A NEAR VIEW OF THE HIGH SIERRA
Early one bright morning in the middle of Indian summer, while the
glacier meadows were still crisp with frost crystals, I set out from
the foot of Mount Lyell, on my way down to Yosemite Valley, to
replenish my exhausted store of bread and tea. I had spent the past
summer, as many preceding ones, exploring the glaciers that lie on the
head waters of the San Joaquin, Tuolumne, Merced, and Owen’s rivers;
measuring and studying their movements, trends, crevasses, moraines,
etc., and the part they had played during the period of their greater
extension in the creation and development of the landscapes of this
alpine wonderland. The time for this kind of work was nearly over for
the year, and I began to look forward with delight to the approaching
winter with its wondrous storms, when I would be warmly snow-bound in
my Yosemite cabin with plenty of bread and books; but a tinge of regret
came on when I considered that possibly I might not see this favorite
region again until the next summer, excepting distant views from the
heights about the Yosemite walls.
To artists, few portions of the High Sierra are, strictly speaking,
picturesque. The whole massive uplift of the range is one great
picture, not clearly divisible into smaller ones; differing much in
this respect from the older, and what may be called, riper mountains of
the Coast Range. All the landscapes of the Sierra, as we have seen,
were born again, remodeled from base to summit by the developing
ice-floods of the last glacial winter. But all those new landscapes
were not brought forth simultaneously; some of the highest, where the
ice lingered longest, are tens of centuries younger than those of the
warmer regions below them. In general, the younger the
mountain-landscapes,—younger, I mean, with reference to the time of
their emergence from the ice of the glacial period,—the less separable
are they into artistic bits capable of being made into warm,
sympathetic, lovable pictures with appreciable humanity in them.
Here, however, on the head waters of the Tuolumne, is a group of wild
peaks on which the geologist may say that the sun has but just begun to
shine, which is yet in a high degree picturesque, and in its main
features so regular and evenly balanced as almost to appear
conventional—one somber cluster of snow-laden peaks with gray
pine-fringed granite bosses braided around its base, the whole surging
free into the sky from the head of a magnificent valley, whose lofty
walls are beveled away on both sides so as to embrace it all without
admitting anything not strictly belonging to it. The foreground was now
aflame with autumn colors, brown and purple and gold, ripe in the
mellow sunshine; contrasting brightly with the deep, cobalt blue of the
sky, and the black and gray, and pure, spiritual white of the rocks and
glaciers. Down through the midst, the young Tuolumne was seen pouring
from its crystal fountains, now resting in glassy pools as if changing
back again into ice, now leaping in white cascades as if turning to
snow; gliding right and left between granite bosses, then sweeping on
through the smooth, meadowy levels of the valley, swaying pensively
from side to side with calm, stately gestures past dipping willows and
sedges, and around groves of arrowy pine; and throughout its whole
eventful course, whether flowing fast or slow, singing loud or low,
ever filling the landscape with spiritual animation, and manifesting
the grandeur of its sources in every movement and tone.
Pursuing my lonely way down the valley, I turned again and again to
gaze on the glorious picture, throwing up my arms to inclose it as in a
frame. After long ages of growth in the darkness beneath the glaciers,
through sunshine and storms, it seemed now to be ready and waiting for
the elected artist, like yellow wheat for the reaper; and I could not
help wishing that I might carry colors and brushes with me on my
travels, and learn to paint. In the mean time I had to be content with
photographs on my mind and sketches in my note-books. At length, after
I had rounded a precipitous headland that puts out from the west wall
of the valley, every peak vanished from sight, and I pushed rapidly
along the frozen meadows, over the divide between the waters of the
Merced and Tuolumne, and down through the forests that clothe the
slopes of Cloud’s Rest, arriving in Yosemite in due time—which, with
me, is _any_ time. And, strange to say, among the first people I met
here were two artists who, with letters of introduction, were awaiting
my return. They inquired whether in the course of my explorations in
the adjacent mountains I had ever come upon a landscape suitable for a
large painting; whereupon I began a description of the one that had so
lately excited my admiration. Then, as I went on further and further
into details, their faces began to glow, and I offered to guide them to
it, while they declared that they would gladly follow, far or near,
whithersoever I could spare the time to lead them.
