and Learns the Proper Way To Climb
The scouts were up again before five, and hurried to the camp, where the
doctor was still sound asleep.
"Sound is right!" Spider laughed.
But he woke when he heard them getting breakfast, and by the time he was
dressed and breakfast was ready, Mills came up, followed by Popgun and
the packhorse, both saddled.
As soon as breakfast was over, the two men and Tom stowed away in their
pockets the sandwiches Joe made for them, made sure that all the spikes
were in their boots, and swung into the saddle.
"Good-bye, old Joey," Tom called. "Have some good hot dinner ready when
we get back."
"Yes, and you come back with your neck whole, to eat it," said Joe,
waving his hand and watching the three riders trot up the trail in the
cool, level, early morning sunlight.
It was a fine, clear day, a real Rocky Mountain day, when you could
almost see the buttons on a man's coat a quarter of a mile away. And it
was Tom's first trip away from Many Glacier, into the high places,
though he had walked around the camp as far as he dared, and even
climbed a little way up a steep shale pile at the base of the cliff
behind the chalets. However, hikers were apt to show up at any time of
the day, and he had never been able to venture more than a mile or two.
But now he was bound for Iceberg Lake, and then up the very main
precipice of the Great Divide, the backbone of the continent, with the
Park Ranger and a man who had climbed the Matterhorn!
It was only a short ride to Iceberg Lake--about six miles. The trail was
a fine one, of easy grade, and for some distance wound through the
woods, over tumbling brooks, and through beds of wild flowers. The
doctor seemed as much interested in these flowers as he was in the
coming climb.
"I never saw such a profusion," he kept saying. "So many kinds all
together, and such beautiful masses of color. Well, well, how little we
Americans know about our own country. Tom, I want you to go back East
and tell your schoolmates this is a pretty fine land we live in."
"You bet I will--if I go back," said Tom. "I like it so much here I may
stay forever, and be a ranger, like Mr. Mills."
"After one winter, you won't like it so much," Mills said.
Gradually the trail climbed above the tall timber, and the view opened
out. Tom could see they were headed for a big semicircular amphitheatre,
cut into the towering rock walls of the Divide, and before long they
entered the open end of this titanic stadium. It was a wild, beautiful
spot. At their feet was a meadow, covered with yellow dog-tooth violets
like gold patterns in a green carpet, and with little pines in it like
people walking about. On three sides of them, sweeping around in a
semicircle at the end, was a vast precipice, seemingly perpendicular,
except for the big shale piles at the base. The top of this cliff was a
"castellated ridge," the term mountaineers give to a summit which is
long and level, but broken into little depressions and towers, like the
battlements of an ancient castle. At the upper end of the amphitheatre
lay a round lake, about half a mile across, and at the upper end of
that, right under the shadow of the head wall, was the glacier.
This glacier, snow covered on top, showed a thirty foot wall of green
ice on the upright edge, and chunks of this ice were constantly breaking
off and floating away in the green water. Hence the name Iceberg Lake.
They rode right up to the shore, and Mills took the horses into a little
clump of trees, where there was some grass also, and tethered them.
"Now," said he, coming back, "to the job. There's the cliff."
He led the way, with long easy strides, around the right hand side of
the lake, through steep rough going, without any path and amid stubborn
timber-line evergreens, till he reached the base of a huge shale and
snowslide that stretched right up at an angle of about fifty degrees,
Tom estimated, to the base of the jagged precipice. Looking up this
shale slide to the towering cliff above, Tom saw the staggering task
ahead of them--and his heart went down into his spiked boots for a
minute. He could see how they could get up part way, all right, for at
first it wasn't quite perpendicular, and it was full of ledges. But then
there seemed to be a sheer rise, with not even a toe hold--"and if you
fell--good-night!" he whispered to himself.
But Mills and Dr. Kent were studying the cliff quite calmly.
"I've seen the goats come down to that snow-field at the top of this
shale, half a dozen times," the Ranger was saying, "and go back the same
way. If we can find their trail, I guess we can make it, though they'll
use an awful narrow ledge sometimes. They get into one or the other of
those two big gullies, too, on the way back."
"There seems to be ample footing," the doctor remarked.
There did not seem to be any footing to poor Tom, but he did not say so.
If they were going up, he was! But those two thousand feet of rock
didn't look much like the three hundred foot slope the scouts used to
climb back in Southmead. It was the Great Divide in a single jump, and
Tom felt about as small as a fly must feel on the side of the Washington
Monument--and a good deal more helpless, because the fly has suckers on
his feet, and wings beside.
