the john muir exhibit - writings - picturesque_california - chapter 1
Chapter 1
The Peaks and Glaciers of the High Sierra
Looking across the broad, level plain of the Sacramento and San Joaquin from
the summit of the Coast Range opposite San Francisco, after the sky has been
washed by the winter rains, the lofty Sierra may be seen throughout nearly its whole
extent, stretching in simple grandeur along the edge of the plain, like an immense
wall, four hundred miles long and two and a half miles high, colored in four
horizontal bands; the lowest rose-purple of exquisite beauty of tone, the next higher
dark purple, the next blue, and the highest pearl-white--all delicately interblending
with each other and with the pale luminous sky and the golden yellow of the plain,
and varying in tone with the time of day and the advance of the season.
The thousand landscapes of the Sierra are thus beheld in one view, massed into
one sublime picture, and such is the marvelous purity of the atmosphere it seems
as near and clear as a painting hung on a parlor wall. But nothing can you see or
hear of all the happy life it holds, or of its lakes and meadows and lavish abundance
of white falling water. The majestic range with all its treasures hidden stretches
still and silent as the sunshine that covers it.
The rose-purple zone rising smoothly out of the yellow plain is the torrid
foothill region, comprehending far the greater portion of the gold-bearing rocks of
the range, and the towns mills, and ditches of the miners--a waving stretch of
comparatively low, rounded hills and ridges, cut into sections by the main river
canyons, roughened here and there with outcropping masses of red and grey slates,
and rocky gold gulches rugged and riddled; the whole faintly shaded by a sparse
growth of oaks, and patches of scrubby ceanothus and manzanita chaparral. Specks
of cultivation are scattered from end to end of the zone in fertile flats and hollows
far apart--rose embowered cottages, small glossy orange groves, vineyards and
orchards, and sweet-scented hay fields, mostly out of sight, and making scarce any
appreciable mark on the landscape in wide general views; a paradise of flowers and
bees and bland purple skies during the spring months--dusty, sunbeaten, parched
and bare all the rest of the year. The dark-purple and blue zones are the region of
the giant pines and sequoia and silver-firs, forming the noblest coniferous forests
on the face of the globe. They are everywhere vocal with running water and
drenched with delightful sunshine.
Miles of tangled bushes are blooming beneath them, and lily gardens, and
meadows, and damp ferny glens in endless variety of color and richness,
compelling the admiration of every beholder. Sweeping on over the ridges and
valleys they extend a continuous belt from end to end of the range, only slightly
interrupted at intervals of fifteen and twenty miles by tremendous canyons 3,000
to 5,000 feet in depth. Into these main river-canyons innumerable side-canyons
and gorges open, occupied by bouncing, dancing, rejoicing cascades, making haste
to join the rivers, which, grey with foam, are beating their way with resistless
energy to the lowlands and the sea. All these waters sounding together give
glorious animation to the onlooking forests, and to the stem, rocky grandeur of the
canyon-walls. There too, almost directly opposite our point of view,
is the farfamed Yosemite Valley and to right and left on the same zone many other valleys
of the same type, some of them, though but little known as yet, not a whit less
interesting, either in regard to the sublimity of their architecture, or the grandeur
and beauty of their falling waters.
Above the upper edge of the silver-fir zone, the forest is maintained by smaller
pines and spruces, that sweep on higher around lakes and meadows, and over
smooth waves of outspread moraines, until, dwarfed and storm-bent, the utmost
limit of tree growth is reached at a height of from 10,000 to 12,000 feet. While
far above the bravest climbers of them all, rises the lofty, snow-laden, icy Sierra,
composed of a vast wilderness of peaks, and crests, and splintered spires, swept by
torrents and avalanches, and separated by deep gorges and notches and wide
amphitheaters, the treasuries of the snow and fountain-heads of the rivers, holding
in their dark mysterious recesses all that is left of the grand system of glaciers that
once covered the entire range. During many years of faithful explorations in the
Sierra, sixty-five glaciers have been discovered and studied, and it is not likely that
many more will be found. Over two-thirds of the entire number lie between Lat.
