The Summit is Conquered!
The doctor and Mr. Stone let the boys sleep late the next morning. The
sun was high when they finally arose, and tumbled out into the ice-cold
water of the creek for a good scrub with soap. After the bath, and a hot
breakfast, they all felt cheerful and fairly fit again. The aches of the
night before had somehow vanished, though their lips were still cracked
and their noses were peeling.
“By Jiminy,” said Bennie, as he scraped the breakfast plates to feed
Jeff, “I believe I’d like to climb the old mountain again, after all. I
sure do hate to go away from here and admit it beat us.”
“Me, too,” said Spider.
“Well, I know when I’m licked,” Dumplin’ put in. “I guess if you’d been
dizzy and if you’d slipped the way I did, you wouldn’t be so keen to go
back.”
“You’ve got more weight to cart up than we have,” Spider laughed.
“That’s no joke, either,” said the doctor. “Dumplin’ needs a lot of
training down before he tackles a climb like Jefferson. It isn’t his
fault he was dizzy, or that he got so tired. Some people are always
dizzy at high altitudes, anyhow. I wouldn’t let him try it again in his
present shape. But if you other boys are game, and Stone is game, I’d
like to tackle the mountain from a base camp where we tethered the
horses. That will keep us here two days longer, so we won’t have time to
get in to see Mount Hood close to. You’ll have to decide whether you’d
rather reach the top of Jefferson, or see Hood. Those in favor say
‘Aye.’”
“Aye!”
“Aye!”
“Aye!”
“Aye!”
“The ‘ayes’ have it,” the doctor laughed. “Well, Norman, we’ll take up a
tent and bedding right after lunch. We’ll sleep at timber line tonight,
and again tomorrow night. Have two horses sent up day after tomorrow
morning, at daybreak, to get the stuff, and have the rest of the train
packed and waiting at the head of the cove. We’ll make our getaway over
the head wall by seven or eight o’clock. I’m going to try to get out by
the short trail, day after tomorrow, snow or no snow.”
Everybody lay around all that morning, in the shade of the woods,
resting. After lunch, the largest tent, some grub, the sleeping bags,
and a few cooking utensils were packed on two horses, while the climbers
toted their climbing boots (now dried and oiled again), and a change of
clothes in their packs. Nothing else was taken except the necessary
climbing equipment—not even cameras. Dumplin’ went along to spend the
night with them, and have supper ready for them when they got down the
next evening. He was pretty blue at the idea of being left behind, and
kept saying, “I bet I could do it this time, and not get dizzy.” But his
father and the doctor wouldn’t say he could go.
They got the tent pitched as near timber line as they could find a
level, dry spot, and spent the latter part of the afternoon gathering
fuel and melting snow for water. The two horses, of course, had been
taken back down the slope by the guide. The six of them were alone, in
the chill silence at the edge of the eternal snows, with the mountain
rising right above them, white and naked, to the glittering pinnacle.
While supper was cooking, Bennie and Spider walked up a few hundred feet
on the lower snow-field, glanced back at the tumbled wilderness of
forest and mountain and cañon, stretching south to the white pyramids of
the Three Sisters, and then looked long upward at the pinnacle, pink
with sunset.
“Gosh!” Bennie exclaimed, “what a lot of wild country! Do you realize,
Spider, that we haven’t met a human being since we left Marion Lake?”
“You forget the chap in the aeroplane,” Spider laughed. “Well, we came
out here to see the wilderness, didn’t we?”
“You bet we did! And tomorrow we’re going to tackle old Jefferson again.
You know, I feel just as if it was a kind of fight. I bet other
mountaineers feel that way, too. That’s why it’s such fun.”
“_Other_ mountaineers is good,” Spider replied. “You talk as if you were
a Swiss Guide.”
“Well, I feel as if I could be one, when we get through with this old
ant-hill,” Bennie laughed. “I bet that pinnacle is going to be a
sockdologer!”
Spider’s face was sober. “I’m kind of scared of it, I don’t mind
admitting. I don’t blame poor old Dump a bit for getting dizzy. I don’t
get dizzy, but when I think how easy it would be to slip, I kind of get
hollow in the pit of my stomach.”
Bennie was about to answer, when he heard a bark down the slope, and
looking back saw Jeff bounding up the snow! The pup had broken loose
back at the camp (or the cook had let him loose), and he had followed
the tracks up here. He fell upon Bennie with yelps of joy.
“Well, that pup loves you, if nobody else does,” Spider laughed.
“Dumplin’ will have to sit on him all day tomorrow.”
With the setting of the sun, it grew very cold up here under the
snow-fields. They all huddled around the fire to eat, and soon after
supper took off nothing but their boots and crawled into bed with even
their sweaters on. The six sleeping bags had been packed into the one
tent, so there was no free floor space at all. The first man in couldn’t
get out without stepping on all the rest. Poor Jeff, driven outside,
snuggled down against the tent on the lee side, out of the wind, and so
the night was passed, none too comfortably by anybody.
