the john muir exhibit - writings - steep_trails - chapter 20
Chapter 20
An Ascent of Mount Rainier
Ambitious climbers, seeking adventures and opportunities to test their
strength and skill, occasionally attempt to penetrate the wilderness
on the west side of the Sound, and push on to the summit of Mount
Olympus. But the grandest excursion of all to be make hereabouts is
to Mount Rainier, to climb to the top of its icy crown. The mountain
is very high
29
, fourteen thousand four hundred feet, and laden with
glaciers that are terribly roughened and interrupted by crevasses and
ice cliffs. Only good climbers should attempt to gain the summit, led
by a guide of proved nerve and endurance. A good trail has been cut
through the woods to the base of the mountain on the north; but the
summit of the mountain never has been reached from this side, though
many brave attempts have been made upon it.
Last summer I gained the summit from the south side, in a day and a
half from the timberline, without encountering any desperate obstacles
that could not in some way be passed in good weather. I was
accompanied by Keith, the artist, Professor Ingraham, and five
ambitious young climbers from Seattle. We were led by the veteran
mountaineer and guide Van Trump, of Yelm, who many years before guided
General Stevens in his memorable ascent, and later Mr. Bailey, of
Oakland. With a cumbersome abundance of campstools and blankets we
set out from Seattle, traveling by rail as far as Yelm Prairie, on the
Tacoma and Oregon road. Here we made our first camp and arranged with
Mr. Longmire, a farmer in the neighborhood, for pack and saddle
animals. The noble King Mountain was in full view from here,
glorifying the bright, sunny day with his presence, rising in godlike
majesty over the woods, with the magnificent prairie as a foreground.
The distance to the mountain from Yelm in a straight line is perhaps
fifty miles; but by the mule and yellowjacket trail we had to follow
it is a hundred miles. For, notwithstanding a portion of this trail
runs in the air, where the wasps work hardest, it is far from being an
air line as commonly understood.
By night of the third day we reached the Soda Springs on the right
bank of the Nisqually, which goes roaring by, gray with mud, gravel,
and boulders from the caves of the glaciers of Rainier, now close at
hand. The distance from the Soda Springs to the Camp of the Clouds is
about ten miles. The first part of the way lies up the Nisqually
Canyon, the bottom of which is flat in some places and the walls very
high and precipitous, like those of the Yosemite Valley. The upper
part of the canyon is still occupied by one of the Nisqually glaciers,
from which this branch of the river draws its source, issuing from a
cave in the gray, rock-strewn snout. About a mile below the glacier
we had to ford the river, which caused some anxiety, for the current
is very rapid and carried forward large boulders as well as lighter
material, while its savage roar is bewildering.
At this point we left the canyon, climbing out of it by a steep zigzag
up the old lateral moraine of the glacier, which was deposited when
the present glacier flowed past at this height, and is about eight
hundred feet high. It is now covered with a superb growth of Picea
amabilis
30
; so also is the corresponding portion of the right
lateral. From the top of the moraine, still ascending, we passed for
a mile or two through a forest of mixed growth, mainly silver fir,
Patton spruce, and mountain pine, and then came to the charming park
region, at an elevation of about five thousand feet above sea level.
Here the vast continuous woods at length begin to give way under the
dominion of climate, though still at this height retaining their
beauty and giving no sign of stress of storm, sweeping upward in belts
of varying width, composed mainly of one species of fir, sharp and
spiry in form, leaving smooth, spacious parks, with here and there
separate groups of trees standing out in the midst of the openings
like islands in a lake. Every one of these parks, great and small, is
a garden filled knee-deep with fresh, lovely flowers of every hue, the
most luxuriant and the most extravagantly beautiful of all the alpine
gardens I ever beheld in all my mountain-top wanderings.
We arrived at the Cloud Camp at noon, but no clouds were in sight,
save a few gauzy ornamental wreaths adrift in the sunshine. Out of
the forest at last there stood the mountain, wholly unveiled, awful in
bulk and majesty, filling all the view like a separate, new-born
world, yet withal so fine and so beautiful it might well fire the
dullest observer to desperate enthusiasm. Long we gazed in silent
admiration, buried in tall daisies and anemones by the side of a
snowbank. Higher we could not go with the animals and find food for
them and wood for our own campfires, for just beyond this lies the
region of ice, with only here and there an open spot on the ridges in
the midst of the ice, with dwarf alpine plants, such as saxifrages and
drabas, which reach far up between the glaciers, and low mats of the
beautiful bryanthus, while back of us were the gardens and abundance
of everything that heart could wish. Here we lay all the afternoon,
considering the lilies and the lines of the mountains with reference
to a way to the summit.