36° 30' and 39°, sheltered from the wasting sunshine on the northern
slopes of the highest peaks, where the snowfall on which they depend is most
concentrated and abundant.
Nothing was known of the existence of active glaciers in the Sierra until
October, 1871, when I made the discovery of Black Mountain Glacier and
measured its movements. It lies near the head of a wide shadowy basin between
Red and Black Mountains, two of the dominating summits of the Merced Group.
This group consists of the highest portion of a spur that straggles out from the
main axis of the chain near Mount Ritter, in the direction of Yosemite Valley. Its
western slopes are drained by Illilouette Creek, a tributary of the Merced, which
pours its waters into Yosemite in a fine fall bearing the same name as the stream.
No excursion can be made into the Sierra that may not prove an enduring
blessing. Notwithstanding the great height of the summits, and the ice and the
snow, and the gorges and canyons and sheer giddy precipices, no mountain
chain on the globe is more kindly and approachable. Visions of ineffable beauty
and harmony, health and exhilaration of body and soul, and grand foundation
lessons in Nature's eternal love are the sure reward of every earnest looker in this
glorious wilderness.
The Yosemite Valley is a fine hall of entrance to one or the highest and
most interesting portions of the Sierra the head or the Merced,
Tuolumne, San Joaquin, and Owens rivers. The necessary outfit may be
procured here, in the way of pack animals, provisions, etc., and trails
lead from the valley towards Mounts Dana,
Lyell, and Ritter, and the Mono Pass; and also into the
lower portion of the Illilouette Basin.
Going to the Black Mountain
Glacier, only a few days' provision is
required, and a pair of blankets, if
you are not accustomed to sleeping
by a camp-fire without them.
Leaving the valley by the trail leading past the Vernal and Nevada falls, you
cross the lower end of Little Yosemite Valley, and climb the Starr King Ridge,
from which you obtain a fine general view of the Illilouette Basin, with its grand
array of peaks and domes and dark spirey forests--all on a
grand scale of magnitude, yet keenly fine in finish and beauty. Forming one of the
most interesting of the basins that lie round about Yosemite Valley, they pour their
tribute of songful water into it, swelling the anthems ever sounding there.
The glacier is not visible from this standpoint, but the two mountains between
which it lies make a faithful mark, and you can hardly go wrong, however
inexperienced in mountain ways.
Going down into the heart of the basin, through beds of zauchneria, and
manzanita chaparral, where the bears love to feed, you follow the main stream past
a series of cascades and falls until you find yourself between the two lateral
moraines that come sweeping down in curves from the shoulders of Red and Black
mountains. These henceforth will be your guide, for they belonged to the grand old
glacier, of which Black Mountain Glacier is a remnant, one that has endured until
now the change of climate which has transformed a wilderness of ice and snow into
a wilderness of warm exuberant life. Pushing on over this glacial highway you pass
lake after lake set in solid basins of granite, and many a well-watered meadow
where the deer with their young love to hide; now clanking over smooth shining
rock where not a leaf tries to grow, now wading plushy bogs knee deep in yellow
and purple sphagnum, or brushing through luxuriant garden patches among
larkspurs eight feet high and lilies with thirty flowers on a single stalk. The lateral
moraines bounding the view on either side are like artificial embankments, and are
covered with a superb growth of silver-firs and pines, many specimens attaining a
height of 200 feet or more.