Since storms might come breaking down through the fine weather at any
time, burying the colors in snow, and cutting off the artists’ retreat,
I advised getting ready at once.
I led them out of the valley by the Vernal and Nevada Falls, thence
over the main dividing ridge to the Big Tuolumne Meadows, by the old
Mono trail, and thence along the upper Tuolumne River to its head. This
was my companions’ first excursion into the High Sierra, and as I was
almost always alone in my mountaineering, the way that the fresh beauty
was reflected in their faces made for me a novel and interesting study.
They naturally were affected most of all by the colors—the intense
azure of the sky, the purplish grays of the granite, the red and browns
of dry meadows, and the translucent purple and crimson of huckleberry
bogs; the flaming yellow of aspen groves, the silvery flashing of the
streams, and the bright green and blue of the glacier lakes. But the
general expression of the scenery—rocky and savage—seemed sadly
disappointing; and as they threaded the forest from ridge to ridge,
eagerly scanning the landscapes as they were unfolded, they said: “All
this is huge and sublime, but we see nothing as yet at all available
for effective pictures. Art is long, and art is limited, you know; and
here are foregrounds, middle-grounds, backgrounds, all alike; bare
rock-waves, woods, groves, diminutive flecks of meadow, and strips of
glittering water.” “Never mind,” I replied, “only bide a wee, and I
will show you something you will like.”
At length, toward the end of the second day, the Sierra Crown began to
come into view, and when we had fairly rounded the projecting headland
before mentioned, the whole picture stood revealed in the flush of the
alpenglow. Their enthusiasm was excited beyond bounds, and the more
impulsive of the two, a young Scotchman, dashed ahead, shouting and
gesticulating and tossing his arms in the air like a madman. Here, at
last, was a typical alpine landscape.
After feasting awhile on the view, I proceeded to make camp in a
sheltered grove a little way back from the meadow, where pine-boughs
could be obtained for beds, and where there was plenty of dry wood for
fires, while the artists ran here and there, along the river-bends and
up the sides of the cañon, choosing foregrounds for sketches. After
dark, when our tea was made and a rousing fire had been built, we began
to make our plans. They decided to remain several days, at the least,
while I concluded to make an excursion in the mean time to the
untouched summit of Ritter.
It was now about the middle of October, the springtime of snow-flowers.
The first winter-clouds had already bloomed, and the peaks were strewn
with fresh crystals, without, however, affecting the climbing to any
dangerous extent. And as the weather was still profoundly calm, and the
distance to the foot of the mountain only a little more than a day, I
felt that I was running no great risk of being storm-bound.
Mount Ritter is king of the mountains of the middle portion of the High
Sierra, as Shasta of the north and Whitney of the south sections.
Moreover, as far as I know, it had never been climbed. I had explored
the adjacent wilderness summer after summer, but my studies thus far
had never drawn me to the top of it. Its height above sea-level is
about 13,300 feet, and it is fenced round by steeply inclined glaciers,
and cañons of tremendous depth and ruggedness, which render it almost
inaccessible. But difficulties of this kind only exhilarate the
mountaineer.
Next morning, the artists went heartily to their work and I to mine.
Former experiences had given good reason to know that passionate
storms, invisible as yet, might be brooding in the calm sun-gold;
therefore, before bidding farewell, I warned the artists not to be
alarmed should I fail to appear before a week or ten days, and advised
them, in case a snow-storm should set in, to keep up big fires and
shelter themselves as best they could, and on no account to become
frightened and attempt to seek their way back to Yosemite alone through
the drifts.
My general plan was simply this: to scale the cañon, wall, cross over
to the eastern flank of the range, and then make my way southward to
the northern spurs of Mount Ritter in compliance with the intervening
topography; for to push on directly southward from camp through the
innumerable peaks and pinnacles that adorn this portion of the axis of
the range, however interesting, would take too much time, besides being
extremely difficult and dangerous at this time of year.
