents in the
rims of the two small craters. Alpinists often spend a night in the
caves thus formed in the snow.]
{p.089}
[Illustration: North Peak, named "Liberty Cap" because of its
resemblance to the Bonnet Rouge of the French Revolutionists.
Elevation, about 14,000 feet. View taken from the side of Crater Peak.
Distance, nearly two miles.]
The definitive map of the National Park which was begun last summer by
the Geological Survey, with Mr. Francois E. Matthes in charge, will
establish the elevations of all important landmarks in the Park. Among
these will be the Mountain itself. Whether this will add much, if
anything, to the current figure of the Dictionary is uncertain. In any
case, the result will not lessen the pride of the Northwest in its
great peak. A few feet of height signify nothing. No California
mountain masked behind the Sierra can vie in majesty with this lonely
pile that rises in stately grandeur from the shores of Puget Sound.
[Illustration {p.090}: Goat Peaks, glacier summits in the Cascades,
southeast of the Mountain. Elevation, about 8,000 feet, A branch of
the Cowlitz is seen flowing down from the glaciers above.]
[Illustration {p.091}: Copyright 1907, By W. P. Romans. Spray Park,
from Fay Peak, showing the beautiful region between the Carbon and
North Mowich Glaciers.]
{p.093}
[Illustration: Ice-bound Lake in Cowlitz Park, with top of
Little Tahoma in distance.]
[Illustration: Crevasses in Cowlitz Glacier, with waterfall dropping
from Cowlitz Park, over basaltic cliffs.]
The wide area which the Mountain thrusts far up into the sky is a
highly efficient condenser of moisture. Near to the Pacific as it is,
its broad summit and upper slopes collect several hundred feet of snow
each year from the warm Chinooks blowing in from the west. On all
sides this vast mass presses down, hardened into solid granular névé,
to feed the twelve primary glaciers. Starting eastward from Paradise
Valley, these principal ice-streams are: Cowlitz and Ingraham
glaciers; White or White River glacier, largest of all; Winthrop
glacier, named in honor of Theodore Winthrop, in whose romance of
travel, "The Canoe and the Saddle," the ancient Indian name "Tacoma"
was first printed; Carbon, North and South Mowich, Puyallup, North and
South Tahoma, Kautz and Nisqually glaciers. The most important
secondary glaciers, or "interglaciers," rising within the great rock
wedges which I have described, are called Interglacier, Frying-Pan,
{p.094} Stevens, Paradise and Van Trump. All of these are of the true
Alpine type; that is, they are moving rivers of ice, as distinguished
from "continental glaciers," the ice caps which cover vast regions in
the Arctic and Antarctic.
[Illustration: Crossing a precipitous slope on White Glacier. Little
Tahoma in distance.]