But this garden and forest luxuriance is soon left behind. The trees are dwarfed,
the gardens become exclusively alpine, patches of the heath-like bryanthus and
cassiope begin to appear, and arctic willows pressed into flat close carpets by the
weight of the winter snow. The lakes, which a few miles down the valley are so
deeply embedded in the tall woods, or embroidered with flowery meadows, have
here, at an elevation of 10,000 feet above sea level, only thin mats of carex,
leaving bare glaciated rock bosses around more than half their shores. Yet amid all
this alpine suppression, the sturdy brown-barked mountain pine is seen tossing his
storm-beaten branches on edges and buttresses of Red Mountain, some specimens
over a hundred feet high and twenty-four feet in circumference, seemingly as fresh
and vigorous as if made wholly of sunshine and snow. If you have walked well and
have not lingered among the beauties of the way, evening will be coming on as you
enter the grand fountain amphitheater in which the glacier lies. It is about a mile
wide in the middle, and rather less than two miles long. Crumbling spurs and
battlements of Red Mountain bound it on the north, the sombre rudely sculptured
precipices of Black Mountain on the south, and a hacked and splintered col curves
around from mountain to mountain at the head, shutting it in on the east.
You will find a good campground on the brink of a glacier lake, where a
thicket of Williamson spruce affords shelter from the night wind, and wood for
your fire.
As the night advances the mighty rocks looming darkly about you seem to come
nearer, and the starry sky stretches across from wall to wall, fitting closely down
into all the spiky irregularities of the summits in most impressive grandeur. Then,
as you lie by your fireside, gazing into this strange weird beauty, you fall into the
clear, death-like sleep that comes to the tired mountaineer.
In the early morning the mountain voices are hushed, the night wind dies away,
and scarce a leaf stirs in the groves. The birds that dwell here, and the marmots, are
still crouching in their nests. The stream, cascading from pool to pool, seems alone
to be awake and doing. But the spirit of the opening, blooming day calls to action.
The sunbeams stream gloriously through jagged openings of the eastern wall,
glancing on ice-burnished pavements, and lighting the mirror surface of the lake,
while every sunward rock and pinnacle bums white on the edges like melting iron in
a furnace.
Passing round the northern shore of the lake, and tracing the stream that feeds it
back into its upper recesses, you are led past a chain of small lakes set on bare
granite benches and connected by cascades and falls. Here the scenery becomes
more rigidly arctic. The last dwarf pine is left far below, and the streams are
bordered with icicles. The sun now with increasing warmth loosens rock masses on
shattered portions of the wall that come bounding down gullies and couloirs in
dusty, spattering avalanches, echoing wildly from crag to crag. The main lateral
moraines, that stretch so formally from the huge jaws of the amphitheater into the
middle of the basin, are continued along the upper walls in straggling masses
wherever the declivity is sufficiently low to allow loose material to rest, while
separate stones, thousands of tons in weight, are lying stranded here and there out
in the middle of the channel. Here too you may observe well characterized frontal
moraines ranged in regular order along the south wall of Black Mountain, the shape
and size of each corresponding with the daily shadows cast by the wall above them.
Tracing the main stream back to the last of its chain of lakelets, you may notice
that the stones on the bottom are covered with a deposit of fine grey mud, that has
been ground from the rocks in the bed of the glacier and transported by its draining
stream, which is seen issuing from the base of a raw, fresh looking moraine still in
process of formation. Not a plant or weather-stain is visible on its rough unsettled
surface. It is from 60 to more than 100 feet in height and plunges down in front at
an angle of 38°, which is the steepest at which this form of moraine material
will lie. Climbing it is therefore no easy undertaking. The slightest touch loosens
ponderous blocks that go rumbling to the bottom, followed by a train of smaller
stones and sand.
