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Title: The Mountain that was 'God'
Being a Little Book About the Great Peak Which the Indians
Named 'Tacoma' but Which is Officially Called 'Rainier'
Author: John H. Williams
Release Date: July 12, 2007 [EBook #22056]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MOUNTAIN THAT WAS 'GOD' ***
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Transcriber's note: Obvious printer's errors have been corrected, all other inconsistencies are as in the original. Author's spelling has been maintained.
BEING A LITTLE BOOK ABOUT THE GREAT
PEAK WHICH THE INDIANS NAMED "TACOMA"
BUT WHICH IS OFFICIALLY CALLED "RAINIER"
O, rarest miracle of mountain heights,
Thou hast the sky for thy imperial dome,
And dwell'st among the stars all days and nights,
In the far heavens familiarly at home.
—William Hillis Wynn: "Mt. Tacoma; an Apotheosis."
Second Edition revised and greatly enlarged, with 190 illustrations, including eight colored halftones.
TACOMA: JOHN H. WILLIAMS
NEW YORK: G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS: LONDON
1911
Great Crevasses in the upper part of Cowlitz Glacier.
Copyright, 1905, By Kiser Photo Co.
Copyright, 1910, 1911, by John H. Williams.
(p. 007)
On the summit of Eagle Rock in winter.
Boys looking over an 800-foot precipice.
Every summer there is demand for illustrated literature describing the mountain variously called "Rainier" or "Tacoma." Hitherto, we have had only small collections of pictures, without text, and confined to the familiar south and southwest sides.
The little book which I now offer aims to show the grandest and most accessible of our extinct volcanoes from all points of view. Like the glacial rivers, its text will be found a narrow stream flowing swiftly amidst great mountain scenery. Its abundant illustrations cover not only the giants' fairyland south of the peak, but also the equally stupendous scenes that await the adventurer who penetrates the harder trails and climbs the greater glaciers of the north and east slopes. * * * *
The title adopted for the book has reference, of course, to the Indian nature worship, of which something is said in the opening chapter. Both the title and a small part of the matter are reprinted from an article which I contributed last year to the New York Evening Post. Attention is called to the tangle in the names of glaciers and the need of a definitive nomenclature. As to the name of the Mountain itself, that famous bone of contention between two cities, I greatly prefer "Tacoma," one of the several authentic forms of the Indian name used by different tribes; but I believe that "Tahoma," proposed by the Rotary Club of Seattle, would be a justifiable compromise, and satisfy nearly everybody. Its adoption would free our national map from one more of its meaningless names—the name, in this case, of an undistinguished foreign naval officer whose only connection with our history is the fact that he fought against us during the American Revolution. Incidentally, it would also free me from the need of an apology for using the hybrid "Rainier-Tacoma"! * * * Many of the illustrations show wide reaches of wonderful country, and their details may well be studied with a reading glass.
I am much indebted to the librarians and their courteous assistants at the Seattle and Tacoma public libraries; also to Prof. Flett for his interesting account of the flora of the National Park; to Mr. Eugene Ricksecker, of the United States Engineer Corps, for permission to reproduce his new map of the Park, now printed for the first time; and, most of all, to the photographers, both professional and amateur. In the table of illustrations, credit is given the maker of each photograph. The book is sent out in the hope of promoting a wider knowledge of our country's noblest landmark. May it lead many of its readers to delightful days of recreation and adventure.
Tacoma, June 1, 1910.J. H. W.
Second Edition.—The text has been carefully revised, much new matter added, and the information for tourists brought to date. The illustrations have been rearranged, and more (p. 008) than fifty new ones included. Views of the west and south sides, mainly, occupy the first half of the book, while the later pages carry the reader east and north from the Nisqually country.
Nearly five thousand negatives and photographs have now been examined in selecting copy for the engravers. In the table of illustrations I am glad to place the names of several expert photographers in Portland, San Francisco, Pasadena and Boston. Their pictures, with other new ones obtained from photographers already represented, make this edition much more complete. For the convenience of tourists, as well as of persons unable to visit the Mountain but wishing to know its features, I have numbered the landmarks on three of the larger views, giving a key in the underlines. If this somewhat mars the beauty of these pictures, it gives them added value as maps of the areas shown. In renewing my acknowledgments to the photographers, I must mention especially Mr. Asahel Curtis of Seattle. The help and counsel of this intrepid and public-spirited mountaineer have been invaluable. Mr. A. H. Barnes, our Tacoma artist with camera and brush, whose fine pictures fill many of the following pages, is about to publish a book of his mountain views, for which I bespeak liberal patronage.
My readers will join me in welcoming the beautiful verses written for this edition by a gracious and brilliant woman whose poems have delighted two generations of her countrymen.
Thanks are also due to Senator Wesley L. Jones, Superintendent E. S. Hall of the Rainier National Park and the Secretary of the Interior for official information; to Director George Otis Smith of the U. S. Geological Survey for such elevations as have thus far been established by the new survey of the Park; to A. C. McClurg & Co. of Chicago, for permission to quote from Miss Judson's "Myths and Legends of the Pacific Northwest"; to Mr. Wallace Rice, literary executor of the late Francis Brooks, for leave to use Mr. Brooks's fine poem on the Mountain; to the librarians at the Public Library, the John Crerar Library and the Newberry Library in Chicago, and to many others who have aided me in obtaining photographs or data for this edition.
Lovers of the mountains, in all parts of our country, will learn with regret that Congress, remains apparently indifferent to the conservation of the Rainier National Park and its complete opening to the public. At the last session, a small appropriation was asked for much-needed trails through the forests and to the high interglacial plateaus, now inaccessible save to the toughest mountaineer; it being the plan of the government engineers to build such trails on grades that would permit their ultimate widening into permanent roads. Even this was denied. The Idaho catastrophe last year again proved the necessity of trails to the protection of great forests. With the loggers pushing their operations closer to the Park, its danger calls for prompt action. Further, American tourists, it is said, annually spend $200,000,000 abroad, largely to view scenery surpassed in their own country. But Congress refuses the $50,000 asked, even refuses $25,000, toward making the grandest of our National Parks safe from forest fires and accessible to students and lovers of nature!
May 3, 1911.
Winthrop Glacier and St. Elmo Pass,
with Ruth Mountain
(the Wedge) on right and Sour-Dough Mountains on left.
White Glacier and Little Tahoma,
with eastern end of
the Tatoosh Range in distance.
The * indicates engravings made from copyrighted photographs. See notice under the illustration.
THREE-COLOR HALFTONES.
ONE-COLOR HALFTONES.
White River Canyon, from the terminal moraine of White Glacier. A fine example of glacial sculpture. The river seen in the distance is 2,000 feet below the plateau through which the glacier has carved this valley.
Telephoto view from near Electron, 20 miles, showing vast summit plateau left when the Mountain blew its head off. 1. Crater Peak, built by the two small, modern craters. 2. South Peak, or Peak Success. 3. North Peak, or Liberty Cap. 4. North Tahoma Glacier. 5. Puyallup Glacier. 6. South Mowich Glacier. 7. North Mowich Glacier. 8. Snow Cap above Carbon Glacier. The summit peaks (1, 2 and 3) form a triangle, each side of which is two miles or more in length.
View of the Mountain from Fox Island, forty-two miles northwest, with part of Puget Sound in the foreground.
I am Tacoma, Monarch of the Coast!
Uncounted ages heaped my shining snows;
The sun by day, by night the starry host,
Crown me with splendor; every breeze that blows
Wafts incense to my altars; never wanes
The glory my adoring children boast,
For one with sun and sea Tacoma reigns.
Tacoma—the Great Snow Peak—mighty name
My dusky tribes revered when time was young!
Their god was I in avalanche and flame—
In grove and mead and songs my rivers sung,
As blithe they ran to make the valleys fair—
Their Shrine of Peace where no avenger came
To vex Tacoma, lord of earth and air.
