Dumplin’ Tests the Strength of a Snow Cornice on Garfield Peak
Their friend the California camper and his party were up bright and
early. At least, they were up early. As Bennie woke up at their noisy
shouting, and listened to their conversation, he didn’t think they were
particularly bright.
“Oh, well, Irvin Cobb couldn’t make me laugh at half-past five in the
morning,” Dumplin’ said at breakfast. “I heard ’em, but I went to sleep
again. I just stayed awake long enough to hear whether they were talking
about their cli—ha! you didn’t catch me!—about the atmospheric
conditions of California.”
“Did they?” his father asked.
“Not’s I heard. One of ’em was pulling a merry jest. His idea of a joke,
I s’pose. He was throwing cold water on the ones that weren’t up.”
“Gee, I’d have killed him!” the doctor said. “Maybe they’ll be gone by
night. Well, what shall we do today? I don’t feel like going down to the
lake again till the trail is open. It will be done by tonight.”
“Let’s climb Garfield!”
“Good,” said Mr. Stone. “I’d like to get a movie of you all up on that
snow cap against the sky.”
“And I’m going to gather all the kinds of wild flowers I can, and
identify ’em from those mounted specimens in the hotel,” said Spider.
“Might’s well do some work for a botany honor medal, too.”
Bennie was looking up in the tree as Spider spoke.
“Look,” he said, “who’s your friend?”
“Who are your friends, you mean,” added Uncle Billy, also looking up.
Two large birds, fat and sleek, with gray and black plumage were hopping
nearer and nearer to the tents, apparently much excited.
“Hello!” cried Spider. “They are new ones on me. Say, aren’t they tame!”
Mr. Stone laughed. “Tame is the word. Everybody look the other way, and
pretend to pay no attention.”
They did so, and suddenly there was a flutter close by, a little peep, a
flap of wings, and one of the birds was right down on the box by the
stove that served as a kitchen table, and up in the tree again with half
a slice of bread in his bill.
“Well, I’ll be switched!” Bennie exclaimed. “Can you beat that! What are
they?”
“Ever heard of camp robbers?”
“Are _those_ camp robbers, eh? Canada jays is another name, isn’t it?
Well, I thought camp robbers were ugly birds. Those are beautiful.”
“They are beautiful, but now they’ve discovered the camps up here, we’ll
have to keep everything covered. They can’t take a hint worth a cent.”
“Let’s shoo ’em over to California’s camp,” laughed Bennie.
Presently they started off for Garfield.
“Hey, Uncle Bill, where’s the rope?” Bennie asked.
“Don’t need it today.”
“Aw, can’t we take it along and find a place to use it?”
“Nothing doing. We don’t carry any excess baggage out here, son.”
The climb up Garfield proved to be an easy one. The trail was clear of
snow for half the distance, and the rest of the short thousand feet was
over drifts that were neither difficult nor dangerous, till they reached
a little flat place a hundred feet short of the summit. Here a sheer
precipice confronted them, with the summit snow cap hanging out over it
like the cornice of a gigantic house roof.
Mr. Stone set up his camera some distance out from the cliff.
“Now, I want you all to go up there, around on the side, where the trail
goes, and come out into view on the left end of the top. Then walk in
single file, slowly, along the cornice to the right, and then move back
out of sight again. When you get to the top, don’t come into view till I
yell, ‘Shoot!’”
“You mean you want us to walk out on that snow that hangs over the
precipice, Pa?” Lester demanded.
“Sure, why not?”
“Well, if it breaks off with our weight, where do we go from there?”
“It won’t break. You don’t have to get right on the edge of it, of
course. But it would hold up a team of horses.”
“Yes, but will it hold up Dumplin’?” said Bennie.
[Illustration: The Boys Walking on the Snow Cornice of Garfield Peak.
(Enlarged from a Movie)]
“Come on, boys, let’s get this Pearl White stuff over,” the doctor
laughed.
They scrambled up around the side to the very peak, and waited till they
heard the signal. Then one by one they walked forward toward the edge.
