fifteen hundred feet down a steep but ancient land-slide by means of
the bushes growing among the loose rocks, reached the valley, and
encountered a beautiful, peaceful, limpid creek. Van Trump could not
resist the temptation of unpacking his bundle, selecting one of his
carefully preserved flies, and trying the stream for trout, but
without a single rise. After an hour's rest and a hearty repast we
resumed our packs, despite Sluiskin's protests, who seemed tired out
with his arduous day's toil and pleaded hard against traveling
farther. Crossing the stream, we walked through several grassy glades,
or meadows, alternating with open woods. We soon came to the foot of
one of the long ridges already described, and ascending it followed it
for several miles through open woods, until we emerged upon the
enchanting emerald and flowery meads which clothe these upper regions.
Halting upon a rising eminence in our course, and looking back, we
beheld the ridge of mountains we had just descended stretching from
east to west in a steep, rocky wall; a little to the left, a beautiful
lake, evidently the source of the stream just crossed, which we called
Clear Creek, and glimpses of which could be seen among the trees as it
flowed away to the right, down a rapidly descending valley along the
foot of the lofty mountain-wall. Beyond the lake again, still farther
to the left, the land also subsided quickly. It was at once evident
that the lake was upon a summit, or divide, between the waters of the
Nisqually and Cowlitz rivers. The ridge which we were ascending lay
north and south, and led directly up to the mountain.
We camped, as the twilight fell upon us, in an aromatic grove of
balsam firs. A grouse, the fruit of Sluiskin's rifle, broiled before
the fire, and impartially divided gave a relish to the dry bread and
coffee. After supper we reclined upon our blankets in front of the
bright, blazing fire, well satisfied. The Indian, when starting from
Bear Prairie, had evidently deemed our intention of ascending Takhoma
too absurd to deserve notice. The turning back of Mr. Coleman only
deepened his contempt for our prowess. But his views had undergone a
change with the day's march. The affair began to look serious to him,
and now in Chinook, interspersed with a few words of broken English
and many signs and gesticulations, he began a solemn exhortation and
warning against our rash project.
Takhoma, he said, was an enchanted mountain, inhabited by an evil
spirit, who dwelt in a fiery lake on its summit. No human being could
ascend it or even attempt its ascent, and survive. At first, indeed,
the way was easy. The broad snow-fields, over which he had so often
hunted the mountain goat, interposed no obstacle, but above them the
rash adventurer would be compelled to climb up steeps of loose,
rolling rocks, which would turn beneath his feet and cast him
head-long into the deep abyss below. The upper snow-slopes, too, were
so steep that not even a goat, far less a man, could get over them.
And he would have to pass below lofty walls and precipices whence
avalanches of snow and vast masses of rocks were continually falling;
and these would inevitably bury the intruder beneath their ruins.
Moreover, a furious tempest continually swept the crown of the
mountain, and the luckless adventurer, even if he wonderfully escaped
the perils below, would be torn from the mountain and whirled through
the air by this fearful blast. And the awful being upon the summit,
who would surely punish the sacrilegious attempt to invade his
sanctuary,--who could hope to escape his vengeance? Many years ago, he
continued, his grandfather, a great chief and warrior, and a mighty
hunter, had ascended part way up the mountain, and had encountered
some of these dangers, but he fortunately turned back in time to
escape destruction; and no other Indian had ever gone so far.
Finding that his words did not produce the desired effect, he assured
us that, if we persisted in attempting the ascent, he would wait three
days for our return, and would then proceed to Olympia and inform our
friends of our death; and he begged us to give him a paper (a written
note) to take to them, so that they might believe his story.
Sluiskin's manner during this harangue was earnest in the extreme, and
he was undoubtedly sincere in his forebodings. After we had retired to
rest, he kept up a most dismal chant, or dirge, until late in the
night. The dim, white, spectral mass towering so near, the roar of the
torrents below us, and the occasional thunder of avalanches, several
of which fell during the night, added to the weird effect of
Sluiskin's song.
The next morning we moved two miles farther up the ridge and made camp
in the last clump of trees, quite within the limit of perpetual snow.
