Up the Huntington Head Wall
Luncheon over, the two men packed their knapsacks again, while Art put
some dehydrated spinach in a pot to soak for supper. He covered the pot
carefully, and stood it in the ashes of the fire, where it would get
the heat from the rock, even though the fire was put out. Then falling
into line behind the two men, the boys and Mr. Rogers started off,
apparently going backward away from the mountain down the path toward
Crystal Cascades and the Glen road.
“We just came up here,” the tall man said. “Came out of our way a bit
to see the shelter camp, as I want to build one like it near my home.”
“So do we,” said the Scouts.
The two men walked very fast, so that the boys had hard work to keep up
with them. They were evidently trained mountain climbers. After half a
mile of descent, they swung to the left, by the Raymond Path, and after
a quarter of a mile of travel toward the northeast, they swung still
again to the left, up the Huntington Ravine Trail, and headed back
almost directly at right angles, toward the northwest, where the cone
of Washington was, though it could not be seen. The path now ascended
again, rather rapidly, and the Scouts puffed along behind the tall man
and his stout companion, who walked just about as fast up-hill as they
did down.
“Say!” called Peanut, “is there a fire in the ravine?”
The tall man laughed. “Sure,” he said. “Four alarms!”
A mile or more of climbing brought them into the ravine. It was not so
large as Tuckerman’s, and it had no lake embosomed in its rocky depths,
but in some ways it was an even wilder and more impressive spot. On
the right, to the east, the cliff wall rose up much steeper than in
Tuckerman’s, to Nelson’s Crag. On the west, also, the wall was almost
perpendicular, while the jagged and uneven head wall, which did not
form the beautiful amphitheatre curve of Tuckerman’s head wall, and had
no snow arch at its base, looked far harder to climb.
“Wow!” said Peanut. “You win. I don’t want to climb here.”
“Why, it’s easy. You can climb where other folks have,” said the stout
man, with a wink. “Folks have climbed all three of these cliffs.”
“That one to the left?” asked Peanut.
“Sure,” said the man.
“What with, an aeroplane?”
“With hobnail boots,” said the other.
“I guess they had pretty good teeth and finger nails, also,” Frank put
in.
A half mile more, and the trail ended at a great mass of debris and
broken rocks piled up in the shape of a fan at the base of the head
wall.
“This is called the Fan,” said the stout man. “Here’s where the job
begins. Goodbye, boys.”
“Oh, let’s go up a way!” cried Art. “If they can do it, we can.”
“Sure,” said Peanut, as he saw the two men begin to climb carefully
over the broken fragments of the Fan.
“Oh, please!” the rest cried.
“Well, just a short way,” Mr. Rogers reluctantly consented, “if you’ll
agree to come down when I give the order. We have no ropes, and we are
none of us used to rock climbing. I won’t take the risk. If we had
ropes and proper spiked staffs, it would be different.”
The Scouts, with a shout, started up behind the two men, who had now
ceased their rapid walking, and were going very slowly and carefully.
The boys soon found out why. The footing on the rocky debris of the Fan
was extremely treacherous, and you had to keep your eyes on every step,
and test your footing.
About fifty yards before the top of the Fan was reached, the two
climbers ahead turned to the right, and made their way along a shelf
on the ledge which they called a “lead,” toward a patch of scrub. One
by one, the boys followed them, using extreme caution on the narrow
shelf. At the patch of scrub, they could look on up the head wall, and
see that the mass of rocks which made the Fan had been brought down by
frost and water in a landslide from the top, and made a gully all the
way to the summit. To climb the wall, you had to use this gully. It
looked quite hopeless, but the stout man started right up, the tall man
following him, zigzagging from one lead, or shelf, to another. The boys
followed.
“Gee,” said Peanut, “wish it hadn’t rained so lately. These rocks are
slippery. And I don’t like walking with the ground in my face all the
time.”
“I think it’s fun,” said Art.
“Me, too,” said Frank. “But I don’t like to look back, though.”
They followed two or three leads up the gully, till they were perhaps
a hundred or a hundred and fifty feet above the floor of the ravine
below. Then Mr. Rogers, looking up, saw Peanut, in the lead, looking
about for the next lead, and, after finding it, trying with his short
legs to straddle the gap between it and the spot where he stood. His
foot slipped, and if Art hadn’t been firmly braced right behind him,
so that he threw his shoulder under, Peanut would have fallen off.
“Here’s where we stop!” said the Scout Master.
Peanut was rather white with the sudden shock of slipping. Still, he
looked longingly up the gully, toward the two climbers above, and said,
“Aw, no, let’s go on a little further!”
“Not a step--remember your promise,” Mr. Rogers declared.
The boys turned reluctantly, and started down. They found it far harder
than going up. Going up, you didn’t see that almost sheer drop below
you. But going the other way, you had to see it at every step, and it
made you constantly realize how easy it would be to fall.
Lou grew very pale, and paused on a wide bit of shelf. “I’m dizzy,” he
said. “Let me stand here a minute. I can’t help it. Makes me dizzy to
look down.”