Ah! when at morn above the mists I tower
And see my cities gleam by slope and strand,
What joy have I in this transcendent dower—
The strength and beauty of my sea-girt land
That holds the future royally in fee!
And lest some danger, undescried, should lower,
From my far height I watch o'er wave and lea.
And cloudless eves when calm in heaven I rest,
All rose-bloom with a glow of paradise,
And through my firs the balm-wind of the west,
Blown over ocean islands, softly sighs,
While placid lakes my radiant image frame—
And know my worshippers, in loving quest,
Will mark my brow and fond lips breathe my name:
Enraptured from my valleys to my snows,
I charm my glow to crimson—soothe to gray;
And when the encircling shadow deeper grows,
Poise, a lone cloud, beside the starry way.
Then, while my realm is hushed from steep to shore,
I yield my grandeur to divine repose,
And know Tacoma reigns forevermore!
South Framingham, Mass.
March, 1911. Edna Dean Proctor
The most kingly of American mountains, seen from beautiful Lake
Washington, Seattle, distance sixty miles.
Copyright, 1906, By Romans Photographic Co.
(p. 017)
A party of climbers on Winthrop Glacier.
Long hours we toiled up through the solemn wood,
Beneath moss-banners stretched from tree to tree;
At last upon a barren hill we stood,
And, lo, above loomed Majesty.
—Herbert Bashford: "Mount Rainier."
The great Mountain fascinates us by its diversity. It is an inspiration and yet a riddle to all who are drawn to the mysterious or who love the sublime. Every view which the breaking clouds vouchsafe to us is a surprise. It never becomes commonplace, save to the commonplace.
Ice Terraces on South Tahoma Glacier. These vast steps are often seen where a glacier moves down a steep and irregular slope.
Old Virgil's gibe at mankind's better half—"varium et mutabile semper femina"—might have been written of this fickle shape of rock and ice and vapor. One tries vainly, year after year, to define it in his own mind. The daily, hourly change of distance, size and aspect, tricks which the Indian's mountain (p. 018) god plays with the puny creatures swarming more and more about his foot; his days of frank neighborliness, his swift transformations from smiles to anger, his fits of sullenness and withdrawal, all baffle study. Even though we live at its base, it is impossible to say we know the Mountain, so various are the spells the sun casts over this huge dome which it is slowly chiseling away with its tools of ice, and which, in coming centuries, it will level with the plain.
Mineral Lake and the Mountain. Distance, eighteen miles.
We are lovers of the water as well as the hills, out here in this northwestern corner of the Republic. We spend many days—and should spend more—in cruising among the hidden bays and park-like islands which make Puget Sound the most interesting body of water in America. We grow a bit boastful about the lakes that cluster around our cities. Nowhere better than from sea level, or from the lakes raised but little above it, does one realize the bulk, the dominance, and yet the grace, of this noble peak. Its impressiveness, indeed, arises in part from the fact that it is one of the few great volcanic mountains whose entire height may be seen from tide level. Many of us can recall views of it from Lake Washington at Seattle, or from American or Spanaway Lake at Tacoma, or from the Sound, which will always haunt the memory.
Storm King Peak and Mineral Lake, viewed from near Mineral Lake Inn.
Early one evening, last summer, I went with a friend to Point Defiance, Tacoma's fine park at the (p. 021) end of the promontory on which the city is built. We drank in refreshment from the picture there unrolled of broad channels and evergreen shores. As sunset approached, we watched the western clouds building range upon range of golden mountains above the black, Alp-like crags of the Olympics. Then, entering a small boat, we rowed far out northward into the Sound. Overhead, and about us, the scenes of the great panorama were swiftly shifted. The western sky became a conflagration. Twilight settled upon the bay. The lights of the distant town came out, one by one, and those of the big smelter, near by, grew brilliant. No Turner ever dreamed so glorious a composition of sunlight and shade. But we were held by one vision.
View from Electron, showing west side of the mountain, with a vast intervening country of forested ranges and deep canyons.
Nisqually Canyon.
... "Where the mountain wall
Is piled to heaven, and through the narrow rift
Of the vast rocks, against whose rugged feet
Beats the mad torrent with perpetual roar:
Where noonday is as twilight, and the wind
Comes burdened with the everlasting moan
Of forests and far-off waterfalls."—Whittier.
Yonder, in the southeast, towering above the lower shadows of harbor and hills, rose a vast pyramid of soft flame. The setting sun had thrown a mantle of rose pink over the ice of the glaciers and the great cleavers of rock which buttress the mighty dome. The rounded summit was warm with beautiful orange light. Soon the colors upon its slope changed to deeper reds, and then to amethyst, and (p. 023) violet, and pearl gray. The sun-forsaken ranges below fell away to dark neutral tints. But the fires upon the crest burned on, deepening from gold to burnished copper, a colossal beacon flaming high against the sunset purple of the eastern skies. Finally, even this great light paled to a ghostly white, as the supporting foundation of mountain ridges dropped into the darkness of the long northern twilight, until the snowy summit seemed no longer a part of earth, but a veil of uncanny mist, caught up by the winds from the Pacific and floating far above the black sky-line of the solid Cascades, that
* * * heaven-sustaining bulwark, reared
Between the East and West.
North Peak, or Liberty Cap, and South Mowich Glacier in storm, seen
from an altitude of 6,000 feet, on ridge between South Mowich and
Puyallup Glaciers. The glacier, 2,000 feet below, is nearly half a
mile wide. Note the tremendous wall of ice in which it ends.
Copyright, 1900, By A. H. Waite.
Basaltic Columns, part of the "Colonnade" on south side of South Mowich Glacier. These
curious six-sided columns of volcanic rock are similar to those
bordering the Cowlitz Glacier.
Copyright, 1900, By A. H. Waite.
Mountain Goat, an accidental snap-shot of the fleet and wary Mazama; godfather of the famous Portland mountain club.
And when even that apparition had faded, and the Mountain appeared only as an uncertain bulk shadowed upon the night, then came the miracle. Gradually, the east, beyond the great hills, showed a faint silver glow. Silhouetted against this dim background, the profile of the peak grew definite. With no other warning, suddenly from its summit the full moon shot forth, huge, majestic and gracious, flooding the lower world with brightness. Clouds and mountain ranges alike shone with its glory. But the great peak loomed blacker and more sullen. Only, on its head, the wide crown of snow gleamed white under the cold rays of the moon.
West Side of the summit, seen from Tahoma Fork of the Nisqually, on road to Longmire Springs. Note the whiteness of the glacial water. This stream is fed by the united Tahoma glaciers. See pp. 32 and 37.
Iron and Copper Mountains (right) in Indian Henry's. The top of Pyramid Peak shows in the saddle beyond with Peak Success towering far above.
No wonder that this mountain of changing moods, overtopping every other eminence in the Northwest, answered the idea of God to the simple, imaginative mind of the Indians who hunted in the forest on its slopes or fished in the waters of Whulge that ebbed and flowed at its base. Primitive peoples in every land have deified superlative manifestations of nature—the sun, the wind, great rivers, and waterfalls, the high mountains. By all the tribes within sight of its summit, this pre-eminent peak, variously called by them Tacoma (Tach-ho´ma), Tahoma or Tacob, as who should say "The Great Snow," was deemed a power to be feared and conciliated. Even when the missionaries taught them a better faith, they continued to hold the Mountain in superstitious reverence—an awe that still has power to silence their "civilized" and very unromantic descendants.
Cutting steps up Paradise Glacier.
The Puget Sound tribes, with the Yakimas, Klickitats and others living just beyond the Cascades, had substantially the same language and beliefs, though differing much in physical and mental type. (p. 026) East of the range, they lived by the chase. They were great horsemen and famous runners, a breed of lithe, upstanding, competent men, as keen of wit as they were stately in appearance. These were "the noble Red Men" of tradition. Fennimore Cooper might have found many a hero worthy of his pen among the savages inhabiting the fertile valley of the Columbia, which we now call the Inland Empire. But here on the Coast were the "Digger" tribes, who subsisted chiefly by spearing salmon and digging clams. Their stooped figures, flat faces, downcast eyes and low mentality reflected the life they led. Contrasting their heavy bodies with their feeble legs, which grew shorter with disuse, a Tacoma humorist last summer gravely proved to a party of English visitors that in a few generations more, had not the white man seized their fishing grounds, the squatting Siwashes would have had no legs at all!