Cautiously picking your way, you at length gain the top, and there outspread in
full view is the little giant glacier swooping down from the sombre
precipices of Black Mountain in a finely graduated curve, fluent in all its lines, yet
seemingly as rugged and immovable as the mountain against which it is leaning. The
blue compact ice appears on all the lower portions of the glacier sprinkled with dirt
and stones embedded in its surface. Higher, the ice disappears beneath coarsely
granulated snow. The face is still further characterized by dirt bands and the
outcropping edges of blue veins, that sweep across from side to side in beautiful
concentric curves, showing the laminated structure of the mass; and at the head of
the glacier where the névé joins the mountain it is traversed by a
huge yawning bergschrund, in some places twelve to fourteen feet in width, and
bridged at intervals by the remains of snow avalanches. Creeping along the lower
edge holding on with benumbed fingers, clear sections are displayed where the
bedded and ribbon structure of glaciers are beautifully illustrated. The surface
snow, though everywhere sprinkled with stones shot down from the cliffs, is in
some places almost pure white, gradually becoming crystalline, and changing to
porous whitish ice of varying shades, and this again changing at a depth of 20 or 30
feet to blue, some of the ribbon-like bands of which are nearly pure and solid, and
blend with the paler bands in the most gradual and exquisite manner imaginable,
reminding one of the way that color bands come together in the rainbow.
Should you wish to descend into the weird ice-world of the 'schrund, you may
find a way or make a way, by cutting steps with an axe. Its chambered hollows are
hung with a multitude of clustered icicles, amidst which thin subdued light pulses
and shimmers with ineffable loveliness. Water drips and tinkles among the icicles
overhead, and from far below there come strange solemn murmurs from currents
that are feeling their way in the darkness among veins and fissures on the bottom.
Ice creations of this kind are perfectly enchanting, notwithstanding one feels
strangely out of place in their cold fountain beauty. Dripping and shivering you are
glad to seek the sunshine, though it is hard to turn away from the delicious music of
the water, and the still more delicious beauty of the light in the crystal chambers.
Coming again to the surface you may see stones of every size setting out on their
downward journey with infinite deliberation, to be built into the terminal moraine.
And now the noonday warmth gives birth to a network of sweet-voiced rills that run
gracefully down the glacier, curling and swirling in their shining channels, and
cutting clear sections in which the structure of the ice is beautifully revealed, their
quick, gliding, glancing movements contrasting widely with the invisible flow of the
glacier itself on whose back they are all riding. The series of frontal moraines
noted further down, forming so striking a picture of the landscape, correspond in
every particular with those of this active glacier; and the cause of their distribution
with reference to shadows, is now plainly unfolded. When those climatic changes
came on that broke up the main glacier that once filled the amphitheater from wall
to wall, a series of residual glaciers was left in the cliff shadows,
under whose protection they lingered until the terminal moraines under
consideration were formed. But as the seasons became yet warmer, or the snow
supply less abundant, they wasted and vanished in succession, all excepting the one
we have just seen; and the causes of its longer life are manifest in the greater
extent of snow in its more perfect shelter from the action of the sun. How much
longer this little glacier will last to enrich the landscape will of course depend
upon climate and the changes slowly effected in the form and exposure of its basin.
But now these same shadows reaching quite across the main basin and up the
slopes of Red Mountain, mark the time for returning to camp, and also hint the
ascent of the mountain next day, from whose summit glorious views are to be seen
far down over the darkening woods, and north and south over the basins of Nevada
Creek, and San Joaquin, with their shining lakes and lace of silvery streams, and
eastward to the snowy Sierras, marshaled along the sky near enough to be
intensely impressive. This ascent will occupy most of your third day, and on the
fourth, sweeping around the southern boundary of the Illilouette Basin, and over the
Glacier Point Ridge, you may reach your headquarters in Yosemite by way of the
Glacier Point trail, thus completing one of the most telling trips one can make into
the icy Yosemite fountains.
The glaciers lying at the head of the Tuolumne and North fork of the San Joaquin
may also be reached from Yosemite, as well as many of the most interesting of the
mountains, Mounts Dana, Lyell, Ritter, and Mammoth Mountain--the Mono Pass
also, and Mono Lake and volcanoes on the eastern flank of the range. For this grand
general excursion into the heart of the High Sierra, good legs and nerves are
required, and great caution, and a free number of weeks. Then you may feel
reasonably safe among the loose crags of the peaks and crevasses of the glaciers,
and return to the lowlands and its cares, rich forever in mountain wealth beyond
your most extravagant expectations.