Thence, with snow-spikes upon our feet and Alpine staff in hand, we
went up the snow-fields to reconnoiter the best line of ascent. We
spent four hours, walking fast, in reaching the foot of the steep,
abrupt part of the mountain. After carefully scanning the southern
approaches, we decided to ascend on the morrow by a steep, rocky ridge
that seemed to lead up to the snowy crown.
Our camp was pitched on a high knoll crowned by a grove of balsam
firs, near a turbulent glacial torrent. About nine o'clock, after we
had lain down for the night, the firs round our camp took fire and
suddenly burst out in a vivid conflagration. The night was dark and
windy, and the scene--the vast, dim outlines of Takhoma, the white
snow-fields, the roaring torrent, the crackling blaze of the burning
trees--was strikingly wild and picturesque.
In honor of our guide we named the cascade at our feet Sluiskin's
Falls; the stream we named Glacier Creek, and the mass of ice whence
it derives its source we styled the Little Nisqually Glacier.
Before daylight the next morning, Wednesday, August 17, 1870, we were
up and had breakfasted, and at six o'clock we started to ascend
Takhoma. Besides our Alpine staffs and creepers, we carried a long
rope, an ice-axe, a brass plate inscribed with our names, our flags, a
large canteen, and some luncheon. We were also provided with gloves,
and green goggles for snow-blindness, but found no occasion to use the
latter. Having suffered much from the heat of the sun since leaving
Bear Prairie, and being satisfied from our late reconnoissance that we
could reach the summit and return on the same day, we left behind our
coats and blankets. In three hours of fast walking we reached the
highest point of the preceding day's trip, and commenced the ascent by
the steep, rocky ridge already described as reaching up to the snowy
dome. We found it to be a very narrow, steep, irregular backbone,
being solid rock, while the sides were composed of loose broken rocks
and débris. Up this ridge, keeping upon the spine when possible, and
sometimes forced to pick our way over the loose and broken rocks at
the sides, around columnar masses which we could not directly climb
over, we toiled for five hundred yards, ascending at an angle of
nearly forty-five degrees. Here the ridge connected, by a narrow neck
or saddle, with a vast square rock, whose huge and distinct outline
can be clearly perceived from a distance of twenty-five miles. This,
like the ridge, is a conglomerate of basalt and trap, in well-defined
strata, and is rapidly disintegrating and continually falling in
showers and even masses of rocks and rubbish, under the action of
frost by night and melting snow by day. It lies imbedded in the side
of the mountain, with one side and end projected and overhanging deep,
terrible gorges, and it is at the corner or junction of these two
faces that the ridge joined it at a point about a thousand feet below
its top. On the southern face the strata were inclined at an angle of
thirty degrees. Crossing by the saddle from the ridge, despite a
strong wind which swept across it, we gained a narrow ledge formed by
a stratum more solid than its fellows, and creeping along it, hugging
close to the main rock on our right, laboriously and cautiously
continued the ascent. The wind was blowing violently. We were now
crawling along the face of the precipice almost in mid-air. On the
right the rock towered far above us perpendicularly. On the left it
fell sheer off, two thousand feet, into a vast abyss. A great glacier
filled its bed and stretched away for several miles, all seamed or
wrinkled across with countless crevasses. We crept up and along a
ledge, not of solid, sure rock, but one obstructed with the loose
stones and débris which were continually falling from above, and we
trod on the upper edge of a steep slope of this rubbish, sending the
stones at every step rolling and bounding into the depth below.
Several times during our progress showers of rocks fell from the
precipice above across our path, and rolled into the abyss, but
fortunately none struck us.
Four hundred yards of this progress brought us to where the rock
joined the overhanging edge of the vast névé or snow-field that
descended from the dome of the mountain and was from time to time, as
pressed forward and downward, breaking off in immense masses, which
fell with a noise as of thunder into the great canyon on our left. The
junction of rock and ice afforded our only line of ascent. It was an
almost perpendicular gutter, but here our ice-axe came into play, and
by cutting steps in the ice and availing ourselves of every crevice or
projecting point of the rock, we slowly worked our way up two hundred
yards higher. Falling stones were continually coming down, both from
the rock on our right and from the ice in front, as it melted and
relaxed its hold upon them. Mr. Van Trump was hit by a small one, and
another struck his staff from his hands. Abandoning the rock, then, at
the earliest practicable point, we ascended directly up the ice,
cutting steps for a short distance, until we reached ice so
corrugated, or drawn up in sharp pinnacles, as to afford a foothold.