Great Crag on the ridge separating the North and South Tahoma Glaciers, with Tahoma Fork of the Nisqually visible several miles below. This rock is seen right of center on page 27.
The Marmot, whose shrill whistle is often heard among the crags.
Stolid and uninspired as he seemed to the whites, the Indian of the Sound was not without his touch of poetry. He had that imaginative curiosity which marked the native (p. 028) American everywhere. He was ever peering into the causes of things, and seeing the supernatural in the world around him.[1]
View from Beljica, showing the deeply indented west side of the Mountain. Beginning at extreme right, the glaciers are, successively: Kautz, South Tahoma, North Tahoma and Puyallup. In the left foreground is the canyon of Tahoma Fork of the Nisqually, which is fed by the Tahoma glaciers.
Mountain Pine, one of
the last outposts of the forest below the line of eternal snow.
Copyright, 1897, By E. S. Curtis.
To the great Snow Mountain the Indians made frequent pilgrimages, for they thought this king of the primeval wild a divinity to be reckoned with. They dreaded its anger, seen in the storms about its head, the thunder of its avalanches, and the volcanic flashes of which their traditions told. They courted its favor, symbolized in the wild flowers that bloomed on its slope, and the tall grass that fed the mowich, or deer.
Mount Wow, or Goat Mountain, above Mesler's.
Copyright, 1897, By E. S. Curtis.
As they ascended the vast ridges, the grandeur about them spoke of the mountain god. There were groves of trees he must have planted, so orderly were they set out. The lakes of the lofty valleys seemed calmer than those on the prairies below, the foliage brighter, the ferns taller and more graceful. The song of the waterfalls here was sweeter than the music of the tamahnawas men, their Indian sorcerers. The many small meadows close to the snow-line, carpeted in deepest green and spread with flowers, were the gardens of the divinity, tended by his superhuman agents. Strange as it may seem, the nature-worship of the silent Red Man had many points in common with that of the imaginative, volatile Greek, who (p. 030) peopled his mountains with immortals; and no wood in ancient Greece was ever thronged with hamadryads more real than the little gods whom the Indian saw in the forests watered by streams from Tacoma's glaciers.
Rounded Cone of Mt. St. Helens, seen from Indian Henry's, forty-five miles away.
View northward in early summer from Eagle Peak, at
western end of the Tatoosh. Gibraltar Rock and Little Tahoma break the
eastern sky-line. On the extreme right lies Paradise Valley, still deep
in snow, with the canyon of Paradise River below it. Next is seen the
Nisqually Glacier, with Nisqually River issuing from its snout. Then
come Van Trump Glacier (an "interglacier"), and the big Kautz Glacier,
dropping into its own deep canyon. Beyond the Kautz, Pyramid Peak and
Iron and Copper Mountains rise on the Indian Henry plateau. The Tahoma
Glaciers close the view westward.
Copyright, 1907, By Pillsbury Picture Co.
Eagle Peak (Indian name, Simlayshe) at west end of the Tatoosh.
Altitude about 6,000 feet. A pony trail three miles long leads up from the Inn.
Copyright, 1909, By Linkletter Photo. Co.
Countless snows had fallen since the mountain god created and beautified this home of his, when one day he grew angry, and in his wrath showed terrible tongues of fire. Thus he ignited an immense fir forest on the south side of the peak. When his anger subsided, the flames passed, and the land they left bare became covered with blue grass and wild flowers—a great sunny country where, before, the dark forest had been. Borrowing a word from the French coureurs des bois who came with the Hudson's Bay Company, the later Indians sometimes called this region "the Big Brulé"; and to this day some Americans call it the same. But for the Big Brulé the Indians had, from ancient times, another name, connected with their ideas of religion. It was their Saghalie Illahe, the "Land of Peace," Heaven. Our name, "Paradise Valley," (p. 031) given to the beautiful open vale on the south slope of the Mountain, is an English equivalent.
Here was the same bar to violence which religion has erected in many lands. The Hebrews had their "Cities of Refuge." The pagan ancients made every altar an asylum. Medićval Christianity constituted all its churches sanctuaries. Thus, in lawless ages, the hand of vengeance was stayed, and the weak were protected.
Exploring an Ice Cave, Paradise Glacier.
So, too, the Indian tradition ordained this home of rest and refuge. Indian custom was an eye for an eye, but on gaining this mountain haven the pursued was safe from his pursuer, the slayer might not be touched by his victim's kindred. When he crossed its border, the warrior laid down his arms. Criminals and cowards, too, were often sent here by the chiefs to do penance.
Junction of North and South Tahoma Glaciers, viewed from Indian Henry's. The main ice stream thus formed, seen in the foreground, feeds Tahoma Fork of the Nisqually River. The Northern part of North Tahoma Glacier, seen in the distance beyond the wedge of rocks, feeds a tributary of the Puyallup.
The mountain divinity, with his under-gods, figures in much of the Siwash (p. 032) folklore, and the "Land of Peace" is often heard of. It is through such typical Indian legends as that of Miser, the greedy hiaqua hunter, that we learn how large a place the great Mountain filled in the thought of the aborigines.
Anemones, a familiar mountain flower.
This myth also explains why no Red Man could ever be persuaded to an ascent beyond the snow line. As to the Greek, so to the Indian the great peaks were sacred. The flames of an eruption, the fall of an avalanche, told of the wrath of the mountain god. The clouds that wrapped the summit of Tacoma spelled mystery and peril. Even so shrewd and intelligent a Siwash as Sluiskin, with all his keenness for "Boston chikamin," the white man's money, refused to accompany Stevens and Van Trump in the first ascent, in 1870; indeed, he gave them up as doomed, and bewailed their certain fate when they defied the Mountain's wrath and started for the summit in spite of his warnings.
North Tahoma Glacier, flowing out of the huge cleft in the west side, between North
and South Peaks. A great rock wedge splits the glacier, turning part
of the ice stream northward into the Puyallup, while the other part,
on the right pours down to join South Tahoma Glacier. Note how the
promontory of rock in the foreground has been rounded and polished by
the ice. Compare this view with pages 32 and 37.
Copyright 1910, A. H. WAITE.
Snow Lake in Indian Henry's, surrounded by Alpine firs, which grow close to the snow line. Elevation about 6,000 feet.
The hero of the Hiaqua Myth is the Indian (p. 035) Rip Van Winkle.[2] He dwelt at the foot of Tacoma, and, like Irving's worthy, he was a mighty hunter and fisherman. He knew the secret pools where fish could always be found, and the dark places in the forest, where the elk hid when snows were deepest. But for these things Miser cared not. His lust was all for hiaqua, the Indian shell money.
A fair Mountaineer at the timber line. Note her equipment, including shoe calks.
Now, Miser's totem was Moosmoos, the elk divinity. So Miser tried, even while hunting the elk, to talk with them, in order to learn where hiaqua might be found. One night Moosmoos persuaded him that on top of the Mountain he would find great store of it. Making him two elk-horn picks, and filling his ikta with dried salmon and kinnikinnick, he climbed in two nights and a day to the summit. Here he found three big rocks, one like a camas root, one like a salmon's head, the third like his friendly Moosmoos. Miser saw that Moosmoos had told him truly.
View of Indian Henry's Hunting Ground from a point on South Tahoma Glacier, looking across to Copper and Iron Mountains, with Mt. St. Helens above the clouds far beyond. This famous upland plateau or "park" gets its name from the fact that it was, years ago, the favorite haunt of a celebrated Indian hunter.