[Illustration: Iceberg Lake and Glacier]
Mills now led the way up the shale pile, just a smooth, insecure slide
of sharp, broken stone, mostly in small, irregular, flat pieces
something like rotten slate. It wasn't as slippery as a pile of coal
would be, of course, but there was a good deal of tiresome back-slide
under one's feet, none the less.
Close to the top was a snow-field, and Mills examined it.
"They've been here--within a day," he announced, pointing to fresh hoof
tracks, and also pointing to spots where the goats had evidently taken
bites out of the snow, probably as a dog does when thirsty. Above the
snow-field Tom could see just the faintest hint of a trail over the
shale, which led up to the base of the solid cliff.
"There she is--this is the way!" the Ranger called.
The three of them now halted directly under the tremendous wall, and
looked up. Again Tom's heart sank. It wasn't so nearly perpendicular as
it looked from the lake below, but he could see stretch after stretch
where a climber's face would be ticklishly close to the spot where he'd
got to put his feet next time--and the great, ragged wall, in long, wavy
horizontal strata belts, stretched up and up and up and up!
Did you ever stand in Broadway below the Woolworth Tower, and look up?
Imagine that tipped over a little from the perpendicular, and four times
as high, and you'll have an idea of what Tom looked at.
"Well, now, this is worth coming for!" the doctor cried, cheerfully, as
he took off his coil of rope, and made it ready. "Mills, will you take
number one place for a way? I'll be number two and anchor, of course.
Tom can dangle off below, like a tail to the kite. How'll you like that,
Tom?"
Tom's face must have shown what he was feeling, for the doctor suddenly
changed tone.
"Come, come," he said. "It's not bad--only long. A Swiss guide wouldn't
even consider this dangerous. All you have to remember is to test all
your hand- and foot-holds before you put your weight on them, and watch
for falling stones. This shale pile means the rock may crumble easily in
places. Come on--be a scout!"
"I'm game!" Tom answered, biting his lip. "I guess I won't be stumped by
an old goat!"
Mills laughed. "Wait till you see a goat perform," he said, as he made
fast one end of the rope around his waist. As he adjusted it, he added,
"This is a better rope than I ever used. Where'd you get it?"
"Switzerland," the doctor answered. "I have several I've brought over
from time to time. You can't get soft, flexible, braided rope here in
this country. We don't go in for mountain climbing enough to make it."
Tom was now fastened on the lower end of the rope, and the doctor in the
middle, and the ascent began.
"You watch me use the rope," the doctor said to Tom. "It will show you
how to do it, if you ever have to be second man on a climb--and it will
keep you from looking down, also!"
Spider was almost as anxious to learn how to use the rope properly as he
was to get up the cliff. He had hoped to climb, when he came to the
Park, but he never dreamed he would be climbing with a real Alpine rope,
manipulated by a man who had been up the Matterhorn, and with the leader
of the party an old goat hunter.
For the benefit of the boys who are reading this book, I want to tell
just how Dr. Kent used the rope. No boy, or man, either, should ever try
to climb a cliff without a rope, and without proper shoes, with plenty
of strong, sharp spikes. The rope must be strong enough to hold the
weight of three or four men, at the very least, and it must be soft and
pliable. If you cannot get such a soft rope, boil an ordinary one in a
wash-boiler till it loses its stiffness. But, even when you have the
rope, you must not use it on a cliff until you have learned the proper
methods, preferably under the guidance of some man who has climbed in
England or the Alps or the Rockies.
Now in rope climbing up rocks, the leader has the hardest job because he
has to find the way up, and to climb without any rope to help him. But
the second man has what is perhaps the most important job, for he is the
anchor; it is on him that the life of the leader may depend, as well as
the life of the man below.
Suppose three men are fastened on the rope almost fifty feet apart, as
Tom, Mills and Dr. Kent were, for the average rope is about a hundred
feet long. The first man starts climbing, and when he gets up nearly to
the full play of his fifty feet of rope, he finds some ledge where he
can rest, or some firm projection where he can throw his end of the rope
over, take a half hitch, and thus make a firm line for the second man to
climb with. The second man comes up to him, and the leader starts up
again. But now he is starting well up from the ground, and if he got any
higher and should fall, it would be bad, so the second man, before the
leader starts up, takes a half turn around the firm projection with his
end of the stretch of rope between himself and number one, or, if it is
very steep and dangerous, perhaps giving the leader a play of only
fifteen or twenty feet. Then if the leader should slip and fall, instead
of dragging off the second man with him, he would fall only the distance
between himself and the point where the rope was secured to the rock. If
the rope was strong, it would bring him up short, dangling against the
cliff, and would not yank the second man off with him. Of course, after
three climbers are well up the face of a cliff, if the leader should
fall without the rope being anchored between him and number two, he
would drag all three men off with him, probably to death. That is why
number two position is so important in rope climbing.