The doctor led the way, and sounded with his alpenstock. He stopped five
feet short of the extreme edge, however, turned and walked along that
line, the rest following him holding their breaths, and half expecting
to go pitching down any instant. But they didn’t. The snow cornice was
many feet thick, and would probably have held up a far greater weight.
When they were out of the picture again, they looked around. The view
was tremendous, and the first one they had got from a high summit.
(Garfield is a shade over 8,000 feet.) To the south they saw the
glistening white snow cone of Mount McLaughlin, and then far, far away,
150 miles, floating almost like a cloud on the horizon, the great white
bulk of Mount Shasta in California, more than 14,000 feet high. To the
eastward, they looked out over the desert country of southeastern
Oregon, stretching for endless miles. North of them, they looked right
down for 2,000 feet into the blue caldera of Crater Lake. North of the
lake, beyond the farther rim, they could see Mount Thielsen, which
looked like a huge needle of lava sticking straight up into the air, and
beyond that the white pyramid of Diamond Peak. Everywhere near by, on
the outer slopes of the crater, they looked down into dark mysterious
forests marching up the ravines.
“Well, Bennie, is this big enough and wild enough for you?” the doctor
demanded.
“I never saw so much land all at once in my life,” said Bennie, “or such
a big hole in it. And to think I’ve seen old Shasta, way off in
California! This beats the old geography!”
“You loosed a larynxful then,” came from Dumplin’.
“Not very poetic, Dump, but true,” the doctor smiled.
The boys found the steepest drift on the descent, and tried to ski down
it on their boot soles, but they hit such a rate of speed that all three
of them toppled over, and landed at the bottom head over heels. After
they had reached the open trail once more, Spider cut away from the
path, and worked down the side slope, through the pumice drifts and the
tumbled piles of broken lava, gathering specimens of wild flowers. You
would hardly have supposed anything would grow in such unpromising
looking soil, but volcanic stuff rapidly breaks up into a soil rich in
chemical plant foods, especially potash, and soon his hands were full.
Bennie, who had followed him, began to help, and rapidly got interested
in the game of finding new varieties. It was a big bunch they finally
brought into camp, half an hour after the rest had reached home.
That afternoon Spider took his flowers and a note-book over to the
hotel, where a large case of mounted specimens is exhibited, and spent
two hours identifying them, and listing the names in his note-book, with
his specimens pressed between the leaves. Bennie bought some candy, and
a bunch of post-cards, and scribbled messages to his mother and father
and friends. Finally he came over to Spider.
“Gee whiz, you’re a studious one,” he said. “Wish I was. How do you get
that way?”
“I don’t know. I just can’t help being interested in birds and plants
and things like that. You’ve just got to find something you’re awfully
interested in, I guess.”
“Well, I’m interested in mountains, but that won’t get me any merit
badge. I’m gettin’ kind of interested in supper about now, too. What say
we beat it over to camp?”
They walked back along the rim. The snow cap on Garfield was growing
pink behind them, and the lake below, ruffled by a little wind, was like
a wrinkled carpet of vivid ultramarine blue. The trail, they heard, was
now dug out all the way to the landing. Rested by the quiet afternoon,
they felt keen for fresh adventures.
“I feel’s if I could walk all the way around this old rim,” Bennie
declared. “You know, there’s a motor road runs around it, only it’s full
of snow now. Has to cut down behind Dutton Cliffs and Garfield, way down
to the road we came up on. But the rest of the way round it’s up on the
rim. Uncle Bill says it’s about thirty or thirty-five miles around, he
thinks, by the road. Bet you we could do it in a day, right over the old
snow. That ought to help toward a merit badge for hiking.”
“I’d rather row around the lake at the base of the cliffs,” said Spider.
“Well, let’s do that tomorrow. Shall we?”
“I guess we’ll do what the rest do. Your uncle will have something good
on, sure.”
“Hope so, I need the exercise,” Bennie laughed, plunging across the
snow-drift toward the tents.
“Bennie’s feeling awful good,” Spider told the rest. “Says he’s not
getting exercise enough.”
“The wood-pile is rather low,” the doctor remarked quietly.
Bennie saluted. “Yes, sir, thank you, sir!” he said, and picked up his
ax.