Southwest side of the Mountain as seen from Indian Henry's, showing North and South Tahoma Glaciers meeting in foreground, and Kautz Glacier on extreme right.
After long digging, Miser overturned the rock that was like the elk's head. Beneath lay a vast quantity of hiaqua. This he strung on elk's sinews—enough of it to make him the richest of men. Then he hurried to depart. But he left no thank-offering to the tanahnawas powers. Thereupon the whole earth shook with a mighty convulsion, and the mountain shot forth terrible fires, which melted the snows and poured floods down the slopes, where they were turned to ice again by the breath of the storm-god. And above the roar of torrents and the crash of thunder, (p. 038) Miser heard the voices of all the tamahnawas, hissing: "Hiaqua! Hiaqua! Ha, ha, Hiaqua!"
Climbing Pinnacle Peak, in the Tatoosh. Elevation 6,500 feet. The route leads up from Paradise Valley, over the steep snow field shown in the lower view, and thence by a difficult trail to the summit.
Panic-stricken at the results of his greed, Miser threw down his load of treasure to propitiate the angry tamahnawas. But the storm-god hurled him down the mountain side. Miser fell into a deep sleep. Many, many snows after, he awoke to find himself far from the summit, in a pleasant country of beautiful meadows carpeted with flowers, abounding in camas roots, and musical with the song of birds. He had grown very old, with white hair falling to his shoulders. His ikta was empty, save for a few dried leaves. Recognizing the scene about him as Saghalie Illahe, he sought his old tent. It was where he had left it. There, too, was his klootchman, or wife, grown old, like himself. Thirty snows, she said, she had awaited his return. Back they went to their (p. 039) home on the bank of the Cowlitz, where he became a famous tamahnawas man, and spent the rest of his days in honor, for his tribesmen recognized that the aged Indian's heart had been marvelously softened and his mind enriched by his experience upon the peak. He had lost his love for hiaqua.
A silhouette on Pinnacle Peak, with Paradise Valley and the Nisqually Glacier below.
Among the familiar myths of the Mountain was one of a great flood, not unlike that of Noah. I quote Miss Judson's version:
WHY THERE ARE NO SNAKES ON TAKHOMA.
A long, long time ago, Tyhce Sahale became angry with his people. Sahale ordered a medicine man to take his bow and arrow and shoot into the cloud which hung low over Takhoma. The medicine man shot the arrow, and it stuck fast in the cloud. Then he shot another into the lower end of the first. Then he shot another into the lower end of the second. He shot arrows until he had made a chain which reached from the cloud to the earth. The medicine man told his klootchman and his children to climb up the arrow trail. Then he told the good animals to climb up the arrow trail. Then the medicine man climbed up himself. Just as he was climbing into the cloud, he looked back. A long line of bad animals and snakes were also climbing up the arrow trail. Therefore the medicine man broke the chain of arrows. Thus the snakes and bad animals fell down on the mountain side. Then at once it began to rain. It rained until all the land was flooded. Water reached even to the snow line of Takhoma. When all the bad animals and snakes were drowned, it stopped raining. After a while the waters sank again. Then the medicine man and his klootchman and the children climbed out of the cloud and came down the mountain side. The good animals also climbed out of the cloud. Thus there are now no snakes or bad animals on Takhoma.
Rough Climbing, an
illustration of perils encountered in crossing the glaciers.
Copyright, 1897, by E. S. Curtis.
Ptarmigan, the Grouse of the ice-fields. Unlike its neighbor, the Mountain Goat, this bird is tame, and may sometimes be caught by hand. In winter its plumage turns from brown to white.
Childish and fantastic as they seem to our wise age, such legends show the Northwestern Indian struggling to interpret the world about him. Like savages everywhere, he peopled the unknown with spirits good and bad, and mingled his conception of a beneficent deity with his ideas of the evil one. Symbolism pervaded his crude but very positive mind. Ever by his side the old Siwash felt the Power that dwelt on Tacoma, protecting and aiding him, or leading him to destruction. Knowing (p. 040) nothing of true worship, his primitive intelligence could imagine God only in things either the most beautiful or the most terrifying; and the more we know the Mountain, the more easily we shall understand why he deemed the majestic peak a factor of his destiny—an infinite force that could, at will, bless or destroy. For to us, too, though we have no illusions as to its supernatural powers, the majestic peak may bring a message. Before me is a letter from an inspiring New England writer, who has well earned the right to appraise life's values. "I saw the great Mountain three years ago," she says; "would that it might ever be my lot to see it again! I love to dream of its glory, and its vast whiteness is a moral force in my life."
Perpetual
And snowy tabernacle of the land,
While purples at thy base this peaceful sea,
And all thy hither slopes in evening bathe,
I hear soft twilight voices calling down
From all thy summits unto prayer and love.
—Francis Brooks: "Mt. Rainier."
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The Mountain, seen from Puyallup River, near Tacoma.
Falls of the Little Mashell River, near Eatonville and the road to the Mountain.
Old Stage Road to Longmire Springs and the National Park Inn, showing the tall, clear trunks of the giant firs.
(p. 043)
On Pierce County's splendid scenic road to the Mountain. Passing Ohop Valley.
There are plenty of higher mountains, but it is the decided isolation—the absolute standing alone in full majesty of its own mightiness—that forms the attraction of Rainier. * * * It is no squatting giant, perched on the shoulders of other mountains. From Puget Sound, it is a sight for the gods, and one feels in the presence of the gods.—Paul Fountain: "The Seven Eaglets of the West" (London, 1905).
Cowlitz Chimneys, seen from basin below Frying-Pan Glacier.
The first explorers to climb the Mountain, forty years ago, were compelled to make their way from Puget Sound through the dense growths of one of the world's greatest forests, over lofty ridges and deep canyons, and across perilous glacial torrents. The hardships of a journey to the timber line were more formidable than the difficulties encountered above it.
Even from the East the first railroad to the Coast had just reached San Francisco. Thence the traveler came north to the Sound by boat. The now busy cities of Seattle and Tacoma were, one, an ambitious village of 1,107 inhabitants; the other, a sawmill, with seventy persons living around it. They were frontier settlements, outposts of (p. 044) civilization; but civilization paid little attention to them and their great Mountain, until the railways, some years later, began to connect them with the big world of people and markets beyond the Rockies.
On the way out from Tacoma, over the partly wooded prairie, the automobilist sees many scenes like this old road near Spanaway Lake.
How different the case to-day! Six transcontinental railroads now deliver their trains in the Puget Sound cities. These are: The Northern Pacific, which was the first trunk line to reach the Sound; the Great Northern; the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy; the Chicago, Milwaukee & Puget Sound; the Oregon-Washington (Union Pacific), and the Canadian Pacific. A seventh, the North Coast, is planned.
View Northward from top of Pinnacle Peak in the Tatoosh range to Paradise Valley, Nisqually Glacier and Gibraltar Rock, eight miles away.
Looking Northeast from slope of Pinnacle Peak, across Paradise, Stevens, Cowlitz and Frying Pan Glaciers. These two views form virtually a panorama.
Arriving in Seattle or Tacoma, the traveler has his choice of quick and enjoyable routes to the Mountain. He may go by automobile, leaving either city in the morning. After traveling one of the best and most interesting roads in the country—the only one, in fact, to reach a glacier—he may take luncheon at noon six thousand feet higher, in Paradise Park, overlooking great glaciers and close to the line of eternal snow. Or he may go by the comfortable trains of the Tacoma Eastern (Milwaukee system) to Ashford, fifty-five miles from Tacoma, and then by automobile stages, over a picturesque portion of the fine highway just mentioned, to the National Park Inn at Longmire Springs (altitude 2,762 feet). Lunching there, he may then go on, by coach over the new government road, or on horseback over one of the most inviting mountain trails in America, or afoot, as many prefer. Thus he (p. 049) gains Paradise Park and its far-reaching observation point, Camp of the Clouds (elevation, 5,800 feet). From the Inn, too, another romantic bridle path leads to Indian Henry's famous Hunting Ground, equally convenient as a base of adventure.