And Tom was not long in realizing this. He saw Mills go up easily to a
shelf forty feet above, and both the doctor and he scrambled up after
him, without needing the rope at all. The next stage was not difficult,
either, though the Ranger, as soon as he was well above the shale pile,
began to test his hand-holds and foot-holds with the utmost care,
keeping in the faintly discernible goat track whenever he could. But
when they were up a hundred and seventy-five feet or more, all three of
them on a ledge about three feet wide, they found themselves directly
against a perpendicular wall at least twenty-five feet high.
Mills was studying the situation. "Coming down, the goats jump it from
that shelf above," he said. "You can see their tracks here where they
land. But they can't climb it going up. They swing off to the left, by
this ledge--and look at it!"
Tom and the doctor looked. To the left the ledge shrank to a cornice
actually not over six inches wide.
"Do you mean to tell me the goats walk around on that?" the doctor
demanded.
"Sure," said Mills. "It probably leads to an easy way around to the
shelf over our heads, but we can't make it--at least, I don't want to
try, unless I have to."
Tom looked at the six inch ledge, and the hundred and seventy-five foot
drop below it, and said, "Amen!"
"All right--straight up," said the doctor. He looked for a firm
projection of rock, and took a turn with the rope, while Mills picked up
the slack and tested it.
The Ranger studied the wall in front of him, and made a try. Anchored by
the doctor from below, he got up ten feet, but at that point he could
not find a single handhold higher up which would bear his weight. After
a long try, he descended to the ledge again.
"No use, we've got to go around to the right, and climb that big gully,"
Mills said. "If this wall stumps us, we'd find a dozen worse ones before
we got to the top."
To get to the gully to the east of them, they had to go along the ledge
on which they stood. It was wider to the east than six inches, which was
its width in the other direction, the direction the goats took at this
point, but it wasn't any too wide for comfort, and in places the
precipice above actually overhung it, and seemed to be crushing you
down. In one place they had to crawl on their hands and knees under this
overhang. In another place they came to what the doctor called "a real
transverse"--that is, a very narrow shelf leading them around a
projection from the ledge they were on to another one, with a sheer drop
below it.
This transverse ledge was about fifteen feet long before it widened. It
may have been eighteen inches wide, but to Tom it looked about six. It
was level enough, and firm, but it was cut out of the side of an
absolute precipice, and the sheer drop, before you hit any ledge or
slope below, to break your fall, was at least a hundred feet.
"Dizzy?" the doctor asked Tom, noting the expression that had come over
the scout's face.
"No," said Tom. "But I feel as if I would be if I looked down."
The doctor eyed him sharply. "I guess you're all right," he said.
"Remember, you'll be anchored fast, and look hard at your footing, focus
on that, and don't see off at all. All ready, Mills."
The Ranger walked out on the ledge quite calmly, a little sideways, so
he could lean back toward the cliff, and tested each step to see that
the ledge was firm and his spikes were gripping. Then the doctor went,
even more coolly than Mills. Tom swallowed a lump in his throat, called
himself a "poor mut," and when he had the signal, followed the others.
He kept his eyes on the ledge, as the doctor told him, though there was
a horribly fascinating and indescribable temptation to peep from the
corners of them down over the edge. He could feel the doctor taking up
the slack of the rope as he came, so that with each step his fall would
be shorter if he fell. Then, suddenly, he was over! He had been cold
before he started, with a chill in his back as the wind evaporated the
perspiration. Now he was suddenly hot again, and the sweat came out on
his forehead.
The doctor was smiling at him.
"That's your real initiation in rock climbing," he said. "You're going
good. Keep it up!"
The new ledge brought them to the big gully (the one you see, filled
with snow, in the picture). It still had some snow in places when the
party reached it, but for the most part it was clear, though there was a
tiny trickle of water at the bottom. It was a great, rough, jagged
trough scooped out of the cliff by ages of running snow water, and
inclined at an angle not very far off the perpendicular.
"Not quite a real chimney," the doctor said briefly. "It's too big and
open, and you can't stretch from side to side. Looks as if we'd have to
watch out for stones, too."
"You will," said Mills.
Even as he spoke, they heard a noise above them, and the Ranger yelled,
"Jump for shelter!"