All my first day was pure pleasure; simply mountaineering indulgence,
crossing the dry pathways of the ancient glaciers, tracing happy
streams, and learning the habits of the birds and marmots in the groves
and rocks. Before I had gone a mile from camp, I came to the foot of a
white cascade that beats its way down a rugged gorge in the cañon wall,
from a height of about nine hundred feet, and pours its throbbing
waters into the Tuolumne. I was acquainted with its fountains, which,
fortunately, lay in my course. What a fine traveling companion it
proved to be, what songs it sang, and how passionately it told the
mountain’s own joy! Gladly I climbed along its dashing border,
absorbing its divine music, and bathing from time to time in waftings
of irised spray. Climbing higher, higher, now beauty came streaming on
the sight: painted meadows, late-blooming gardens, peaks of rare
architecture, lakes here and there, shining like silver, and glimpses
of the forested middle region and the yellow lowlands far in the west.
Beyond the range I saw the so-called Mono Desert, lying dreamily silent
in thick purple light—a desert of heavy sun-glare beheld from a desert
of ice-burnished granite. Here the waters divide, shouting in glorious
enthusiasm, and falling eastward to vanish in the volcanic sands and
dry sky of the Great Basin, or westward to the Great Valley of
California, and thence through the Bay of San Francisco and the Golden
Gate to the sea.
Passing a little way down over the summit until I had reached an
elevation of about 10,000 feet, I pushed on southward toward a group of
savage peaks that stand guard about Ritter on the north and west,
groping my way, and dealing instinctively with every obstacle as it
presented itself. Here a huge gorge would be found cutting across my
path, along the dizzy edge of which I scrambled until some less
precipitous point was discovered where I might safely venture to the
bottom and then, selecting some feasible portion of the opposite wall,
reascend with the same slow caution. Massive, flat-topped spurs
alternate with the gorges, plunging abruptly from the shoulders of the
snowy peaks, and planting their feet in the warm desert. These were
everywhere marked and adorned with characteristic sculptures of the
ancient glaciers that swept over this entire region like one vast
ice-wind, and the polished surfaces produced by the ponderous flood are
still so perfectly preserved that in many places the sunlight reflected
from them is about as trying to the eyes as sheets of snow.
God’s glacial-mills grind slowly, but they have been kept in motion
long enough in California to grind sufficient soil for a glorious
abundance of life, though most of the grist has been carried to the
lowlands, leaving these high regions comparatively lean and bare; while
the post-glacial agents of erosion have not yet furnished sufficient
available food over the general surface for more than a few tufts of
the hardiest plants, chiefly carices and eriogonae. And it is
interesting to learn in this connection that the sparseness and
repressed character of the vegetation at this height is caused more by
want of soil than by harshness of climate; for, here and there, in
sheltered hollows (countersunk beneath the general surface) into which
a few rods of well-ground moraine chips have been dumped, we find
groves of spruce and pine thirty to forty feet high, trimmed around the
edges with willow and huckleberry bushes, and oftentimes still further
by an outer ring of tall grasses, bright with lupines, larkspurs, and
showy columbines, suggesting a climate by no means repressingly severe.
All the streams, too, and the pools at this elevation are furnished
with little gardens wherever soil can be made to lie, which, though
making scarce any show at a distance, constitute charming surprises to
the appreciative observer. In these bits of leanness a few birds find
grateful homes. Having no acquaintance with man, they fear no ill, and
flock curiously about the stranger, almost allowing themselves to be
taken in the hand. In so wild and so beautiful a region was spent my
first day, every sight and sound inspiring, leading one far out of
himself, yet feeding and building up his individuality.
Now came the solemn, silent evening. Long, blue, spiky shadows crept
out across the snow-fields, while a rosy glow, at first scarce
discernible, gradually deepened and suffused every mountain-top,
flushing the glaciers and the harsh crags above them. This was the
alpenglow, to me one of the most impressive of all the terrestrial
manifestations of God. At the touch of this divine light, the mountains
seemed to kindle to a rapt, religious consciousness, and stood hushed
and waiting like devout worshipers. Just before the alpenglow began to
fade, two crimson clouds came streaming across the summit like wings of
flame, rendering the sublime scene yet more impressive; then came
darkness and the stars.