Automobile Party above Nisqually Canyon, Pierce County Road to the Mountain.
Prof. O. D. Allen's cottage, in the Forest Reserve, where the former Yale professor has for years studied the flora of the Mountain.
Whether the visitor goes to the Mountain by train or by automobile, his choice will be a happy one. For either route leads through a country of uncommon charm. Each of them, too, will carry the visitor up from the Sound to the great and beautiful region on the southern slopes which includes the Tahoma, Kautz, Nisqually, Paradise and Stevens canyons, with their glaciers and the wonderful upland plateaus or "parks" that lie between.
"Ghost Trees" in Indian Henry's. These white stalks tell of fires set by careless visitors.
Here let him stay a day or a month. Every moment of his time will be crowded with new experiences and packed with enjoyment. For here is sport to last for many months. He may content himself with a day spent in coasting down a steep snow-field in midsummer, snowballing his companions, and climbing Alta Vista to look down on the big Nisqually glacier in the deep bed which it has (p. 050) carved for itself, and up its steep slopes to its névé field on the summit. Or he may explore this whole region at his leisure. He may climb the hard mountain trails that radiate from Longmires and Paradise. He may work up over the lower glaciers, studying their crevasses, ice caves and flow. He will want to ascend some of the tempting crags of the ragged Tatoosh, for the panorama of ice-capped peaks and dark, forested ranges which is there unfolded. After a week or two of such "trying-out," to develop wind and harden muscle, he may even scale the great Mountain itself under the safe lead of experienced guides. He may wander at will over the vast platform left by a prehistoric explosion which truncated the cone, and perhaps spend a night of sensational novelty (and discomfort) in a big steam cave, under the snow, inside a dead crater.
The south side has the advantage of offering the wildest alpine sport in combination with a well-appointed hotel as a base of operations. Hence the majority of visitors know only that side. Everybody should know it, too, for there is not a nobler playground anywhere; but should also know that it is by no means the only side to see.
Government Road in the Forest Reserve.
One may, of course, work around from the Nisqually canyon and Paradise, east or west, to the other glaciers and "parks." It is quite practicable, if not easy, to make the trip eastward from Camp of the Clouds, crossing Paradise, Stevens and Cowlitz glaciers, and thus to reach the huge White glacier on the east side and Winthrop and Carbon glaciers on the north. Every summer sees more and more visitors making this wonderful journey.
But the usual way to reach the great north side, especially for parties which carry camp equipment, is by a Northern Pacific train over the Carbonado branch to Fairfax. This is on Carbon river, five miles from the northwest corner of the National Park. Thence the traveler will go by horse or afoot, over a safe mountain trail, to Spray Park, the fascinating region between Carbon and North Mowich (p. 051) glaciers. Standing here, on such an eminence as Fay Peak or Eagle Cliff, he may have views of the Mountain in its finest aspects that will a thousand times repay the labor of attainment.
"Hanging Glacier," or ice fall, above Cowlitz Glacier.
A visit to this less known but no less interesting side involves the necessity of packing an outfit. But arrangements for horses and packers are easily made, and each year an increasing number of parties make Spray Park their headquarters, spending, if they are wise, at least a week in this wide region of flowering alpine valleys and commanding heights. From there they go south, over the west-side glaciers, or east, across the Carbon and through the great White river country. They camp on the south side of the Sluiskin mountains, in Moraine Park, and there have ready access to Carbon and Winthrop glaciers, with splendid views of the vast precipices that form the north face of the Mountain. Thence they climb east and south over the Winthrop and White glaciers. They visit the beautiful Grand Park and Summerland, and either make the ascent to the summit from "Steamboat Prow" on the "Wedge," over the long ice slope of the White glacier, or continue around to the Paradise country and Longmire Springs.
(p. 052)
Leaving the National Park Inn at Longmire Springs for Paradise Park.
On the Summit,
showing Columbia's Crest, the great mound of snow that has, most
curiously, formed on this wide, wind-swept platform. This, the actual
top of the Mountain, is 14,363 feet above sea level.
Copyright, 1909, By Asahel Curtis.
The west side has been less visited than the others, but there is a trail from the North Mowich to the Nisqually, and from this adventurous explorers reach North and South Mowich and Puyallup glaciers. No one has yet climbed the Mountain over those glaciers, or from the north side. A view from any of the trails will explain why. The great rock spines are more precipitous than elsewhere, the glaciers more broken; and the summit is fronted on either side by a huge parapet of rock which hurls defiance at anything short of an airship. Doubtless, we shall some day travel to Crater Peak by aeroplanes, but until these vehicles are equipped with (p. 054) runners for landing and starting on the snow, we shall do best to plan our ascents from the south or east side.
Paradise Valley or "Park," and Tatoosh Mountains, from slope below Paradise Glacier. The highest of the peaks are about 7,000 feet above sea level and 1,700 feet above the floor of the valley.
On the Government Road a mile above Longmires, bound for the Nisqually Glacier.
Near "Gap Point," where the road turns from the Nisqually canyon into that of Paradise River.
I have thus briefly pointed out the favorite routes followed in exploring the National Park. The time is fast approaching when it will be a truly national recreation ground, well known to Americans in every State. The coming of new railways to Puget Sound and the development of new facilities for reaching the Mountain make this certain.[3]
Snout of Nisqually Glacier, with the river which it feeds. Though much shrunken since the epoch when it filled the whole canyon, the glacier is still a vast river of ice; and its front, seen several hundred yards above the bridge, rises sheer 500 feet. The new road to Narada Falls and Paradise Park crosses the Nisqually here. Automobiles are not permitted to go above this point.
Pony bridge over the Nisqually, on trail to Paradise. Note the granite boulders which the stream has rounded in rolling them down from the glacier.
Every step taken for the conservation of the natural beauty of the Park and its opening to proper use and enjoyment is a public benefit. Outside the national reserves, our lumbermen are fast destroying the forests; but, if properly guarded against fire, the great Park forest will still teach future generations how lavishly Nature plants, just as the delightful glacial valleys and towering landmarks teach how powerful and artistic a sculptor she is. Experienced travelers and alpinists (p. 055) who have visited the Mountain unite in declaring its scenery, combining as it does great vistas of ice with vast stretches of noble forest, to be unequaled elsewhere in America, and unsurpassed anywhere. In the fascination of its glacial story, as well as in the grandeur of its features, it has few rivals among the great peaks of the world. The geologist, the botanist, the weary business man, the sportsman, all find it calling them to study, to rest, or to strenuous and profitable recreation. Here is a resource more lasting than our timber. When the loggers shall have left us only naked ranges, without the reserves, the Park may yield a crop more valuable.
The road a mile above the bridge, overlooking Nisqually Canyon and Glacier.
On the Pony Trail to Paradise. This trail winds through the dense forest above Longmires, crosses the Nisqually, and then follows Paradise River, with its miles of picturesque cascades. It is one of the most beautiful mountain paths in America.
Until recent years this was known only to the hardy few who delight in doing difficult things for great rewards. But that day of isolation has passed. The value of the Park to the whole American people is more (p. 056) and more appreciated by them, if not yet by their official representatives. While Congress has dealt less liberally with this than with the other great National Parks, what it has appropriated has been well spent in building an invaluable road, which opens one of the most important upland regions to public knowledge and use. This road is a continuation of the well-made highway maintained by Pierce County from Tacoma, which passes through an attractive country of partly wooded prairies and follows the picturesque Nisqually valley up the heavily forested slopes to the Forest Reserve and the southwestern corner of the Park. The public has been quick to seize the opportunity which the roads offered. The number of persons entering the Park, as shown by the annual reports of the Superintendent, has grown (p. 057) from 1,786 in 1906 to more than 8,000 in 1910. In the same period, the Yellowstone National Park, with its greater age, its wider advertising, its many hotels, its abundance of government money, increased its total of visitors from 17,182 to 19,575.