All three sprang to one side of the gully, below a projecting shelf of
rock, and past them, thundering down the chute, went a stone as big as a
bucket, just loosened by melting snow above.
Tom watched it go past, and began to think the last place on the rope
was not the softest berth he could imagine.
The doctor now turned to him. "You see what you've got to look out for,
Tom," he said. "For each fresh climb, we'll pick a place where there is
shelter for the man waiting below. But you've still got to be on the
watch, and dodge quick. This is going to be a regular climb!"
It was! For the next three hours Tom did the liveliest and the hardest
work he had ever put in. He had no chance to get dizzy looking down, for
he never even dared to look down. He looked up, never knowing when the
next stone or even shower of stones would descend upon him, and prepared
every second to spring to right or left to dodge them. They climbed by
sending Mills out from under a protecting ledge and letting him shin up
his fifty feet. Then the doctor would follow, and when he was up with
Mills, Tom would emerge from under the shelter, and join them. Then they
would repeat the process. But even with Mills and the doctor standing
still above him, Tom had to look out for rocks. They were always coming
down, loosened by the melting snow above, as well as by the feet of the
climbers.
And it was hard work, too. Not only was the gully tremendously steep,
but it was rough, in places wet and slippery, and finally half full of
snow. When they reached the snow, their worst troubles came, for they
had no ice axes to make steps, and without steps they could not climb on
the snow, it was so steep. They had to work up the side of the gully, by
whatever toe holds they could find. The gully was steeper than a flight
of very steep stairs--in places, indeed, it was almost
perpendicular,--and Tom's breath began to come hard and his legs tremble
with weariness. But Mills kept plugging upward, and the towering,
upright pinnacles of the summit began to loom nearer and nearer.
Finally Mills, without warning, turned out of the gully, close to its
top, and swung out on a wide ledge right under the final two or three
hundred feet of the climb. On this ledge, which didn't show from below,
was a regular little garden of moss campion and Alpine wild flowers.
"Goat food," said Mills, shortly. He had hardly spoken a word since the
first bad place, and the doctor had been equally silent They sat down to
rest on this wide ledge, and looked off at last upon the great prospect
below them, with the lake, like a little green mirror now, far beneath.
"Wonderful!" the doctor exclaimed. "A magnificent balcony seat we have
in this amphitheatre, and no ushers to bother us. Mills, you're a good
climber--you don't talk."
Mills smiled. "Never knew a safe mountain man who did talk on a cliff or
a glacier," said he.
"No, you can't watch your footing and gabble at the same time. Bah! how
I hate a talker on a climb!"
"A man came out here once in a big party," said the Ranger. "I took 'em
up Cleveland. When we hit the real climb, he fetched out a sign from his
pack, and hung it on his back. It read, 'I'm not very sociable when I'm
climbing.'"
The doctor and Tom laughed, and the former added, "There's a wise man!"
The ledge on which they sat, which was like a little secret garden hung
up here two thousand feet above the lake, was covered with goat tracks,
and Mills pointed out several little caves, too, under overhanging
rocks, where, he said, the kids were probably born. Above them, the last
three hundred feet of the cliff went up perfectly straight, and Tom
didn't see how they were going to get any farther.
But Mills presently rose and led the way to a "chimney," which is the
name given to an open cleft in a rock wall. This chimney was so narrow
that a man could brace his back on one side, and his feet on the other,
and climb it just as you climb a well. Of course, it was rough, with
plenty of projections to cling to. Mills had the hardest job here, for
he had no rope to help him.
The doctor spoke in here, breaking his rule.
"Do the goats use this chimney?" he shouted up.
"Sure," Mills replied. "Can't you see the marks of their hoofs? They
jump from side to side right up it."
"All I can say is, I'd like to see 'em," was the somewhat sceptical
answer.
The chimney work was great sport, but it was also hard work. Tom's back
was sore, his hands bruised, his arms weary, before they reached the
top. But finally he saw Mills disappear over the rim, and then the
doctor; and finally he himself crawled out of the cleft, and stood on
the very summit of the precipice. And then Tom gasped, and forgot he was
hot, forgot he was tired, forgot his hands were bruised by the rough
rocks, forgot the moments when his heart had been either in his boots or
his throat, forgot everything but the bigness of that prospect! He
almost forgot to look at his watch; but the doctor didn't.
"Four hours and a half to go two thousand feet!" the doctor said.
"That's the hardest rock climb I ever made. You don't need to go to
Switzerland for real mountain climbing, Mills. You've got it here, right
in your back yard."