The best time to go to the High Sierra is about the end of September, when the
leaf colors are ripe, and the snow is in great part melted from the glaciers,
revealing the crevasses that are hidden earlier in the season.
Setting out with a pack-animal by the way of Vernal and Nevada falls at
the lower end of Little Yosemite
Valley, you will strike the old Mariposa and Mono Trail, which will lead you along
the base of Clouds Rest, past Cathedral Peak, and down through beautiful forests
into the Big Tuolumne Meadows. There, leaving the trail which crosses the
meadows and makes direct for the head of the Mono Pass, you turn to the right and
follow on up the meadow to its head near the base of Mount Lyell, where a central
camp should be established, from which short excursions may be made under
comfortable auspices to the adjacent peaks and glaciers.
Throughout the journey to the central camp you will be delighted with the
intense azure of the sky, the fine purplish-grey tones of the granite, the
reds 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 in their rocky channels, and the bright green and blue of the glacier lakes.
But the general expression of the scenery is savage and bewildering to the lover of
the picturesque. Threading the forests from ridge to ridge, and scanning the
landscapes from every outlook, foregrounds, middle-grounds, backgrounds,
sublime in magnitude, yet seem all alike bare rock waves, woods, groves,
diminutive flecks of meadow and strips of shining water, pictures without lines of
beginning or ending.
Cathedral Peak, grandly sculptured, a temple hewn from the living rock, of
noble proportions and profusely spired, is the first peak that concentrates the
attention. Then come the Tuolumne Meadows, a wide roomy stretch lying at a
height of about 8,500 feet above the sea, smooth and lawn-like, with the noble
forms of Mounts Dana and Gibbs in the distance, and curiously sculptured peaks on
either side. But it is only towards evening of the second day from the valley, that in
approaching the upper end of the meadows you gain a view of a truly beautiful and
well-balanced picture. It is composed of one lofty group of snow-laden peaks, of
which Mount Lyell is the center, with 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 is now aflame with autumn colors, brown, and purple, and gold,
ripe and luminous in the mellow sunshine, contrasting brightly with the
deep cobalt-blue of the sky, and the black and grey, and pure spiritual white of the rocks and
glaciers. Down through the heart of the picture the young Tuolumne River is 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 meadow levels
of the valley, swaying pensively from side to side, with calm, stately gestures, past
dipping sedges and willows, and around groves of arrowy pine; and throughout its
whole eventful course, flowing however fast or slow, singing loud or low, ever
filling the landscape with delightful animation, and manifesting the grandeur of its
sources in every movement and tone.
The excursion to the top of Mount Lyell, 13,000 feet high, will take you
through the midst of this alpine grandeur, and one day is all the time required.
From your camp on the bank of the river you bear off up the right wall of the
canyon and on direct to the glacier, keeping towards its western margin, so as to
reach the west side of the extreme summit of the mountain where the ascent is
least dangerous. The surface of the glacier is shattered with crevasses in some
places; these, however, are easily avoided, but the sharp wave-like blades of
granular snow covering a great part of the upper slopes during most of the season
are exceedingly fatiguing, and are likely to
stop any but the most determined climbers willing to stagger, stumble, and wriggle
onward against every difficulty. The view from the summit overlooks the
wilderness of peaks towards Mount Ritter, with their bright array of snow, and ice,
and lakes; and northward Mount Dana, Castle Peak, Mammoth Mountain, and
many others; westward, sweeping sheets of meadow, and heaving swells of
ice-polished granite, and dark lines of forest and shadowy canyons towards Yosemite;
while to eastward the view fades dimly among the sunbeaten deserts and ranges of
the Great Basin. These grand mountain scriptures laid impressively open will make
all your labor light, and you will return to camp braced and strengthened for yet
grander things to come.