Sierra Club lunching on Nisqually Glacier. The huge ice wall in the distance is the west branch of the Nisqually, and is sometimes miscalled "Stevens Glacier." As seen here, it forms a "hanging glacier," which empties into the main glacier over the cliff.
For one thing, these roads have put it within the power of automobilists from all parts of the Coast to reach the grandest of American mountains and the largest glaciers of the United States south of Alaska. They connect at Tacoma, with excellent roads from Seattle and other cities on the Sound, as well as from Portland and points farther south. The travel from these cities has already justified the construction of the roads, and is increasing every year. Even from California many automobile parties visit the Mountain. The railway travel is also fast increasing, and the opening this year of its transcontinental service by the Milwaukee Railway, which owns the Tacoma Eastern line to Ashford, is likely soon to double the number of those who journey to the Mountain by rail.
A Mountain Celery.
The new government road to Paradise and the trails (p. 058) connecting with it have, however made only a fraction of the Park accessible. The most important work for the conservation of this great alpine area and its opening to the public still remains to be done. Congress is now asked to provide funds for the survey and gradual extension of the road to the other plateaus on all sides of the peak. Pending the construction of the road, it is highly important that, as soon as the surveys can be made, bridle trails be built on the easy grades thus established. Not only are these roads and trails much needed for the convenience of visitors to the Mountain, but, with the closer approach of logging operations, they are year by year becoming more necessary to the proper policing of the Park and its protection against forest fires. For want of them, great sections of forest within the Park are liable to be swept away at any time, before the rangers could find their way over the scant and broken trails now existing. The request for better access to the other sides of the Mountain has received the earnest indorsement of the Washington legislature, the commercial organizations of the entire Coast, and the several mountain clubs in different parts of the country. Only Congress remains blind to its importance.
Narada Falls, 185 feet, on Paradise River (altitude, 4,572 feet). Both trail and road pass it. "Narada" is an East Indian word meaning "peace." The name was given many years ago by a party of Theosophists who visited the falls. Happily, the effort to change the name to "Cushman Falls" has failed.
Congressional action affecting this immediate area began in 1899. A tract eighteen miles square, 207,360 acres, to be known as "Ranier National Park,"[4] was (p. 059) withdrawn from the 2,146,600 acres of the Pacific Forest Reserve, previously created. The area thus set apart as "a public park for the benefit and enjoyment of the people" (Act of March 2, 1899) was already known to a few enthusiasts and explorers as one of the world's great wonderlands. In 1861 James Longmire, a prospector, had built a trail from Yelm over Mashell mountain and up the Nisqually river to Bear Prairie. This he extended in 1884 to the spot now known as Longmire Springs, and thence up the Nisqually and Paradise rivers to the region now called Paradise Park. Part of this trail was widened later into a wagon road, used for many years by persons seeking health at the remarkable mineral springs on the tract which the Longmires acquired from the government before the establishment of the Forest Reserve.
Washington Torrents, on Paradise River; a series of falls a mile in length, seen from the new road to Paradise and still better from the pony trail.
Portion of Paradise Park and the Tatoosh Range.
The Longmire road, rough as it was, long remained the best route; but in 1903 the Mountain found a tireless friend in the late Francis W. Cushman, representative from this State, who persuaded Congress to authorize the survey and construction of a better highway. Work was not begun, however, until 1906. The (p. 061) yearly appropriations have been small, and total only $240,000 for surveys, construction and maintenance, to the end of the last session.
View from north side of the Tatoosh. 1. Crater Peak. 2. South Peak, or Peak Success. 3. Nisqually Glacier, with feeders. 4. Gibraltar Rock. 5. Camp Muir, on Cowlitz Cleaver. 6. Cathedral Rocks. 7. Little Tahoma. 8. Paradise Glacier. 9. Alta Vista. 10. Camp of the Clouds. 11. Reese's Camp. 12. Sluiskin Falls. 13. Paradise River and Valley. 14. Mazama Ridge. 15. Reflection Lake. 16. Van Trump Glacier. 17. Von Trump Park. 18. Kautz Glacier. 19. Pyramid Peak. 20. Tahoma Glaciers. 21. Indian Henry's. Dotted line shows South-side route to the summit.
Ice Bridge, Stevens Glacier.
Mountain Sports. Tug of War between teams picked from the feminine contingent of the Mountaineers.
The road, as now open to Paradise valley, is a monument to the engineering skill of Mr. Eugene Ricksecker, United States Assistant Engineer, in local charge of the work. Over its even floor you go from the west boundary of the Forest Reserve up the north bank of the Nisqually river, as far as the foot of its glacier. Crossing on the bridge here, you climb up and up, around the face of a bluff known as Gap Point, where a step over the retaining wall would mean a sheer drop of a thousand feet into the river below. Thus you wind over to the Paradise river and famous Narada Falls, switch back up the side of the deep Paradise canyon to the beautiful valley of the same name above, and, still climbing, reach Camp of the Clouds and its picturesque tent hotel. The road has brought you a zigzag journey of twenty-five miles to cover an air-line distance of twelve and a gain in elevation of 3,600 feet. It is probably unique in its grades. It has no descents. Almost everywhere it is a gentle climb. (p. 062) Below Longmire Springs the maximum grade is 2.5 per cent., and the average, 1.6 per cent. Beyond, the grade is steeper, but nowhere more than 4 per cent.
Tatoosh Mountains and Paradise Park in Winter.
Copyright, 1911, By J. H. Weer.
The alignment and grades originally planned have been followed, but for want of funds only one stretch, a mile and a quarter, has yet been widened to the standard width of eighteen feet. Lacking money for a broader road, the engineers built the rest of it twelve feet wide. They wisely believed that early opening of the route for vehicles to Paradise, even though the road be less than standard width, would serve the public by making the Park better known, and thus arouse interest in making it still more accessible. It will require about $60,000 to complete the road to full width, and render it thoroughly secure.
Hiking through Paradise in Winter.
Copyright, 1911, By J. H. Weer.
Of still greater importance, however, to the safety of the Park and its opening to public use is the carrying out of Mr. Ricksecker's fine plan for a road around the Mountain. His new map of the Park, printed at the end of this volume, shows the route proposed. Leaving the present road near Christine Falls, below the Nisqually glacier, he would double back over the hills to Indian Henry's, thence dropping into the canyon of Tahoma (p. 064) Fork, climbing up to St. Andrew's Park, and so working round to the Mowich glaciers, Spray Falls, and the great "parks" on the north. The snout of each glacier would be reached in turn, and the high plateaus which the glaciers have left would be visited.
Waterfall from snowfields on ridge above Paradise Valley.
Copyright, 1910, By Asahel Curtis.
Looking from Stevens Glacier down into Stevens Canyon, and across the Tatoosh and Cascade ranges to Mt. Adams.
Crossing Spray Park, Moraine Park and Winthrop glacier's old bed, the road would ascend to Grand Park and the Sour-Dough country—a region unsurpassed anywhere on the Mountain for the breadth and grandeur of its views. More descents, climbs and detours would bring it to the foot of White glacier, and thence through Summerland and Cowlitz Park, and westward to a junction with the existing road in Paradise. Its elevation would range between four and seven thousand feet above the sea. The route, as indicated on the contour map, suggests very plainly the engineering feats involved in hanging roads on these steep and deeply-carved slopes.
Reese's Camp, a tent hotel on a ridge in Paradise Park, below Camp of the Clouds (Elevation, 5,557 feet). This is the usual starting point of parties to the summit over the South-side route, via Gibraltar. See p. 60.
Between eighty and a hundred miles of construction work would be required, costing approximately $10,000 a mile. Including the completion of the present (p. 067) road to standard width, Congress will thus have to provide a round million if it wishes to give reasonable protection to the Park and fully achieve the purpose of "benefit and enjoyment" for which it was created. Such a road would justify the Congress which authorizes it, immortalize the engineers who build it, and honor the nation that owns it.
