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 make hereabouts is to Mount
Rainier, to climb to the top of its icy crown. The mountain is very
high[29], 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.
[Illustration: MOUNT RAINIER FROM THE SODA SPRINGS]
Last summer I gained the summit from the south side, in a day and a
half from the timberline, 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 five 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
yellowjacket 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 Cañon, 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
cañon 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 cañon, 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_[30]; 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, new-born 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
campfires, 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 timberline 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 mountains 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
the mountains than on their 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.