Icy Ritter was still miles away, but I could proceed no farther that
night. I found a good campground on the rim of a glacier basin about
11,000 feet above the sea. A small lake nestles in the bottom of it,
from which I got water for my tea, and a storm-beaten thicket near by
furnished abundance of resiny fire-wood. Somber peaks, hacked and
shattered, circled half-way around the horizon, wearing a savage aspect
in the gloaming, and a waterfall chanted solemnly across the lake on
its way down from the foot of a glacier. The fall and the lake and the
glacier were almost equally bare; while the scraggy pines anchored in
the rock-fissures were so dwarfed and shorn by storm-winds that you
might walk over their tops. In tone and aspect the scene was one of the
most desolate I ever beheld. But the darkest scriptures of the
mountains are illumined with bright passages of love that never fail to
make themselves felt when one is alone.
I made my bed in a nook of the pine-thicket, where the branches were
pressed and crinkled overhead like a roof, and bent down around the
sides. These are the best bedchambers the high mountains afford—snug as
squirrel-nests, well ventilated, full of spicy odors, and with plenty
of wind-played needles to sing one asleep. I little expected company,
but, creeping in through a low side-door, I found five or six birds
nestling among the tassels. The night-wind began to blow soon after
dark; at first only a gentle breathing, but increasing toward midnight
to a rough gale that fell upon my leafy roof in ragged surges like a
cascade, bearing wild sounds from the crags overhead. The waterfall
sang in chorus, filling the old ice-fountain with its solemn roar, and
seeming to increase in power as the night advanced—fit voice for such a
landscape. I had to creep out many times to the fire during the night,
for it was biting cold and I had no blankets. Gladly I welcomed the
morning star.
The dawn in the dry, wavering air of the desert was glorious.
Everything encouraged my undertaking and betokened success. There was
no cloud in the sky, no storm-tone in the wind. Breakfast of bread and
tea was soon made. I fastened a hard, durable crust to my belt by way
of provision, in case I should be compelled to pass a night on the
mountain-top; then, securing the remainder of my little stock against
wolves and wood-rats, I set forth free and hopeful.
How glorious a greeting the sun gives the mountains! To behold this
alone is worth the pains of any excursion a thousand times over. The
highest peaks burned like islands in a sea of liquid shade. Then the
lower peaks and spires caught the glow, and long lances of light,
streaming through many a notch and pass, fell thick on the frozen
meadows. The majestic form of Ritter was full in sight, and I pushed
rapidly on over rounded rock-bosses and pavements, my iron-shod shoes
making a clanking sound, suddenly hushed now and then in rugs of
bryanthus, and sedgy lake-margins soft as moss. Here, too, in this
so-called “land of desolation,” I met cassiope, growing in fringes
among the battered rocks. Her blossoms had faded long ago, but they
were still clinging with happy memories to the evergreen sprays, and
still so beautiful as to thrill every fiber of one’s being. Winter and
summer, you may hear her voice, the low, sweet melody of her purple
bells. No evangel among all the mountain plants speaks Nature’s love
more plainly than cassiope. Where she dwells, the redemption of the
coldest solitude is complete. The very rocks and glaciers seem to feel
her presence, and become imbued with her own fountain sweetness. All
things were warming and awakening. Frozen rills began to flow, the
marmots came out of their nests in boulder-piles and climbed sunny
rocks to bask, and the dun-headed sparrows were flitting about seeking
their breakfasts. The lakes seen from every ridge-top were brilliantly
rippled and spangled, shimmering like the thickets of the low Dwarf
Pines. The rocks, too, seemed responsive to the vital
heat—rock-crystals and snow-crystals thrilling alike. I strode on
exhilarated, as if never more to feel fatigue, limbs moving of
themselves, every sense unfolding like the thawing flowers, to take
part in the new day harmony.
All along my course thus far, excepting when down in the cañons, the
landscapes were mostly open to me, and expansive, at least on one side.
On the left were the purple plains of Mono, reposing dreamily and warm;
on the right, the near peaks springing keenly into the thin sky with
more and more impressive sublimity. But these larger views were at
length lost. Rugged spurs, and moraines, and huge, projecting
buttresses began to shut me in. Every feature became more rigidly
alpine, without, however, producing any chilling effect; for going to
the mountains is like going home. We always find that the strangest
objects in these fountain wilds are in some degree familiar, and we
look upon them with a vague sense of having seen them before.