Frank was directly in front of him below.
“You keep braced after every step, Frank,” said the Scout Master, “and
let Lou take his next step to you each time before you take another.
Better now, Lou? You’ll be all right. Just keep your eye on your feet,
and don’t look off.”
They started down once more, and after at least fifteen minutes reached
the Fan in safety and then the floor of the ravine. Lou sat down
immediately looking, as Peanut said, “some seasick.”
“I guess I was never cut out for rock climbing,” poor Lou declared. “I
wouldn’t have gone, and worried you, Mr. Rogers, if I’d known it would
make me dizzy like that.”
“You’d probably get used to it,” the Scout Master answered, “but I
guess we’ll not experiment any more just now, where there’s no path.
Look, our friends are almost up.”
The boys, who had forgotten the two men, turned and saw them far above,
working carefully toward the summit of the wall. They shouted, and
waved their hats, and the men waved back, though the Scouts could hear
no voices.
“Gee, and folks have climbed those side walls, too, eh?” said Peanut.
“Believe me, real mountain climbing is some work!”
“It is, surely,” Mr. Rogers said. “But in the Alps, of course, people
go roped together, and if one falls, the rest brace and the rope holds
him. How would you like to climb that gully if it was all ice and snow
instead of rock, and you had to cut steps all the way with an ice ax,
for ten thousand feet?”
“Say, there’d have to be a pretty big pile of twenty dollar gold pieces
waiting at the top,” answered Peanut.
“Oh, get out,” said Art. “That isn’t what makes folks climb such
places. It’s the fun of getting where nobody ever got before--just
saying, ‘You old cliff, you can’t stump me!’ isn’t it, Mr. Rogers?”
“About that, I guess,” the Scout Master replied. “There’s some
fascination about mountain climbing which makes men risk their lives
at it all over the globe, every year, on cliffs beside which this one
would look like a canoe beside the Mauretania. I’m glad we’ve had a
taste of real climbing this afternoon, anyhow, to see what it’s like.
Look, the men have reached the top, and are waving good-bye.”
The boys waved back, and as the men disappeared from sight, they
themselves moved slowly down the trail, toward the Raymond Path,
looking up with a new respect at the walls on either side, and
speculating how they could be climbed. Consulting the Appalachian
Mountain Club guide book, they found no description of how to get
up the west wall, but the ascent of the eastern wall, to Nelson’s
Crag, which was called “the most interesting rock climb in the White
Mountains,” was described briefly. The Scouts easily identified the
gully up which the ascent must be made, but nobody seemed very eager to
make it.
“No, sir,” said Peanut, “not for me, till I’ve had more practice on
cliff work, and have bigger hobnails in my shoes, and can keep right on
up.”
“Still,” said Frank, “people who go up places like that in the Alps
have to come down again.”
“Sure they do,” Peanut replied, “but they’re used to it. The older I
grow, the more I realize it doesn’t pay to tackle a job till you’re up
to it.”
“Hear Grandpa talk!” laughed Frank. “You’d think he was fifty-three.”
“He’s talking horse sense, though,” the Scout Master put in. “When we
get home, we’ll go over to the cliffs on Monument Mountain some day,
with a rope, and get some practice. As a matter of fact, those cliffs,
though they are only two hundred feet high, are steeper than these
here, and you haven’t any gully to go up, either. We’ll get some Alpine
work right at home.”
“I’ll stay at the bottom, and catch you when you fall off,” said Lou,
with a rather crooked smile. “Gee, to think I’d go dizzy like a girl!”
“Forget it, Lou,” Peanut cheered him. “’Twasn’t your fault, any more’n
getting seasick.”
The afternoon shadows were all across Tuckerman’s Ravine when the
boys once more reached the camp. It was not yet five o’clock, and out
behind them the green summits of Carter and Wildcat and Moriah across
the Glen, and all the peaks to the south and east, were bathed in full
sunlight; but down in the great hole of the ravine the shadow of Boott
Spur had risen half-way up the east wall toward the Lion’s Head, and it
seemed like twilight.
“Makes me want supper,” Frank laughed.
“I got an idea,” said Peanut. “Let’s take a loaf. Let’s just sit around
the camp-fire till supper, and do nothing.”
“Let’s cut our mileage on our staffs,” said Art.
“Hooray!”
Somebody lit the fire, for already the twilight chill was creeping down
from the snow-bank, and Art put the pot of dehydrated spinach on to
simmer. Then everybody got out his knife and cut mileage.
“Only nine miles for yesterday!” said Art. “And think of the work we
did.”
“One mile against that hurricane is about equal to fifteen on the
level, I guess,” said Peanut. “Shall we call it eight plus fifteen?”
“You can, if you want to be a nature fakir,” Rob answered. “What’s the
total to-day? Who’s got the guide book?”
