Of course it is never agreeable to go camping; it is not convenient to
carry about with one bedsteads, chairs, bureaus, wash-stands, bath-tubs,
and such like plunder deemed essential to comfort. And then again it is
not comfortable to live out doors like a tramp. It is either too hot or
too cold, too dry or too wet,—that is for a certain large class of
human beings. They wonder why one will forego the comforts of our
civilized ways for those of the Ute. But perhaps we may get to the
solution of the problem further on.
It was dusty when our party left Idaho for a fifty-mile drive to Hot
Sulphur Springs. Of course it was dusty; the dust was in the road, in
our eyes and mouths, throats and lungs, just for our discomfort, and the
toll-road companies were never known to keep sprinklers. So we traveled
in a cloud for half an hour, then it began to rain. Of course it did;
the first rain-storm for three weeks; we got damp, then we forgot the
dust, and were doggedly satisfied that if pleasure had not been one of
our objects in going camping it would not have rained. We got to Empire;
it rained till dark, and everybody said the rainy season had begun in
earnest; that it was liable to keep on raining for three weeks to get
even with the “dry spell,” and we went to bed feeling very much
encouraged. There is an exasperating sententiousness about the mountain
weather prophet that prevails nowhere else on the globe, I verily
believe; when he tells you what the weather is, or is going to be, you
must believe him. You dare not even express a hope that he may be
mistaken. But even this gentry, one soon begins to believe, is essential
to comfort; the weather prophet is the means of agreeable
disappointment. Our weather prophet was the most entertaining old liar
that ever contributed to the misery of a tenderfoot or the mortification
of a moss-back. The sun never broke over the eastern hills more
gloriously than on the eventful next morning; he seemed to come up in a
spirit of exultation, as if aware that the prophet at Empire had been
maligning him. But the prophet was not overcome; far from it; the
appearance of the sun was a “weather breeder,” and the cheerful old
atmospheric vaticinator swore that before we could reach the summit of
the range it would and must rain, and snow and hail and freeze and thaw
and blow and the ——. We bade him good morning sadly, and took the road
with a determination to wrest comfort, if necessary, from the worst
“spell of weather” the range could boast.
The rain of the day before was the first element to lend its influence
to the day’s enjoyment; it had sweetened the air, if Colorado mountain
air is ever otherwise; it had laid the dust, and the road was a marvel
of excellence—for a toll road; it had sharpened the fragrance of the
pines, and the wild flowers, lacking in perfume, made amends by such a
wealth of beauty that one became lost in the multitude of bright colors.
We were a happy party that rode up through the Devil’s Gate to encounter
punishment. Leaving the magnificent mass of granite cliffs reaching a
thousand feet high, and wondering if he who should follow next would
experience the same degree of veneration for the mighty pile, we began
the ascent of Berthoud Pass. We did not climb; there is no climbing to
be done, except one escapes over a precipice, and has an ambition to get
back. Strolling leisurely along, the white-capped range would, from time
to time, reveal itself through the green of the pines, while to the left
of us plunged down from the snowy heights the beautiful mountain stream,
here not degraded and a satire on its name. Its banks are fringed with
rich-colored mosses and decked with flowers, and the beautiful firs,
waved by the gentle breeze, seem to be bowing an accompaniment to the
music of the crystal waters at their feet. As we go on, the sharp ridge
of Red Mountain comes into view, guarded on the east by a monster hill,
which none of our ingenious explorers, so generous in giving names, have
condescended to dignify with a title. Its broad base washed by the
rushing torrent, its sides clothed in a mantle of living green away up
to the sharp line which marks the limit of the timber growth, and yet on
and up the eye glances over the granite, with its azure background,
until the vast pile is diademed with a fleecy cloud. It is a noble
mountain, and involuntarily I took off my hat to it, wondering if the
civil engineers, explorers, and the like, had really the monopoly of the
love and veneration for the beautiful. Red Mountain! a carmine-colored
excrescence dignified with a name, and this overtopping evidence of
God’s handiwork, like a giant overlooking a pigmy, without anything to
distinguish it from its surroundings, except its own magnificence. Well,
that is enough.
But at this rate we will never get into that “infernal spell of weather”
we are seeking. Up the gorge on the right, toward the summit, an ominous
cloud begins to creep upon the blue, and we begin to think the prophet
will, after all, command respect, but are doomed to disappointment. As
the black mass rises over the summit we notice a rift in its center,
soon it widens, goes to the right and left, the blue expands, and we are
not deprived of a minute’s sunshine. We look down into the gorge and see
the beautiful stream dancing through the firs, so far below its breadth
is shrunk to a hand-span, looking now like an emerald ribbon flecked
with white, and its rude noise dies into a gentle murmur as a turn in
the road shuts it out from sight. On and up; disappointed about the
storm nearing the summit, reaching out for the snow and the Alpine
primrose, gorgeous in crimson and royal purple; finding the flowers, but
the snow, alas that has been gone this three weeks, except a
dirt-begrimed bushel or so a few rods from the station.