[Illustration: GENERAL GRANT TREE, GENERAL GRANT NATIONAL PARK]
On the southern shore of a frozen lake, I encountered an extensive
field of hard, granular snow, up which I scampered in fine tone,
intending to follow it to its head, and cross the rocky spur against
which it leans, hoping thus to come direct upon the base of the main
Ritter peak. The surface was pitted with oval hollows, made by stones
and drifted pine-needles that had melted themselves into the mass by
the radiation of absorbed sun-heat. These afforded good footholds, but
the surface curved more and more steeply at the head, and the pits
became shallower and less abundant, until I found myself in danger of
being shed off like avalanching snow. I persisted, however, creeping on
all fours, and shuffling up the smoothest places on my back, as I had
often done on burnished granite, until, after slipping several times, I
was compelled to retrace my course to the bottom, and make my way
around the west end of the lake, and thence up to the summit of the
divide between the head waters of Rush Creek and the northernmost
tributaries of the San Joaquin.
Arriving on the summit of this dividing crest, one of the most exciting
pieces of pure wilderness was disclosed that I ever discovered in all
my mountaineering. There, immediately in front, loomed the majestic
mass of Mount Ritter, with a glacier swooping down its face nearly to
my feet, then curving westward and pouring its frozen flood into a dark
blue lake, whose shores were bound with precipices of crystalline snow;
while a deep chasm drawn between the divide and the glacier separated
the massive picture from everything else. I could see only the one
sublime mountain, the one glacier, the one lake; the whole veiled with
one blue shadow—rock, ice, and water close together without a single
leaf or sign of life. After gazing spellbound, I began instinctively to
scrutinize every notch and gorge and weathered buttress of the
mountain, with reference to making the ascent. The entire front above
the glacier appeared as one tremendous precipice, slightly receding at
the top, and bristling with spires and pinnacles set above one another
in formidable array. Massive lichen-stained battlements stood forward
here and there, hacked at the top with angular notches, and separated
by frosty gullies and recesses that have been veiled in shadow ever
since their creation; while to right and left, as far as I could see,
were huge, crumbling buttresses, offering no hope to the climber. The
head of the glacier sends up a few finger-like branches through narrow
_couloirs_; but these seemed too steep and short to be available,
especially as I had no ax with which to cut steps, and the numerous
narrow-throated gullies down which stones and snow are avalanched
seemed hopelessly steep, besides being interrupted by vertical cliffs;
while the whole front was rendered still more terribly forbidding by
the chill shadow and the gloomy blackness of the rocks.
Descending the divide in a hesitating mood, I picked my way across the
yawning chasm at the foot, and climbed out upon the glacier. There were
no meadows now to cheer with their brave colors, nor could I hear the
dun-headed sparrows, whose cheery notes so often relieve the silence of
our highest mountains. The only sounds were the gurgling of small rills
down in the veins and crevasses of the glacier, and now and then the
rattling report of falling stones, with the echoes they shot out into
the crisp air.
I could not distinctly hope to reach the summit from this side, yet I
moved on across the glacier as if driven by fate. Contending with
myself, the season is too far spent, I said, and even should I be
successful, I might be storm-bound on the mountain; and in the
cloud-darkness, with the cliffs and crevasses covered with snow, how
could I escape? No; I must wait till next summer. I would only approach
the mountain now, and inspect it, creep about its flanks, learn what I
could of its history, holding myself ready to flee on the approach of
the first storm-cloud. But we little know until tried how much of the
uncontrollable there is in us, urging across glaciers and torrents, and
up dangerous heights, let the judgment forbid as it may.