The excursion to Mount Ritter will take about three days from the Tuolumne
Camp, some provision therefore will have to be carried, but no one will chafe under
slight inconveniences while seeking so noble a mark. Ritter is king of all the giant
summits hereabouts. Its height is about 13,300 feet, and it is guarded by steeply
inclined glaciers, and canyons and gorges of tremendous depth and ruggedness,
rendering it comparatively inaccessible. But difficulties of this kind only exhilarate
the mountaineer.
Setting out from the Tuolumne, carrying bread, and an axe to cut steps in the
glaciers, you go about a mile down the valley to the foot of a cascade that beats its
way through a rugged gorge in the canyon wall from a height of about 900 feet, and
pours its foaming waters into the river. Along the edge of this cascade you will find
a charming way to the summit. Thence you cross the axis of the range and make
your way southward along the eastern flank to the northern slopes of Ritter,
conforming to the topography as best you can, for to push on directly through the
peaks along the summit is impossible.
Climbing along the dashing border of the cascade, bathed from time to time in
waftings of irised spray, you are not likely to feel much weariness, and all too soon
you find yourself beyond its highest fountains. Climbing higher, new beauty comes
streaming on the sight--autumn-painted meadows, late-blooming goldenrods, peaks
of rare architecture, bright crystal lakes, and glimpses of the forested lowlands
seen far in the west.
Over the divide the Mono Desert comes full into view, lying dreaming silent in
thick purple light--a desert of heavy sun-glare, beheld from a foreground of
ice-burnished granite. Here the mountain waters separate, flowing east to vanish in the
volcanic sands and dry sky of the Great Basin, west to pass through the Golden
Gate to the sea.
Passing a little way down over the summit until an elevation of about ten
thousand feet is reached, you then push on southward dealing instinctively with
every obstacle as it presents itself. Massive spurs, alternating with deep gorges and
canyons, plunge abruptly from the shoulders of the snowy peaks and plant their feet
in the warm desert. These are everywhere marked 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 you will
find them about as trying to the eyes as sheets of snow. But even on the barest of
these ice pavements, in sheltered hollows countersunk beneath the general surface
into which a few rods of well-ground moraine chips have been dumped, there are
groves of spruce and pine thirty to forty feet high, trimmed around the edges with
willow and huckleberry bushes; and sometimes still further with an outer ring of
grasses bright with lupines, larkspurs, and showy columbines. All the streams, too,
and the pools at this elevation, are furnished with little gardens, which, though
making scarce any show at a distance, constitute charming surprises to the
appreciative mountaineer in their midst. In these bits of leafiness a few birds find
grateful homes, and having no acquaintance with man they fear no ill and flock
curiously around the stranger, almost allowing themselves to be taken in hand. In so
wild and so beautiful a region your first day will be spent, every sight and sound
novel and inspiring, and leading you far from yourself. Wearied with enjoyment and
the crossing of many canyons you will be glad to camp while yet far from Mount
Ritter. With the approach of evening long, blue, spiky-edged shadows creep out over
the snowfields, while a rosy glow, at first scarce discernible, gradually deepens,
suffusing every peak and flushing the glaciers and the harsh crags above them. This
is the alpenglow, the most impressive of all the terrestrial manifestations of God.
At the touch of this divine light the mountains seem to kindle to a rapt religious
consciousness, and stand hushed like worshippers waiting to be blessed. Then
suddenly comes darkness and the stars.
On my first visit to Ritter 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 nearby furnished abundance
of firewood. Sombre peaks, hacked and shattered, circle half way round the horizon,
wearing a most solemn aspect in the gloaming, and a waterfall chanted in deep base
tones across the lake on its way down from the foot of a glacier. The fall and the
lake and the glacier are almost equally bare, while the pines anchored in the fissures
of the rocks are so dwarfed and shorn by storm-winds you may walk over the tops
of them as if on a shaggy rug. The scene was one of the most desolate in tone I ever
beheld. But the darkest scriptures of the mountains are illumined with bright
passages of Nature's eternal love and they never fail to manifest themselves 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 on the sides. These are the
best bed-chambers the Sierra affords, 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 in such a place, but creeping in through a low opening I found
five or six small birds nestling among the tassels. The night wind begins to blow
soon after dark, at first only a gentle breathing, but increasing toward midnight to a
gale in
strength, that fell on my leafy roof in rugged surges like a cascade, while 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.