At noon next day we left camp and began our long climb. We were in
light marching order, save one who pluckily determined to carry his
camera to the summit. At night, after a long easy climb over wide and
smooth fields of ice, we reached a narrow ridge, at an elevation of
about ten thousand feet above the sea, on the divide between the
glaciers of the Nisqually and the Cowlitz. Here we lay as best we
could, waiting for another day, without fire of course, as we were now
many miles beyond the timberline and without much to cover us. After
eating a little hardtack, each of us leveled a spot to lie on among
lava-blocks and cinders. The night was cold, and the wind coming down
upon us in stormy surges drove gritty ashes and fragments of pumice
about our ears while chilling to the bone. Very short and shallow was
our sleep that night; but day dawned at last, early rising was easy,
and there was nothing about breakfast to cause any delay. About four
o'clock we were off, and climbing began in earnest. We followed up
the ridge on which we had spent the night, now along its crest, now on
either side, or on the ice leaning against it, until we came to where
it becomes massive and precipitous. Then we were compelled to crawl
along a seam or narrow shelf, on its face, which we traced to its
termination in the base of the great ice cap. From this point all the
climbing was over ice, which was here desperately steep but
fortunately was at the same time carved into innumerable spikes and
pillars which afforded good footholds, and we crawled cautiously on,
warm with ambition and exercise.
At length, after gaining the upper extreme of our guiding ridge, we
found a good place to rest and prepare ourselves to scale the
dangerous upper curves of the dome. The surface almost everywhere was
bare, hard, snowless ice, extremely slippery; and, though smooth in
general, it was interrupted by a network of yawning crevasses,
outspread like lines of defense against any attempt to win the summit.
Here every one of the party took off his shoes and drove stout steel
caulks about half an inch long into them, having brought tools along
for the purpose, and not having made use of them until now so that the
points might not get dulled on the rocks ere the smooth, dangerous ice
was reached. Besides being well shod each carried an alpenstock, and
for special difficulties we had a hundred feet of rope and an axe,
Thus prepared, we stepped forth afresh, slowly groping our way through
tangled lines of crevasses, crossing on snow bridges here and there
after cautiously testing them, jumping at narrow places, or crawling
around the ends of the largest, bracing well at every point with our
alpenstocks and setting our spiked shoes squarely down on the
dangerous slopes. It was nerve-trying work, most of it, but we made
good speed nevertheless, and by noon all stood together on the utmost
summit, save one who, his strength failing for a time, came up later.
We remained on the summit nearly two hours, looking about us at the
vast maplike views, comprehending hundreds of miles of the Cascade
Range, with their black interminable forests and white volcanic cones
in glorious array reaching far into Oregon; the Sound region also, and
the great plains of eastern Washington, hazy and vague in the
distance. Clouds began to gather. Soon of all the land only the
summits of the mountains, St. Helen's, Adams, and Hood, were left in
sight, forming islands in the sky.
We found two well-formed and well-preserved craters on the summit,
lying close together like two plates
on a table with their rims touching. The highest point of the
mountain is located between the craters, where their edges come in
contact. Sulphurous fumes and steam issue from several vents, giving
out a sickening smell that can be detected at a considerable distance.
The unwasted condition of these craters, and, indeed, to a great
extent, of the entire mountain, would tend to show that Rainier is
still a comparatively young mountain. With the exception of the
projecting lips of the craters and the top of a subordinate summit a
short distance to the northward, the mountains is solidly capped with
ice all around; and it is this ice cap which forms the grand central
fountain whence all the twenty glaciers of Rainier flow, radiating in
every direction.
The descent was accomplished without disaster, though several of the
party had narrow escapes. One slipped and fell, and as he shot past
me seemed to be going to certain death. So steep was the ice slope no
one could move to help him, but fortunately, keeping his presence of
mine, he threw himself on his face and digging his alpenstock into the
ice, gradually retarded his motion until he came to rest. Another
broke through a slim bridge over a crevasse, but his momentum at the
time carried him against the lower edge and only his alpenstock was
lost in the abyss. Thus crippled by the loss of his staff, we had to
lower him the rest of the way down the dome by means of the rope we
carried. Falling rocks from the upper precipitous part of the ridge
were also a source of danger, as they came whizzing past in successive
volleys; but none told on us, and when we at length gained the gentle
slopes of the lower ice fields, we ran and slid at our ease, making
fast, glad time, all care and danger past, and arrived at our beloved
Cloud Camp before sundown.
We were rather weak from want of nourishment, and some suffered from
sunburn, notwithstanding the partial protection of glasses and veils;
otherwise, all were unscathed and well. The view we enjoyed from the
summit could hardly be surpassed in sublimity and grandeur; but one
feels far from home so high in the sky, so much so that one is
inclined to guess that, apart from the acquisition of knowledge and
the exhilaration of climbing, more pleasure is to be found at the foot
of the mountains than on their tops. Doubly happy, however, is the
man to whom lofty mountain tops are within reach, for the lights that
shine there illumine all that lies below.
[Back to chapter 19]
·
[Forward to chapter 21]