I succeeded in gaining the foot of the cliff on the eastern extremity
of the glacier, and there discovered the mouth of a narrow avalanche
gully, through which I began to climb, intending to follow it as far as
possible, and at least obtain some fine wild views for my pains. Its
general course is oblique to the plane of the mountain-face, and the
metamorphic slates of which the mountain is built are cut by cleavage
planes in such a way that they weather off in angular blocks, giving
rise to irregular steps that greatly facilitate climbing on the sheer
places. I thus made my way into a wilderness of crumbling spires and
battlements, built together in bewildering combinations, and glazed in
many places with a thin coating of ice, which I had to hammer off with
stones. The situation was becoming gradually more perilous; but, having
passed several dangerous spots, I dared not think of descending; for,
so steep was the entire ascent, one would inevitably fall to the
glacier in case a single misstep were made. Knowing, therefore, the
tried danger beneath, I became all the more anxious concerning the
developments to be made above, and began to be conscious of a vague
foreboding of what actually befell; not that I was given to fear, but
rather because my instincts, usually so positive and true, seemed
vitiated in some way, and were leading me astray. At length, after
attaining an elevation of about 12,800 feet, I found myself at the foot
of a sheer drop in the bed of the avalanche channel I was tracing,
which seemed absolutely to bar further progress. It was only about
forty-five or fifty feet high, and somewhat roughened by fissures and
projections; but these seemed so slight and insecure, as footholds,
that I tried hard to avoid the precipice altogether, by scaling the
wall of the channel on either side. But, though less steep, the walls
were smoother than the obstructing rock, and repeated efforts only
showed that I must either go right ahead or turn back. The tried
dangers beneath seemed even greater than that of the cliff in front;
therefore, after scanning its face again and again, I began to scale
it, picking my holds with intense caution. After gaining a point about
halfway to the top, I was suddenly brought to a dead stop, with arms
outspread, clinging close to the face of the rock, unable to move hand
or foot either up or down. My doom appeared fixed. I _must_ fall. There
would be a moment of bewilderment, and then a lifeless rumble down the
one general precipice to the glacier below.
When this final danger flashed upon me, I became nerve-shaken for the
first time since setting foot on the mountains, and my mind seemed to
fill with a stifling smoke. But this terrible eclipse lasted only a
moment, when life blazed forth again with preternatural clearness. I
seemed suddenly to become possessed of a new sense. The other self,
bygone experiences, Instinct, or Guardian Angel,—call it what you
will,—came forward and assumed control. Then my trembling muscles
became firm again, every rift and flaw in the rock was seen as through
a microscope, and my limbs moved with a positiveness and precision with
which I seemed to have nothing at all to do. Had I been borne aloft
upon wings, my deliverance could not have been more complete.
Above this memorable spot, the face of the mountain is still more
savagely hacked and torn. It is a maze of yawning chasms and gullies,
in the angles of which rise beetling crags and piles of detached
boulders that seem to have been gotten ready to be launched below. But
the strange influx of strength I had received seemed inexhaustible. I
found a way without effort, and soon stood upon the topmost crag in the
blessed light.
How truly glorious the landscape circled around this noble
summit!—giant mountains, valleys innumerable, glaciers and meadows,
rivers and lakes, with the wide blue sky bent tenderly over them all.
But in my first hour of freedom from that terrible shadow, the sunlight
in which I was laving seemed all in all.
Looking southward along the axis of the range, the eye is first caught
by a row of exceedingly sharp and slender spires, which rise openly to
a height of about a thousand feet, above a series of short, residual
glaciers that lean back against their bases; their fantastic sculpture
and the unrelieved sharpness with which they spring out of the ice
rendering them peculiarly wild and striking. These are “The Minarets.”
Beyond them you behold a sublime wilderness of mountains, their snowy
summits towering together in crowded abundance, peak beyond peak,
swelling higher, higher as they sweep on southward, until the
culminating point of the range is reached on Mount Whitney, near the
head of the Kern River, at an elevation of nearly 14,700 feet above the
level of the sea.
Westward, the general flank of the range is seen flowing sublimely away
from the sharp summits, in smooth undulations; a sea of huge gray
granite waves dotted with lakes and meadows, and fluted with stupendous
cañons that grow steadily deeper as they recede in the distance. Below
this gray region lies the dark forest zone, broken here and there by
upswelling ridges and domes; and yet beyond lies a yellow, hazy belt,
marking the broad plain of the San Joaquin, bounded on its farther side
by the blue mountains of the coast.
Turning now to the northward, there in the immediate foreground is the
glorious Sierra Crown, with Cathedral Peak, a temple of marvelous
architecture, a few degrees to the left of it; the gray, massive form
of Mammoth Mountain to the right; while Mounts Ord, Gibbs, Dana,
Conness, Tower Peak, Castle Peak, Silver Mountain, and a host of noble
companions, as yet nameless, make a sublime show along the axis of the
range.