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 bum like
islands in a sea of liquid shade. Then the lower peaks and spires catch the glow, and
the long lances of light streaming through many a notch and pass, fall thick on the
frosty meadows. The whole mountain world awakes. Frozen rills begin to flow. The
marmots come out of their nests beneath the boulders and climb sunny rocks to
bask. The lakes seen from every ridge-top shimmer with white spangles like the
glossy needles of the low tasselled pines. The rocks, too, seem responsive to the
vital sun-heat, rock-crystals and snow-crystals throbbing alike. Thrilled and
exhilarated one strides onward in the crisp bracing air as if never more to feel
fatigue, limbs moving without effort, every sense unfolding and alert like the
thawing flowers to take part in the new day harmony.
All along your course thus far, excepting while crossing the canyons, the
landscapes are open and expansive. On your left the purple plains of Mono repose
dreamy and warm. On your right and in front, the near Alps spring keenly into the
thin sky with more and more impressive sublimity.
But these larger views are at length lost. Rugged spurs and moraines and huge
projecting buttresses begin to shut you in, until arriving at the summit of the
dividing ridge between the head waters of Rush Creek and the northmost tributaries
of the San Joaquin, a picture of pure wildness is disclosed, far surpassing every
other you have yet seen.
There, immediately in front, looms the majestic mass of Mt. Ritter, with a
glacier swooping down its face nearly to your feet, then curving, westward and
pouring its frozen flood into a blue-green lake whose shores are bound with
precipices of crystalline snow, while a deep chasm drawn between the divide and
the glacier separates the sublime picture from everything else. Only the one huge
mountain in sight, the one glacier, and one lake; the whole veiled with one blue
shadow--rock, ice, and water, without a single leaf. After gazing spell-bound you
begin 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 appears as one tremendous precipice, slightly receding at the top and
bristling with comparatively short spires and pinnacles set above one another in
formidable array. Massive lichen-stained battlements stand 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, far
as the eye can reach, are huge crumbling buttresses offering no invitation to the
climber. The head of the glacier sends up a few fingerlike branches through
couloirs, but these are too steep and short to be available, and numerous
narrow-throated gullies down which stones and
snow are avalanched seem hopelessly steep, besides being interrupted by vertical
cliffs past which no side way is visible. The whole is rendered still more terribly
forbidding by the chill shadow, and the gloomy blackness of the rocks, and the dead
silence relieved only by the murmur of small rills among the crevasses of the
glacier, and ever and anon the rattling report of falling stones. Nevertheless the
mountain may be climbed from this side, but only tried mountaineers should think
of making the attempt.
Near the eastern extremity of the glacier you may discover the mouth of an
avalanche gully, whose general course lies oblique to the plane of the front, 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 steepest places. Thus you make your 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 must be
removed from your steps; while so steep is the entire ascent one would inevitably
fall to the glacier in case a single slip should be made.
Towards the summit 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, made ready, apparently, to be
launched below. The climbing is, however, less dangerous here, and after hours of
strained, nerve-trying climbing, you at length stand on the topmost crag, out of the
shadow in the blessed light. How truly glorious the landscape circled this noble
summit! Giant mountains, innumerable valleys, glaciers, and meadows, rivers and
lakes, with the dark blue sky bent tenderly over them 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 from a series of short 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 the highest mountains of the range, their snowy summits crowded
together in lavish abundance, peak beyond peak, aspiring higher, and higher as they
sweep on southward, until the culminating point is reached in Mount Whitney near
the head of the Kern River, at an elevation of nearly 15,000 feet above the level of
the sea.