These folds or pinnacles were about two or three feet high, and half
as thick, and stood close together. It was like a very violent chop
sea, only the waves were sharper. Up this safe footing we climbed
rapidly, the side of the mountain becoming less and less steep, and
the ice waves smaller and more regular, and, after ascending about
three hundred yards, stood fairly upon the broad dome of mighty
Takhoma. It rose before us like a broad, gently swelling headland of
dazzling white, topped with black, where the rocky summit projected
above the névé. Ascending diagonally towards the left, we continued
our course. The snow was hard and firm under foot, crisp and light for
an inch or two, but solidified into ice a foot or less beneath the
surface. The whole field was covered with the ice-waves already
described, and intersected by a number of crevasses which we crossed
at narrow places without difficulty. About half-way up the slope, we
encountered one from eight to twenty feet wide and of profound depth.
The most beautiful vivid emerald-green color seemed to fill the abyss,
the reflection of the bright sunlight from side to side of its pure
ice walls. The upper side or wall of the crevasse was some twelve feet
above the lower, and in places overhung it, as though the snow-field
on the lower side had bodily settled down a dozen feet. Throwing a
bight of the rope around a projecting pinnacle on the upper side, we
climbed up, hand over hand, and thus effected a crossing. We were now
obliged to travel slowly, with frequent rests. In that rare
atmosphere, after taking seventy or eighty steps, our breath would be
gone, our muscles grew tired and strained, and we experienced all the
sensations of extreme fatigue. An instant's pause, however, was
sufficient to recover strength and breath, and we would start again.
The wind, which we had not felt while climbing the steepest part of
the mountain, now again blew furiously, and we began to suffer from
the cold. Our course,--directed still diagonally towards the left,
thus shunning the severe exertion of climbing straight up the dome,
although at an ordinary altitude the slope would be deemed
easy,--brought us first to the southwest peak. This is a long,
exceedingly sharp, narrow ridge, springing out from the main dome for
a mile into mid-air. The ridge affords not over ten or twelve feet of
foothold on top, and the sides descend almost vertically. On the right
side the snow lay firm and smooth for a few feet on top, and then
descended in a steep, unbroken sheet, like an immense, flowing
curtain, into the tremendous basin which lies on the west side of the
mountain between the southern and northern peaks, and which is
inclosed by them as by two mighty arms. The snow on the top and left
crest of the ridge was broken into high, sharp pinnacles, with cracks
and fissures extending to the rocks a few feet below. The left side,
too steep for the snow to lie on, was vertical, bare rock. The wind
blew so violently that we were obliged to brace ourselves with our
Alpine staffs and use great caution to guard against being swept off
the ridge. We threw ourselves behind the pinnacles or into the cracks
every seventy steps, for rest and shelter against the bitter, piercing
wind. Hastening forward in this way along the dizzy, narrow, and
precarious ridge, we reached at length the highest point. Sheltered
behind a pinnacle of ice we rested a moment, took out our flags and
fastened them upon the Alpine staffs, and then, standing erect in the
furious blast, waved them in triumph with three cheers. We stood a
moment upon that narrow summit, bracing ourselves against the tempest
to view the prospect. The whole country was shrouded in a dense sea
of smoke, above which the mountain towered two thousand feet in the
clear, cloudless ether. A solitary peak far to the southeast,
doubtless Mount Adams, and one or two others in the extreme northern
horizon, alone protruded above the pall. On every side of the mountain
were deep gorges falling off precipitously thousands of feet, and from
these the thunderous sound of avalanches would rise occasionally. Far
below were the wide-extended glaciers already described. The wind was
now a perfect tempest, and bitterly cold; smoke and mist were flying
about the base of the mountain, half hiding, half revealing its
gigantic outlines; and the whole scene was sublimely awful.
It was now five P.M. We had spent eleven hours of unremitted toil in
making the ascent, and, thoroughly fatigued, and chilled by the cold,
bitter gale, we saw ourselves obliged to pass the night on the summit
without shelter or food, except our meagre lunch. It would have been
impossible to descend the mountain before nightfall, and sure
destruction to attempt it in darkness. We concluded to return to a
mass of rocks not far below, and there pass the night as best we
could, burrowing in the loose débris.