Eastward, the whole region seems a land of desolation covered with
beautiful light. The torrid volcanic basin of Mono, with its one bare
lake fourteen miles long; Owen’s Valley and the broad lava table-land
at its head, dotted with craters, and the massive Inyo Range, rivaling
even the Sierra in height; these are spread, map-like, beneath you,
with countless ranges beyond, passing and overlapping one another and
fading on the glowing horizon.
[Illustration: MAP OF THE YOSEMITE VALLEY]
At a distance of less than 3000 feet below the summit of Mount Ritter
you may find tributaries of the San Joaquin and Owen’s rivers, bursting
forth from the ice and snow of the glaciers that load its flanks; while
a little to the north of here are found the highest affluents of the
Tuolumne and Merced. Thus, the fountains of four of the principal
rivers of California are within a radius of four or five miles.
Lakes are seen gleaming in all sorts of places,—round, or oval, or
square, like very mirrors; others narrow and sinuous, drawn close
around the peaks like silver zones, the highest reflecting only rocks,
snow, and the sky. But neither these nor the glaciers, nor the bits of
brown meadow and moorland that occur here and there, are large enough
to make any marked impression upon the mighty wilderness of mountains.
The eye, rejoicing in its freedom, roves about the vast expanse, yet
returns again and again to the fountain peaks. Perhaps some one of the
multitude excites special attention, some gigantic castle with turret
and battlement, or some Gothic cathedral more abundantly spired than
Milan’s. But, generally, when looking for the first time from an
all-embracing standpoint like this, the inexperienced observer is
oppressed by the incomprehensible grandeur, variety, and abundance of
the mountains rising shoulder to shoulder beyond the reach of vision;
and it is only after they have been studied one by one, long and
lovingly, that their far-reaching harmonies become manifest. Then,
penetrate the wilderness where you may, the main telling features, to
which all the surrounding topography is subordinate, are quickly
perceived, and the most complicated clusters of peaks stand revealed
harmoniously correlated and fashioned like works of art—eloquent
monuments of the ancient ice-rivers that brought them into relief from
the general mass of the range. The cañons, too, some of them a mile
deep, mazing wildly through the mighty host of mountains, however
lawless and ungovernable at first sight they appear, are at length
recognized as the necessary effects of causes which followed each other
in harmonious sequence—Nature’s poems carved on tables of stone—the
simplest and most emphatic of her glacial compositions.
Could we have been here to observe during the glacial period, we should
have overlooked a wrinkled ocean of ice as continuous as that now
covering the landscapes of Greenland; filling every valley and cañon
with only the tops of the fountain peaks rising darkly above the
rock-encumbered ice-waves like islets in a stormy sea—those islets the
only hints of the glorious landscapes now smiling in the sun. Standing
here in the deep, brooding silence all the wilderness seems motionless,
as if the work of creation were done. But in the midst of this outer
steadfastness we know there is incessant motion and change. Ever and
anon, avalanches are falling from yonder peaks. These cliff-bound
glaciers, seemingly wedged and immovable, are flowing like water and
grinding the rocks beneath them. The lakes are lapping their granite
shores and wearing them away, and every one of these rills and young
rivers is fretting the air into music, and carrying the mountains to
the plains. Here are the roots of all the life of the valleys, and here
more simply than elsewhere is the eternal flux of nature manifested.
Ice changing to water, lakes to meadows, and mountains to plains. And
while we thus contemplate Nature’s methods of landscape creation, and,
reading the records she has carved on the rocks, reconstruct, however
imperfectly, the landscapes of the past, we also learn that as these we
now behold have succeeded those of the pre-glacial age, so they in turn
are withering and vanishing to be succeeded by others yet unborn.
But in the midst of these fine lessons and landscapes, I had to
remember that the sun was wheeling far to the west, while a new way
down the mountain had to be discovered to some point on the timber line
where I could have a fire; for I had not even burdened myself with a
coat. I first scanned the western spurs, hoping some way might appear
through which I might reach the northern glacier, and cross its snout;
or pass around the lake into which it flows, and thus strike my morning
track. This route was soon sufficiently unfolded to show that, if
practicable at all, it would require so much time that reaching camp
that night would be out of the question. I therefore scrambled back
eastward, descending the southern slopes obliquely at the same time.