Westward the general flank of the range is seen flowing grandly away in smooth
undulations, a sea of grey granite waves, dotted with lakes and meadows, and fluted
with stupendous canyons that grow steadily deeper as they recede in the distance.
Below this grey region lie the dark forests, broken here and there by upswelling
ridges and domes; and yet beyond is 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 Sierra Crown, with Cathedral Peak a few degrees to the left, the
grey, massive form of Mammoth Mountain to the right, 13,000 feet high, and
Mounts Ord, Gibbs, Dana, Conness, Tower Peak, Castle Peak, and Silver Mountain,
stretching away in the distance, with a host of noble companions that are as yet
nameless.
To the eastward the whole region seems a land of pure desolation covered with
beautiful light. The hot volcanic basin of Mono, with its lake fourteen miles long,
Owens Valley, and the wide table land at its head dotted with craters, and the Inyo
Mountains; these are spread map-like beneath you, with many of the short ranges of
the Great Basin passing and overlapping each other and fading on the glowing
horizon.
At a distance of less than 3,000 feet below the summit you see the tributaries of
the San Joaquin and Owens Rivers bursting forth from their sure fountains of ice,
while a little to the north of here are found the highest affluents of the Tuolumne
and Merced. Thus the fountain heads of four of the principal rivers of California
are seen to lie within a radius of four or five miles.
Lakes, the eyes of the wilderness, are seen gleaming in every direction round, or
square, or oval like very mirrors; others narrow and sinuous, drawn close about the
peaks like silver girdles; the highest reflecting only rock and snow and sky. But
neither these nor the glaciers, nor yet the brown bits of meadow and moorland that
occur here and there, are large enough to make any marked impression upon the
mighty host of peaks. The eye roves around the vast expanse rejoicing in so grand a
freedom, yet returns again and again to the fountain mountains. Perhaps some one
of the multitude excites special attention, some gigantic castle with turret and
battlement, or gothic cathedral more lavishly spired than any ever chiselled by art.
But generally, when looking for the first time from an all-embracing standpoint like
this, the inexperienced observer is oppressed by the incomprehensible grandeur of
the peaks crowded about him, and it is only after they have been studied long and
lovingly that their far-reaching harmonies begin to appear. Then penetrate the
wilderness where you may, the main telling features to which all the topography is
subordinate are quickly perceived, and the most chaotic alp-clusters stand revealed
and regularly fashioned and grouped in accordance with law, eloquent monuments
of the ancient glaciers that brought them into relief. The grand canyons likewise are
recognized as the necessary results of causes following one another in melodious
sequence--Nature's poems carved on tables of stone, the simplest and most
emphatic of her glacial compositions.
Had we been here to look during the glacial period we would have found a
wrinkled ocean of ice continuous as that now covering North Greenland and the
lands about the South Pole, filling every valley and canyon, flowing deep above
every ridge, leaving only the tops of the peaks rising darkly
above the rock-encumbered waves, like foam-streaked islets in the midst of a
stormy sea--these islets the only hints of the glorious landscapes now lying warm
and fruitful beneath the sun. Now all the work of creation seems done. In the deep,
brooding silence all appears motionless. But in the midst of this outer
steadfastness we know there is incessant motion. Ever and anon avalanches are
falling from yonder peaks. These cliff-bound glaciers seemingly wedged fast 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
young rivers is fretting the air into music, and carrying the mountains to the plains.
Here are the roots of the life of the lowlands with all their wealth of vineyard and
grove, and here more simply than elsewhere is the eternal flux of nature
manifested.
But in the thick of these fine lessons you must remember that the sun is
wheeling far to the west, and you have many a weary and nerve-trying step to make
ere you can reach the timber-line where you may lie warm through the night. But
with keen caution and instinct and the guidance of your guardian angel you may
pass every danger in safety, and in another delightful day win your way back again
to your camp to rest on the beautiful Tuolumne River.
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