They were up with the first daylight, built the fire, and cooked
breakfast. Then Jeff was tied with a piece of the tent guy ropes, and
Dumplin’ came with them as far as the southwest shoulder, where they
roped.
“Don’t let Jeff get away and follow us!” was Bennie’s parting word.
“He might use my alpenstock, and make it all right,” said Dumplin’,
trying to seem cheerful as he saw the rest leaving him. “I’ll watch for
you, and have hot supper ready,” he added, waving his hand.
“Good old Dump!” Bennie said, as they moved out on the pumice. “Too bad
he can’t come along.”
“He’ll be all right in a year or two, after we get the fat off him, and
get him hardened up. He’s grown too fast,” said Uncle Billy.
Whether it was because they were now more used to the trick, or because
Dumplin’ was not on the rope to hold them back, or because the steps had
not entirely melted away since the day before yesterday, making the
doctor’s work easier, or because of all three reasons, they made faster
time than before, and didn’t need to rest so long or so often. But they
had four rock chutes to cross instead of two. The one which had been
started by the big lava chunk which nearly hit them was now four feet
deep, and a fourth one had been ploughed, also. But nothing was coming
down them yet, for they reached the traverse long before the sun’s rays
got in on that side. They were up on the northwest shoulder at 10:30,
and at the base of the pinnacle at noon.
Once at the foot of that terrific incline, both the scouts felt suddenly
weak in the knees.
“Like the looks of it?” the doctor asked.
“I do not!” Bennie answered. “I’d about as soon try to climb the outside
of the Washington Monument. But if you say people have done it, I guess
we can. It’s a fight, and I ain’t licked yet!”
The doctor let them rest before they tackled the pinnacle, and gave his
orders. “I’ll go ahead and cut the steps. You, Bennie, will anchor, and
play me out the rope, and don’t you come on a step till I tell you. Then
Stone will play you out till you get to the platform I’ve made for you.
Then Spider plays him out, then Norman plays Spider out. We won’t have
more than one of the five of us moving at any one time, in other words.”
The doctor rose, and began to hack steps into the snow, in front of his
face, on the precipitous incline. He had to cut them deep, to get a firm
footing, and it was slow work. Before he was quite played out on his
twenty feet of rope, he cut an extra large step, like a little platform,
and then moved up a couple of steps, and told Bennie to climb to the
platform. Bennie did so, while Mr. Stone played him out. Then Bennie
anchored firmly on the platform, and let his uncle cut his way up
fifteen or twenty feet farther. Bennie then stepped up two steps, and
let Mr. Stone climb to the first platform. Once on it, Mr. Stone played
Bennie up, till he was on a second little platform, just behind the
doctor. Then the doctor moved ahead twenty feet higher, Bennie moved,
Mr. Stone climbed to platform number two, and they all anchored hard,
and waited till Spider reached platform number one. In this way, only
one man ever climbing at a time, with the rest anchored, they crept
slowly up the wall of icy snow. In two places, it was, in fact, not snow
but actual ice, and the doctor had to hack out the steps and could not
use his stock as he climbed. He had to depend on the spikes in his boots
entirely, because he carried no ice ax. Bennie, below him, watched with
terror in his heart, and clung to his alpenstock with a rigid grip. If
his uncle slipped, nothing would save him but that stock! If Bennie’s
grip gave way, they would both go, and maybe pull down all the rest!
Here was a battle indeed, here was a fight with the mountain where every
single step you took had to be just right, or you were gone! Bennie
didn’t dare look down. He kept his eyes fixed on his uncle’s boot soles
above him, and refused even to look off to right and left. He didn’t
dare.
They climbed steadily, and in silence, except for the orders to each man
when he was to advance. Their faces were set and grim. Bennie felt the
strain. He was getting tired rapidly, not from the physical effort,
which wasn’t really great except for the doctor, but from the mental
effort, the incessant concentration on every step he took. At last,
after an hour and a half, the doctor went over the top, and shouted back
a loud “Hurrah!” Bennie followed him over, and one by one the rest came
on, to fall at once down on the snow.
After a long moment, Bennie sat up and looked around him. At first he
felt as if he were riding in an airship in the sky. The summit cap of
snow was small, and on every side ended in a sharp edge—the edge of a
precipice!
“Look at old Hood up there!” his uncle cried, pointing north. “Seems
near enough to touch today, and it’s fifty miles off.”
“I don’t want to look at it,” Bennie answered. “I don’t want to look at
anything. Gosh, I don’t like this place!”
“I don’t care for it much myself,” Mr. Stone confessed. “You could roll
over twice here, and commit suicide with the greatest ease.”
“But we got here!” Spider exclaimed. “I’m glad we got here! We’ve beat
the old mountain!”