Climbing the "horn" on the summit of Unicorn Peak, the highest crag in the Tatoosh (Elevation, about 7,000 feet). The man who first reached the top is dimly seen in the shadow on the left.
Stevens Canyon in October, with Mt. Adams over eastern end of Tatoosh range on right, and Cascade range on left. The snow summits on the Cascade sky-line are "Goat Peaks." Goat Lick Basin is in lower left corner of the picture.
Sluiskin Falls, 150 feet, just below Paradise Glacier, named after Sluiskin, the famous Indian who guided Van Trump and Stevens to the snow line in 1870.
Talking with President David Starr Jordan of Stanford University a few weeks ago, I found that famous climber of mountains greatly interested in the project for better roads and trails in the National Park. "How much will the whole thing cost?" he asked. I told him.
An eminent scientist practices the simple life in camp near the Timber Line.
"Why, a million dollars would pay for the upkeep of one of our battleships for a whole year!" exclaimed the great advocate of disarmament. Whether Congress can be induced to value scenery as highly as battleships remains to be seen. It has already done very well by the Yellowstone National Park, where $2,142,720 of government money had been spent on road building and administration up to July 1, 1910. No one who knows the glories of that park will deem the amount excessive. But with its still grander scenery, its important glaciers, its priceless forests, and the greater population within easy reach of its opportunities for study and recreation, the claims of the Rainier National Park are at least equal to those of the Yellowstone, and they should be as liberally met.
Nisqually Glacier, with its sources in the snow field of the summit. On the right is Gibraltar Rock and on the extreme left Kautz Glacier flows down from Peak Success. Note the medial moraines, resulting from junction of ice streams above. These apparently small lines of dirt are often great ridges of rocks, cut from the cliffs. The picture also illustrates how the marginal crevasses of a glacier point down stream from the center, though the center flows faster than the sides.
The Sierra Club on Nisqually Glacier. This active California organization sent a large party to the Mountain in 1905.
It is not desired that the whole sum named be appropriated at once. Indeed, the recommendation of the engineers has been far more modest. As far back as 1907, Maj. H. M. Chittenden of the United States Engineer Corps, in charge, wrote as follows in his report to the Secretary of War:
A bridle trail around the Mountain, just under the glacier line, is absolutely essential to the proper policing of the Park, and very necessary for the convenience of tourists, if they are really to have access to the attractions of the Park. The trail should be so located that in time it may be enlarged into a wagon road.
Lost to the World,
7,500 feet above sea level, with an ocean of cloud rising.
Copyright, 1909, Asahel Curtis.
This recommendation has been indorsed by Major Chittenden's successor, Maj. C. W. Kutz, and may be taken as expressing the conviction of the government (p. 070) engineers as to the minimum of work needed in the Park at once. For the necessary surveys and the building of the trails, Mr. Ricksecker informs me that $50,000 will probably be enough. This is so insignificant in comparison with the good sought and the value of the national property to be protected and made accessible that its immediate appropriation by Congress should be beyond question. Nevertheless, half that amount has twice been asked for in measures introduced by Senator S. H. Piles, but in neither case did the appropriation pass both houses. It is to be hoped that the present Congress will give the full amount of $50,000, which will enable the surveys to be completed over the entire route, and trails to be built on most, if not all, of that route. Their widening into permanent roads will follow in due time, when the wonders of glacier, canyon and forest which they make accessible are once known.
"Sunshine." View of the Mountain from above Sluiskin Falls at 3 p. m.
"Storm." View near the same point an hour later.
The road recently completed to Paradise Valley should be widened, by all means, and made safer by retaining walls at every danger point. But it is doubtful whether automobiles will ever be permitted above the bridge at the Nisqually glacier. Some automobile owners regard the Park as an automobile-club preserve, and insist that nothing more be done toward the opening of its (p. 072) scenery or the conservation of its forest until it is made safe for them to run their touring cars into Paradise. This is unfortunate, because it betrays ignorance of the purpose of Congress in creating the National Parks, namely, the education and enjoyment of all the people, not the pleasure of a class. Moreover, no matter how wide or well-guarded the road may be above the bridge, it can never be wide enough to prevent a reckless chauffeur from causing a terrible fatality. It is necessarily a very crooked road, hung upon the high ledges of precipitous cliffs. While the road is safe for coaches drawn by well-broken horses and driven by trustworthy drivers, it would be criminal folly to open it to the crowd of automobiles that would rush to Paradise Valley. If automobiles are permitted to go beyond the Nisqually glacier, it should be only when in charge of a park officer.
Looking down on Nisqually Glacier from top of Gibraltar Rock, with storm clouds veiling the Mountain.
Measuring the Ice Flow in Nisqually Glacier. In 1905 Prof. J. N. Le Conte of Berkeley, Cal., established the fact that this glacier has an average flow, in summer, of 16.2 inches a day. The movement is greater at the center than on the sides, and greater on the convex side of a curve than on the concave side. It thus is a true river, though a slow one. The measurements are taken by running a line from one lateral moraine to the other with a transit, setting stakes across the glacier at short intervals, and ascertaining the advance they make from day to day.
Even from the older and wider roads of the Yellowstone automobiles have been excluded, although there are no large cities near by, as there are here, to send hundreds of cars into that park on any pleasant day. The automobilists will be wise to accept their privilege of access to the foot of the glacier, and use it with care, too. Several serious accidents have already occurred, and if greater care is not exercised, the Interior Department will apply the Yellowstone rule, at least to the extent of stopping all cars at Longmires.
Miss Fay Fuller exploring a crevasse.
Copyright, 1897, By E. S. Curtis.
Ice Cave, Paradise Glacier.
Copyright 1906, By A. H. Barnes.
Questions like this, involving conflict between the interests of a class and the vital needs of the Park as a public institution, (p. 075) give especial emphasis to the recommendation made by Secretary Ballinger on his last annual report. Owing to the great number and extent of the National Parks, and the inefficiency of the present "perfunctory policy" in their administration, Mr. Ballinger asked Congress to put the management of these institutions under a Bureau of National Parks, conducted by a competent commissioner, and organized for efficient field administration and careful inspection of all public work and of the conduct of concessionaries. Regarding the need of such a systematic and scientific organization for the development of the parks, he says:
A definite policy for their maintenance, supervision and improvement should be established, which would enable them to be gradually opened up for the convenience of tourists and campers and for the careful preservation of their natural features. Complete and comprehensive plans for roads, trails, telegraph and telephone lines, sewer and water systems, hotel accommodations, transportation, and other conveniences should be made before any large amount of money is expended. The treatment of our national parks, except as regards the Yellowstone, has not heretofore had the benefit of any well-considered or systematic plans. In all of them the road and trail problems for public travel and convenience to enable tourists to obtain the benefits of scenic beauties are primary, but sewage, water, and electric-power problems are after all of equal importance.
Fairy Falls in Goat Lick Basin, below Stevens Glacier.
In line with Secretary Ballinger's report, Senator Flint of California introduced a bill authorizing the creation of such a bureau in the Interior Department. The bill failed to get through at the last session, but I am informed by Senator Jones that it will be reintroduced. Its purpose is of great public importance, and the indorsement of the very intelligent directors of the Sierra Club in California argues well for its form. Every person interested in the development of our National Parks to fullest usefulness and the proper conservation of their natural beauty should work for the passage of the bill.[Back to content]
Gibraltar and
its Neighbors, showing a mile of the deeply crevassed ice-field inside
the angle of which the great crag is the apex. On the left are Cowlitz
Cleaver and the Bee-Hive; on the right, Cathedral Rocks.
Copyright, 1897, By E. S. Curtis.
(p. 077)
Crossing Carbon Glacier. On the ice slopes, it is customary to divide a large party into companies of ten, with an experienced alpinist at the head of each. Note the medial moraines on the glacier.