The middle peak of the mountain, however, was evidently the highest,
and we determined to first visit it. Retracing our steps along the
narrow crest of Peak Success, as we named the scene of our triumph, we
crossed an intervening depression in the dome, and ascended the middle
peak, about a mile distant and two hundred feet higher than Peak
Success. Climbing over a rocky ridge which crowns the summit, we found
ourselves within a circular crater two hundred yards in diameter,
filled with a solid bed of snow, and inclosed with a rim of rocks
projecting above the snow all around. As we were crossing the crater
on the snow, Van Trump detected the odor of sulphur, and the next
instant numerous jets of steam and smoke were observed issuing from
the crevices of the rocks which formed the rim on the northern side.
Never was a discovery more welcome! Hastening forward, we both
exclaimed, as we warmed our chilled and benumbed extremities over one
of Pluto's fires, that here we would pass the night, secure against
freezing to death, at least. These jets were from the size of that of
a large steampipe to a faint, scarcely perceptible emission, and
issued all along the rim among the loose rocks on the northern side
for more than half the circumference of the crater. At intervals they
would puff up more strongly, and the smoke would collect in a cloud
until blown aside and scattered by the wind, and then their force
would abate for a time.
A deep cavern, extending into and under the ice, and formed by the
action of heat, was found. Its roof was a dome of brilliant green ice
with long icicles pendent from it, while its floor, composed of the
rocks and débris which formed the side of the crater, descended at an
angle of thirty degrees. Forty feet within its mouth we built a wall
of stones, inclosing a space five by six feet around a strong jet of
steam and heat. Unlike the angular, broken rocks met with elsewhere,
within the crater we found well-rounded bowlders and stones of all
sizes worn as smooth by the trituration of the crater as by the action
of water. Nowhere, however, did we observe any new lava or other
evidences of recent volcanic action excepting these issues of steam
and smoke. Inclosed within the rude shelter thus hastily constructed,
we discussed our future prospects while we ate our lunch and warmed
ourselves at our natural register. The heat at the orifice was too
great to bear for more than an instant, but the steam wet us, the
smell of sulphur was nauseating, and the cold was so severe that our
clothes, saturated with the steam, froze stiff when turned away from
the heated jet. The wind outside roared and whistled, but it did not
much affect us, secure within our cavern, except when an occasional
gust came down perpendicularly. However, we passed a most miserable
night, freezing on one side, and in a hot steam-sulphur-bath on the
other.
The dawn at last slowly broke, cold and gray. The tempest howled still
wilder. As it grew light, dense masses of driven mist went sweeping by
overhead and completely hid the sun, and enveloped the mountain so as
to conceal objects scarce a hundred feet distant. We watched and
waited with great anxiety, fearing a storm which might detain us there
for days without food or shelter, or, worse yet, snow, which would
render the descent more perilous, or most likely impossible. And when,
at nine A.M., an occasional rift in the driving mist gave a glimpse of
blue sky, we made haste to descend. First, however, I deposited the
brass plate inscribed with our names in a cleft in a large bowlder on
the highest summit,--a huge mount of rocks on the east side of our
crater of refuge, which we named Crater Peak,--placed the canteen
alongside, and covered it with a large stone. I was then literally
freezing in the cold, piercing blast, and was glad to hurry back to
the crater, breathless and benumbed.
We left our den of refuge at length, after exercising violently to
start the blood through our limbs, and, in attempting to pass around
the rocky summit, discovered a second crater, larger than the first,
perhaps three hundred yards in diameter. It is circular, filled with a
bed of snow, with a rocky rim all around and numerous jets of steam
issuing from the rocks on the northern side. Both craters are
inclined--the first to the west, and the latter to the east with a
much steeper inclination, about thirty degrees. The rim of the second
crater is higher, or the snow-field inside lower, than that of the
first, and upon the east side rises in a rocky wall thirty feet above
the snow within. From the summit we obtained a view of the northern
peak, still partially enveloped in the driving mist. It appeared about
a mile distant, several hundred feet lower than the center peak, and
separated from it by a deeper, more abrupt depression or gap than
that separating Crater and Success peaks. Like the latter, too, it is
a sharp, narrow ridge springing out from the main mountain, and swept
bare of snow on its summit by the wind. The weather was still too
threatening, the glimpses of the sun and sky through the thick, flying
scud were too few and fugitive, to warrant us in visiting this peak,
which we named Peak Takhoma, to perpetuate the Indian name of the
mountain.