“Now you’re talking,” said Uncle Billy. “You’ll all like it better when
we are down again. Well, come on, let’s start then, if you don’t care
for my view.”
They now reversed positions on the rope, Norman going first, and facing
in against the cliff almost as you descend a ladder, crawled down as
slowly as they had crawled up. But it was even more trying to Bennie,
because he had to look down for each step, and he had to watch the man
descending below him, when he was anchored, in order to brace extra
firmly in case of a slip. He didn’t get dizzy, but at every step he had
to fight a kind of nausea, as if he was going to be sick, especially
when he was obliged to lower himself over the two ice walls, with only
his spikes to hold him, and the rope, played out by the man above. When
they were all at the bottom again, he felt faint, and sat down on the
snow a moment, to get back the strength in his legs.
“Well, boys,” he heard his uncle say, “you’ve done what mighty few
people do any one season. But we’re not through yet. We’ve got to get
home, you know.”
Bennie got up quickly. “I’m all right,” he said. “Lead the way!”
At half-past four o’clock they were back again at the point on the
shoulder where they lunched two days before, and here they rested
fifteen minutes, and ate the small portions of food they had brought.
Nobody was really hungry, however, and soon they were starting down the
drift where Dumplin’ slipped. Out across the traverse they went, got
over the chutes without accident, though twice they were barely over
when great toboggans of ice came whizzing down, and at seven o’clock
reached the southwest shoulder. Far below, at timber line, they saw
Dumplin’ building up the fire, and they saw, too, his tracks up here in
the snow.
“He was up here watching us crossing the traverse,” Bennie said. “He
beat it down to cook supper. Good old Dump—wish he could have been with
us.”
Off came the rope now, and with wet boots and cracked faces and aching
backs and smarting eyes, they half ran, half tumbled, down the last
snow-field to the camp, and walked into the odor of boiling coffee and
sizzling bacon, while Jeff, released from his tether, came yelping to
meet them.
“I saw you on top!” Dumplin’ said. “I spent half the day up on the
shoulder. I couldn’t see you climb the pinnacle, but I saw you on top.
You didn’t stay there long.”
“Bennie didn’t like it,” his uncle laughed.
“I’ll say I didn’t!” Bennie cried. “Gee, Dump, I’m not fat like you, and
I guess I’m in pretty good condition, but I kept feeling all the way up
and down that old pinnacle as if I was going to be dizzy the next
minute.”
“That’s not a matter of condition with you—it’s a matter of nerves,”
said his uncle.
“I felt so, too,” Spider put in. “Whenever I looked down, and couldn’t
help thinking what would happen if I fell, then I got kind of sick
inside. But when I was just thinking about my next step, I was all
right.”
“And nothing happened,” the doctor added. “Climbing is safe enough if
you know how to climb, if you are in good physical condition, and if you
can control your nerves. But you can no more tackle a climb like this
safely without a guide who knows the technique than you can fly an
aeroplane without practice. The accidents happen either to people who
try to climb without knowing the tricks, or to people who aren’t in good
shape for the hard work, or to people who can’t keep their nerves under
control and take each step slowly, carefully and firmly.”
“What made me so tired at the top?” Bennie asked. “I was twice as tired
then as I am now. Was it the altitude?”
“No,” said his uncle. “Ten thousand five hundred feet wouldn’t bother
you a bit. It was because you are still a green climber and you were
fighting your nerves all the way up the pinnacle. Nothing is such hard
work as fighting your own nerves.”
“Well, I’ll tell the world my old nerves put up a good scrap, then!”
Bennie laughed. “Anyhow, Spider and I aren’t so green as we were three
days ago. I wish the Boy Scouts gave merit badges for mountain climbing.
I bet we could get one.”
“Why don’t they give badges for that, I wonder?” Mr. Stone said.
The doctor shook his head. “Too dangerous,” was his comment. “How many
scout masters could you find who are really skilled mountain climbers?
Think what would probably happen if a green climber tried to take a
bunch of scouts up Jefferson. They’d all land down in the cañon. And
rock climbing is just as dangerous.”
“How would you get up the pinnacle if it was all ice, the way it was in
a couple of places?” Spider asked. “I mean, so hard, you couldn’t drive
your stock in, and the man below you couldn’t either?”
“You’d have to use ice axes,” the doctor replied. “An ice ax has a long
handle, and on the back of the blade is a long, sharp, slightly curved
point, like a railroad spike. You cut your steps with the blade, and
then you use this point, driven in above you, to anchor with. That’s
what they use in the Alps, where so much of the climbing is on glacier
ice.”
“Well, Spider, we’ll have to go to Switzerland next, and climb some old
glaciers,” Bennie grinned.
“And a few spitzes,” Spider answered.
It was bitter cold again that night, and soon after supper they all
crawled into their sleeping bags. They were so weary, however, that even
the cold could not keep them awake.