It is high noon, and, for the first time, I stand upon the “backbone of
the continent,” and a good deal of a backbone it is, here only eleven
thousand four hundred and odd feet high. There must have been trouble in
the neighborhood when the continent got its back up to this extent; the
agitation experienced in the framing and signing of the Declaration of
Independence was evidently trifling in comparison. I did not look down
into the Pacific, but saw where the waters start that go that way. Never
having seen any of them before, I took a mouthful, and from my
recollection of those on the Atlantic side I thought I detected a
resemblance. The mercury stood at 55° and we had lunch, taken with a
healthy appetite sharpened by a three miles walk in the pure light air.
Among the grand mountains of the snowy range to the north, I thought I
recognized at least one familiar peak, but there was considerable
difference of opinion in the party, including Gaskill, the only resident
on the summit. This lack of absolute certainty struck me as a little
extraordinary, because everybody is usually filled with correct
information, and a mountaineer by instinct; I sighed for a tenderfoot.
Lunch concluded, we continued on our way. About three miles by the road,
down the western slope, a pretty mountain brook comes tumbling down from
the range, and on the bank, surrounded by wild flowers, I noticed an
oblong heap of stones—the rude monument of an unfortunate Swede who
perished near by early in the spring of the previous year. Frank, our
driver, told us how the ill-fated Norseman had started with a companion
from Billy Cozzens’ at the head of the Park. They carried nothing save
their blankets slung over their shoulders. It was afternoon, and they,
had “struck out” for the summit, but were met by a blinding storm; how
they succeeded in making their way to within a couple of miles of their
destination and safety, when the unfortunate, exhausted and discouraged,
sank down into the huge drifts and to sleep; how the other, stronger and
more resolute, yet powerless to arouse his dying friend, floundered back
to a deserted cabin, built a fire and kept himself from freezing, unable
to procure assistance till the following day. But when the news reached
Cozzens’ there was no lack of quick and experienced effort, though they
felt, those strong hearts, as they labored on and up through the great
masses of snow, that they were going not to the rescue of a life. They
hoped he might have been wise and strong enough to burrow into the
drifts, but they found him with one arm clasping a small dead pine, just
where his companion had left him, covered partly by the white mantle
that had proved his death and his winding sheet. They who loved him best
would not have selected a more inviting spot for his sepulture than did
those strangers.
From this Frank drifted off to an adventure of his own and his cousin
Glenn, on this same range, a few winters before. They were both mere
boys, of sixteen and eighteen, “shoeing it,” each with a light pack, and
determined to make the head of the Park before sundown. With the mercury
rapidly going down with the sun, the lads started cheerfully over the
crust and had got near the spot where the cabin was built, when, by some
accident, one of Frank’s shoes snapped in two, and he plunged into the
drift. The loss of a snow shoe at such a time and place was a mishap
that was by no means trivial. It was simply impossible to go on; to
remain, of course, was almost certain death. The boys set their wits to
work, without shedding any tears. Fortunately, one of them had several
balls of sacking twine, which he had bought and was carrying into the
Park. Upon that slender thread hung the safety of one at least. Frank
laid down on the snow, to get as much surface as possible upon the
treacherous crust, and held on to the end of the string while his cousin
went on till it was all paid out. Then the cousin slipped off the shoes,
tied them to his end, Frank drew them up to himself, get on them, went
on down past his cousin, leaving him an end of the line. When he reached
his limit, he slipped off the shoes in turn, the cousin hauled them up,
and so alternating, they worked their way down to the foot of the range,
where the trail was partly broken.
“You bet, I was glad to see that trail,” he concluded, with a smile that
had something serious in it.
On down the glorious mountain road we make our way at a lively trot,
marking the increase in the volume of the Frazier as the range is left
behind. After descending some four thousand feet or more, we enter upon
an avenue over a mile in length, straight as an engineer can run a line,
and adorned on either side with stately pines, that keep off the heat.
At the other end we discern the comfortable cabin of Cozzens, and as we
emerge from the shelter of the trees the head of the Park is spread out
into a broad valley before us, guarded by low-lying hills, while here
and there against the clear blue sky looms up an occasional snow-capped
peak. Bright colors everywhere—the green of the meadow and the darker
shade of the pine, the silver-lined leaf of the white-trunked aspen, and
flowers countless as the stars, reposing tranquilly under the slanting
rays of the afternoon sun. A picture to defy the skill of the artist,
but to fill him with admiration.
We must remain over night; of course; because the team needs a rest, and
the twenty odd miles to our destination will be an easy day’s drive for
the morrow. And to stop means fresh trout for supper and breakfast, with
nice cream in the coffee, helped out with light bread and sweet butter;
perhaps an elk steak, or a tit-bit from a mule deer cooked to a turn—“a
righteous man regardeth the life of his beast.” Besides the fortieth
parallel is to be crossed, before we reach the Springs, and the
magnificence of that must be reserved for daylight inspection.
[Illustration]