I asked myself, How was this colossal work performed? Who chiseled these mighty and picturesque masses out of a mere protuberance of earth? And the answer was at hand. Ever young, ever mighty, with the vigor of a thousand worlds still within him, the real sculptor was even then climbing up the eastern sky. It was he who planted the glaciers on the mountain slopes, thus giving gravity a plough to open out the valleys; and it is he who, acting through the ages, will finally lay low these mighty monuments, * * * so that the people of an older earth may see mould spread and corn wave over the hidden rocks which at this moment bear the weight of the Jungfrau.—John Tyndall: "Hours of Exercise in the Alps."
The life of a glacier is one eternal grind.—John Muir.
Our stately Mountain, in its youth, was as comely and symmetrical a cone as ever graced the galaxy of volcanic peaks. To-day, while still young as compared with the obelisk crags of the Alps, it has already taken on the venerable and deeply-scarred physiognomy of a veteran. It is no longer merely an overgrown boy among the hills, but, cut and torn by the ice of centuries, it is fast assuming the dignity and interest of a patriarch of the mountains.
Reflection Lake, below Pinnacle Peak and the Mountain.
Copyright, 1897, By E. S. Curtis.
To some, no doubt, the smooth, youthful contours of an active volcano seem more beautiful than the rugged grandeur of the Weisshorn. The perfect cone of Mt. St. Helens, until recently in eruption, pleases them more than the broad dome of Mt. Adams, rounded by an explosion in the unknown past. But for those who love nature and the story written upon its (p. 079) face, mountains have character as truly as men, and they show it in their features as clearly.
Looking up from Cowlitz Chimneys to Gibraltar and the summit. 1, Crater and Columbia's Crest. 2, Peak Success. 3, Upper snow fields of Nisqually Glacier. 4, Gibraltar Rock. 5, Cowlitz Cleaver. 6, Cathedral Rocks. 7, Little Tahoma. 8, Cowlitz Glacier. 9, Ingraham Glacier, emptying into the Cowlitz.
Divide of Paradise and Stevens Glaciers. Once probably separated by a chine of rock, they are now one save for a slight elevation in their bed, which turns them respectively toward Paradise Valley and Stevens Canyon.
Old Moraine of Stevens Glacier. Now comparatively small and harmless, this glacier did heavy work in its prime. Witness, Stevens Canyon (p. 66) and this huge pile of debris, showing that some time ago the glacier, finding a cliff in its way, cut it down and dumped it here.
Nowhere is this better exemplified than in the monarch of the Cascades. No longer the huge conical pimple which a volcano erected on the earth's crust, it bears upon it the history of its own explosion, which scattered its top far over the landscape, and of its losing battle with the sun, which, employing the heaviest of all (p. 080) tools, is steadily destroying it. It has already lost a tenth of its height and a third of its bulk. The ice is cutting deeper and deeper into its sides. Upon three of them, it has excavated great amphitheaters, which it is ceaselessly driving back toward the heart of the peak. As if to compensate for losses in size and shapeliness, the Mountain presents the most important phenomena of glacial action to be seen in the United States.
Climbers preparing for a night at Camp Muir (altitude 10,000 feet), in order to get an early start for the summit. This is on the Cowlitz Cleaver, below Gibraltar. John Muir, the famous mountain climber, selected this spot as a camp in 1888. A stout cabin should be built here to shelter climbers.
The Bee-Hive, a landmark on Cowlitz Cleaver, below Gibraltar.
In its dimensions, however, it is still one of the world's great peaks. The Rainier National Park, eighteen miles square—as large as many counties in the East—has an elevation along its western and lowest boundary averaging four thousand feet above sea level. Assuming a diameter for the peak of only twenty miles, the (p. 081) area occupied by this creature of a volcano exceeds three hundred square miles. Of its vast surface upwards of 32,500 acres, or about fifty-one square miles, are covered by glaciers or the fields of perpetual snow which feed them. A straight line drawn through from the end of North Tahoma glacier, on the west side, to the end of White glacier, on the east, would be thirteen miles long. The circumference of the crest on the 10,000-foot contour is nearly seven miles. Its glacial system is, and doubtless has long been, the most extensive on the continent, south of Alaska; it is said by scientists to outrank that of any mountain in Europe. The twelve primary glaciers vary in length from three to eight miles, and from half a mile to three miles in width. There are nearly as many "interglaciers," or smaller ice streams which gather their snow supply, not from the névé fields of the summit, but within the wedges of rock which the greater glaciers have left pointing upward on the higher slopes.
Mazama Club on Cowlitz Chimneys, looking across the ice-stream of the Cowlitz Glacier.
Climbing Cowlitz Cleaver to Gibraltar. This hacked and weather-worn spine left by the glaciers forms one wing of a great inverted V, with Gibraltar as its apex. On the other side of it is a drop of several thousand feet to Nisqually Glacier.
The geological story may be told in a few untechnical words. As those folds in the earth's crust which parallel the coast were slowly formed by the lateral pressure of sea upon land, fractures often occurred in the general incline thus (p. 082) created. Through the fissures that resulted the subterranean fires thrust molten rock. In many cases, the expulsion was of sufficient amount and duration to form clearly defined volcanic craters. The most active craters built up, by continued eruptions of lava and ashes, a great series of cones now seen on both sides of the Cordillera, that huge mountain system which borders the Pacific from Behring sea to the Straits of Magellan. Tacoma-Rainier is one of the more important units in this army of volcanic giants.
Mazamas rounding Gibraltar—a reminiscence of the ascent by the Portland club in 1905. The precipice rises more than 1000 feet above the trail which offers a precarious footing at the head of a steep slope of loose talus.
Unlike some of its companions, however, it owes its bulk less to lava flows than to the explosive eruptions which threw forth bombs and scoriae. It is a mass of agglomerates, with only occasional strata of solid volcanic rock. This becomes evident to one who inspects the exposed sides of any of the canyons, or of the great cliffs, Gibraltar Rock, Little Tahoma or Russell Peak. It is made clear in such pictures as are on this page and the next.
This looseness of structure accounts for the rapidity with which the glaciers are cutting into the peak, and carrying it away. Most of them carry an extraordinary amount of debris, to be deposited in lateral or terminal moraines, or dropped in streams which they feed. They are rivers of rock as well as of ice.
Under the walls of Gibraltar.
(p. 083) That the glaciers of this and every other mountain in the northern hemisphere are receding, and that they are now mere pygmies compared with their former selves, is well known. What their destructive power must have been when their volume was many times greater than now may be judged from the moraines along their former channels. Some of these ridges are hundreds of feet in height. As you go to the Mountain from Tacoma, either by the Tacoma Eastern railway or the Nisqually canyon road, you find them everywhere above the prairies. They are largest on the north side of the Mountain, because there the largest glaciers have been busy. Many of them, on all sides, are covered with forests that must be centuries old.
One of the bedrooms at Camp Muir.
Even now, diminished as they are, the glaciers are fast transporting the Mountain toward the sea. Wherever a glacier skirts a cliff, it is cutting into its side, as it cuts into its own bed below. From the overhanging rocks, too, debris falls as a result of "weathering." The daily ebb and flow of frost and heat help greatly to tear down the cliffs. Thus marginal moraines built of the debris begin to form, on the ice, far up the side of the peak. As the glacier advances, driven by its weight and the resistless mass of snow above, it is often joined by another glacier, bringing its own marginal moraines. Where the two meet, a medial moraine results. (See illustrations, pp. 68 and 77.) Some medial moraines are many feet high. Trees are found growing on them. In Switzerland houses are built upon them. Often the debris which they transport, as the ice carries them forward, includes rocks as big as a ship.
A perilous position on the edge of a great crevasse. Cowlitz Glacier, near end of Cathedral Rocks.
A glacier's flow varies from a hundred to a thousand feet or more a year, depending upon (p. 085) its volume, its width, and the slope of its bed. As the decades pass, its level is greatly lowered by the melting of the ice. More and more, earth and rocks accumulate upon the surface, as it travels onward, and are scatt