Here the crags seemed less formidable, and the head of a glacier that
flows northeast came in sight, which I determined to follow as far as
possible, hoping thus to make my way to the foot of the peak on the
east side, and thence across the intervening cañons and ridges to camp.
The inclination of the glacier is quite moderate at the head, and, as
the sun had softened the _névé_, I made safe and rapid progress,
running and sliding, and keeping up a sharp outlook for crevasses.
About half a mile from the head, there is an ice-cascade, where the
glacier pours over a sharp declivity and is shattered into massive
blocks separated by deep, blue fissures. To thread my way through the
slippery mazes of this crevassed portion seemed impossible, and I
endeavored to avoid it by climbing off to the shoulder of the mountain.
But the slopes rapidly steepened and at length fell away in sheer
precipices, compelling a return to the ice. Fortunately, the day had
been warm enough to loosen the ice-crystals so as to admit of hollows
being dug in the rotten portions of the blocks, thus enabling me to
pick my way with far less difficulty than I had anticipated. Continuing
down over the snout, and along the left lateral moraine, was only a
confident saunter, showing that the ascent of the mountain by way of
this glacier is easy, provided one is armed with an ax to cut steps
here and there.
The lower end of the glacier was beautifully waved and barred by the
outcropping edges of the bedded ice-layers which represent the annual
snowfalls, and to some extent the irregularities of structure caused by
the weathering of the walls of crevasses, and by separate snowfalls
which have been followed by rain, hail, thawing and freezing, etc.
Small rills were gliding and swirling over the melting surface with a
smooth, oily appearance, in channels of pure ice—their quick, compliant
movements contrasting most impressively with the rigid, invisible flow
of the glacier itself, on whose back they all were riding.
Night drew near before I reached the eastern base of the mountain, and
my camp lay many a rugged mile to the north; but ultimate success was
assured. It was now only a matter of endurance and ordinary
mountain-craft. The sunset was, if possible, yet more beautiful than
that of the day before. The Mono landscape seemed to be fairly
saturated with warm, purple light. The peaks marshaled along the summit
were in shadow, but through every notch and pass streamed vivid
sun-fire, soothing and irradiating their rough, black angles, while
companies of small, luminous clouds hovered above them like very angels
of light.
Darkness came on, but I found my way by the trends of the cañons and
the peaks projected against the sky. All excitement died with the
light, and then I was weary. But the joyful sound of the waterfall
across the lake was heard at last, and soon the stars were seen
reflected in the lake itself. Taking my bearings from these, I
discovered the little pine thicket in which my nest was, and then I had
a rest such as only a tired mountaineer may enjoy. After lying loose
and lost for awhile, I made a sunrise fire, went down to the lake,
dashed water on my head, and dipped a cupful for tea. The revival
brought about by bread and tea was as complete as the exhaustion from
excessive enjoyment and toil. Then I crept beneath the pine-tassels to
bed. The wind was frosty and the fire burned low, but my sleep was none
the less sound, and the evening constellations had swept far to the
west before I awoke.
After thawing and resting in the morning sunshine, I sauntered
home,—that is, back to the Tuolumne camp,—bearing away toward a cluster
of peaks that hold the fountain snows of one of the north tributaries
of Rush Creek. Here I discovered a group of beautiful glacier lakes,
nestled together in a grand amphitheater. Toward evening, I crossed the
divide separating the Mono waters from those of the Tuolumne, and
entered the glacier basin that now holds the fountain snows of the
stream that forms the upper Tuolumne cascades. This stream I traced
down through its many dells and gorges, meadows and bogs, reaching the
brink of the main Tuolumne at dusk.
A loud whoop for the artists was answered again and again. Their
camp-fire came in sight, and half an hour afterward I was with them.
They seemed unreasonably glad to see me. I had been absent only three
days; nevertheless, though the weather was fine, they had already been
weighing chances as to whether I would ever return, and trying to
decide whether they should wait longer or begin to seek their way back
to the lowlands. Now their curious troubles were over. They packed
their precious sketches, and next morning we set out homeward bound,
and in two days entered the Yosemite Valley from the north by way of
Indian Cañon.