“Let’s see,” said Frank, turning the pages. “Two miles from the summit
to the Lakes of the Clouds, half a mile back to Boott Spur Trail, from
the junction with the Crawford Path over the spur to here, two and a
half miles--that’s five. Then from here to the snow arch and back, one
and a half--six and a half. Then a quarter of a mile to Raymond Path,
half a mile to Huntington Trail, two miles to the Fan; double it and
you get five miles and a half. That makes twelve miles, not counting
our climb of the head wall, or what we’ll do later to-day.”
“Guess we’ll not do much more,” said Peanut.
“Sure, we’ll walk up the ravine and see the snow arch by moonlight.
Add a mile and a half more,” said Art. “Grand total, thirteen and a
half. Golly, you can get fairly tired doing thirteen miles on Mount
Washington, can’t you?”
“And tolerably hungry,” said Frank. “That spinach smells good to me.”
“We’re going to have bacon, and an omelet, and spinach, and tea, and
flapjacks,” said Art. “Doesn’t that sound good?”
“Well, go ahead and get ’em ready,” Peanut said, flopping backward upon
the old hemlock boughs in the shelter, and immediately closing his eyes.
Nobody did nor said much for the next hour. There came one of those
lazy lulls which hit you once in so often when you are tramping, and
you just naturally lie back and take life easy, half asleep, half
awake. It was half-past five, and getting dusky in the ravine, when
suddenly a hermit thrush in the firs right behind the cabin emitted a
peal of song, so startling in its nearness and beauty that every one of
the six dozers roused with a start.
“Say, that’s some Caruso!” exclaimed Peanut. He rubbed his eyes, and
added, “What’s the matter with you, Art? Where’s supper? You’re fired!”
Art laughed, and jumped out of the shelter, giving orders as he went.
“Water, Lou. Rob and Frank, more wood. Peanut, you lazy stiff, get out
the bacon and light the lantern. Mr. Rogers, more boughs for the beds.”
“Yes, sir,” the others laughed, as they scattered quickly on their
errands.
It was dark when supper was ready, and outside of the cozy shelter
of the cabin and the great boulder facing it, with the fire burning
briskly, it was cold. The boys had all put on their sweaters. But the
boulder threw the warmth of the fire back under the lean-to, and they
sat along the edge of it, their plates on their laps, the fragrance of
new steeped tea in their nostrils, and of sizzling bacon, and made a
meal which tasted like ambrosia. The spinach was an especial luxury,
for this time it had soaked long enough to be soft and palatable. Their
only regret was that Art hadn’t cooked more of it.
“Let’s soak some over night, and have it for breakfast,” Peanut
suggested, amid hoots of derision from the rest.
“We’ll have fresh bread, though,” said Art. “I’m going to bake some in
a tin box somebody has left here in a corner of the hut.”
“How’ll you make bread without yeast?” asked Rob.
Art produced a little sack of baking powder from his pack. “With this,
and powdered milk, and powdered egg,” he answered. “You make me up a
good fire of coals, and I’ll show you.”
He mixed the dough while the rest were clearing up the supper things,
greased his tin box (after it had been thoroughly washed with boiling
water) with bacon fat, and put the dough in to rise. “I’ll leave it
half an hour to raise,” he said, “and go with you fellows up to see the
snow arch. Then I’ve got to come back and bake it.”
It was moonlight when they set out for the head of the ravine, but the
light was not strong enough to make the path easy, nor to take away
the sense of gigantic black shadows towering up where the walls ought
to be. Peanut tried shouting, to get an echo, but his voice sounded
so small and foolish in this great, yawning hole of shadows in the
mountainside, that he grinned rather sheepishly, and shut up.
The “baby glacier,” as Rob called the snow-drift, was like a white
shadow at the foot of the head wall. They could hear the brook tinkling
beneath it, but not so loud as by day. When the sun goes down, the
melting stops to a very considerable extent. And it was very cold near
the icy bank. The boys shivered, and turned back toward camp.
“We’ll go with you, Art, and see you bake that bread,” said Rob.
But they didn’t. While Art went on, the rest made a side trip in to
Hermit Lake, to see the reflections of the moon and stars in the glassy
water. Not one, but a dozen hermit thrushes were singing now in the
thickets of fir. It was lonesome, and cold, but very beautiful here,
and the bird songs rang out like fairy clarions.
“This is as lonely as the Lake of the Dismal Swamp,” Rob remarked, “and
as beautiful.”
“It’s a heap sight colder, though,” said Peanut, shivering.
Back in camp, they found Art with his tin of bread dough propped on
edge in front of a great bed of coals, with coals banked behind it and
on the sides. The others kicked off their shoes and stockings, put on
their heavy night socks, rolled up in their blankets under the lean-to,
and, propped upon their elbows, watched Art tending his bread, while
they talked in low tones.
One by one the voices died away to silence. Finally Rob and Mr. Rogers
were the only ones awake. Then Mr. Rogers asked Rob a question, and got
no answer. He smiled.
“Well, Art,” he said, “all the rest seem to think you can get
that bread baked without their help. I guess I can trust you, too.
Good-night.”
“Good-night,” said Art. “They’ll be glad to eat it in the morning,
though!”
But Mr. Rogers didn’t reply.