Our route back was the same as on the ascent. At the steepest and most
perilous point in descending the steep gutter where we had been forced
to cut steps in the ice, we fastened one end of the rope as securely
as possible to a projecting rock, and lowered ourselves down by it as
far as it reached, thereby passing the place with comparative safety.
We were forced to abandon the rope here, having no means of
unfastening it from the rock above. We reached the foot of the rocky
ledge or ridge, where the real difficulties and dangers of the ascent
commenced, at 1.30 P.M., four and a half hours after leaving the
crater. We had been seven and a half hours in ascending from this
point to the summit of Peak Success, and in both cases we toiled hard
and lost no time.
We now struck out rapidly and joyfully for camp. When nearly there Van
Trump, in attempting to descend a snowbank without his creepers, which
he had taken off for greater ease in walking, fell, shot like
lightning forty feet down the steep incline, and struck among some
loose rocks at its foot with such force as to rebound several feet
into the air; his face and hands were badly skinned, and he received
some severe bruises and a deep, wide gash upon his thigh. Fortunately
the camp was not far distant, and thither with great pain and very
slowly he managed to hobble. Once there I soon started a blazing fire,
made coffee, and roasted choice morsels of a marmot, Sluiskin having
killed and dressed four of these animals during our absence. Their
flesh, like the badger's, is extremely muscular and tough, and has a
strong, disagreeable, doggy odor.
Towards the close of our repast, we observed the Indian approaching
with his head down, and walking slowly and wearily as though tired by
a long tramp. He raised his head as he came nearer, and, seeing us for
the first time, stopped short, gazed long and fixedly, and then slowly
drew near, eying us closely the while, as if to see whether we were
real flesh and blood or disembodied ghosts fresh from the evil demon
of Takhoma. He seemed both astonished and delighted to find us safe
back, and kept repeating that we were strong men and had brave hearts:
"Skookum tilicum, skookum tumtum." He expected never to see us again,
he said, and had resolved to start the next morning for Olympia to
report our destruction.
The weather was still raw and cold. A dense cloud overhung and
shrouded the triple crown of Takhoma and made us rejoice at our timely
descent. The scanty shelter afforded by the few balsam firs about our
camp had been destroyed by the fire, and the situation was terribly
exposed to the chilly and piercing wind that blew from the great
ice-fields. Van Trump, however, was too badly hurt to think of moving
that night. Heating some large stones we placed them at our feet, and
closely wrapped in our blankets slept soundly upon the open ground,
although we awoke in the morning benumbed and chilled.
We found many fresh tracks and signs of the mountain-sheep upon the
snowfields, and hair and wool rubbed off upon rocks, and places where
they had lain at night. The mountain-sheep of Takhoma is much larger
than the common goat, and is found only upon the loftiest and most
secluded peaks of the Cascade Range. Even Sluiskin, a skillful hunter
and accustomed to the pursuit of this animal for years, failed to kill
one, notwithstanding he hunted assiduously during our entire stay
upon the mountain, three days. Sluiskin was greatly chagrined at his
failure, and promised to bring each of us a sheep-skin the following
summer, a promise which he faithfully fulfilled.
The glacial system of Takhoma is stupendous. The mountain is really
the focal centre and summit of a region larger than Massachusetts, and
the five large rivers which water this region all find their sources
in its vast glaciers. They are the Cowlitz, which empties into the
Columbia; the White, Puyallup, and Nisqually rivers, which empty into
Puget Sound sixty, forty, and twelve miles respectively north of
Olympia; and the Wenass, which flows eastward through the range and
empties into the Yakima, which joins the Columbia four hundred miles
above its mouth. These are all large streams from seventy to a hundred
miles in length. The White, Puyallup, and Cowlitz rivers are each
navigable for steamboats for some thirty miles, and like the Nisqually
show their glacial origin by their white and turgid water, which
indeed gives the former its name.