The Mountains of California
by
John Muir
Part 1 out of 5
Produced by Beth Trapaga and PG Distributed Proofreaders
THE MOUNTAINS OF CALIFORNIA
BY
JOHN MUIR
[Illustration: HOOFED LOCUSTS.]
1894
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I THE SIERRA NEVADA
II THE GLACIERS
III THE SNOW
IV A NEAR VIEW OF THE HIGH SIERRA
V THE PASSES
VI THE GLACIER LAKES
VII THE GLACIER MEADOWS
VIII THE FORESTS
IX THE DOUGLAS SQUIRREL
X A WIND-STORM IN THE FORESTS
XI THE RIVER FLOODS
XII SIERRA THUNDER-STORMS
XIII THE WATER-OUZEL
XIV THE WILD SHEEP
XV IN THE SIERRA FOOT-HILLS
XVI THE BEE-PASTURES
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
HOOFED LOCUSTS
MOUNT TAMALPAIS--NORTH OF THE GOLDEN GATE
MOUNT SHASTA, LOOKING SOUTHWEST
MOUNT HOOD
MOUNT RAINIER FROM PARADISE VALLEY--NISQUALLY GLACIER
MAP OF THE YOSEMITE VALLEY
MAP OF THE YOSEMITE VALLEY, SHOWING PRESENT RESERVATION BOUNDARY
VIEW OF THE MONO PLAIN FROM THE FOOT OF BLOODY CANON
LAKE TENAYA, ONE OF THE YOSEMITE FOUNTAINS
THE DEATH OF A LAKE
LAKE STARR KING
VIEW IN THE SIERRA FOREST
EDGE OF THE TIMBER LINE ON MOUNT SHASTA
VIEW IN THE MAIN PINE BELT OF THE SIERRA FOREST
NUT PINE
THE GROVE FORM
LOWER MARGIN OF THE MAIN PINE BELT, SHOWING OPEN CHARACTER OF WOODS
SUGAR PINE ON EXPOSED RIDGE
YOUNG SUGAR PINE BEGINNING TO BEAR CONES
FOREST OF SEQUOIA, SUGAR PINE, AND DOUGLAS SPRUCE
PINUS PONDEROSA
SILVER PINE 210 FEET HIGH
INCENSE CEDAR IN ITS PRIME
FOREST OF GRAND SILVER FIRS
VIEW OF FOREST OF THE MAGNIFICENT SILVER FIR
SILVER-FIR FOREST GROWING ON MORAINES OF THE HOFFMAN AND TENAYA
GLACIERS
JUNIPER, OR RED CEDAR
STORM-BEATEN HEMLOCK SPRUCE, FORTY FEET HIGH
GROUP OF ERECT DWARF PINES
A DWARF PINE
OAK GROWING AMONG YELLOW PINES
TRACK OF DOUGLAS SQUIRREL ONCE DOWN AND UP A PINE-TREE WHEN SHOWING
OFF TO A SPECTATOR
SEEDS, WINGS, AND SCALE OF SUGAR PINE
TRYING THE BOW
A WIND-STORM IN THE CALIFORNIA FORESTS
WATER-OUZEL DIVING AND FEEDING
ONE OF THE LATE-SUMMER FEEDING-GROUNDS OF THE OUZEL
OUZEL ENTERING A WHITE CURRENT
THE OUZEL AT HOME
YOSEMITE BIRDS, SNOW-BOUND AT THE FOOT OF INDIAN CANON
SNOW-BOUND ON MOUNT SHASTA
HEAD OF THE MERINO RAM
HEAD OF ROCKY MOUNTAIN WILD SHEEP
CROSSING A CANON STREAM
WILD SHEEP JUMPING OVER A PRECIPICE
INDIANS HUNTING WILD SHEEP
A BEE-RANCH IN LOWER CALIFORNIA
WILD BEE GARDEN
IN THE SAN GABRIEL VALLEY.--WHITE SAGE
A BEE-RANCH ON A SPUR OF THE SAN GABRIEL RANGE.--CARDINAL FLOWER
WILD BUCKWHEAT.--A BEE-RANCH IN THE WILDERNESS
A BEE-PASTURE ON THE MORAINE DESERT.--SPANISH BAYONET
A BEE-KEEPER'S CABIN
CHAPTER I
THE SIERRA NEVADA
Go where you may within the bounds of California, mountains are ever in
sight, charming and glorifying every landscape. Yet so simple and
massive is the topography of the State in general views, that the main
central portion displays only one valley, and two chains of mountains
which seem almost perfectly regular in trend and height: the Coast Range
on the west side, the Sierra Nevada on the east. These two ranges coming
together in curves on the north and south inclose a magnificent basin,
with a level floor more than 400 miles long, and from 35 to 60 miles
wide. This is the grand Central Valley of California, the waters of
which have only one outlet to the sea through the Golden Gate. But with
this general simplicity of features there is great complexity of hidden
detail. The Coast Range, rising as a grand green barrier against the
ocean, from 2000 to 8000 feet high, is composed of innumerable
forest-crowned spurs, ridges, and rolling hill-waves which inclose a
multitude of smaller valleys; some looking out through long,
forest-lined vistas to the sea; others, with but few trees, to the
Central Valley; while a thousand others yet smaller are embosomed and
concealed in mild, round-browed hills, each, with its own climate, soil,
and productions.
Making your way through the mazes of the Coast Range to the summit of
any of the inner peaks or passes opposite San Francisco, in the clear
springtime, the grandest and most telling of all California landscapes
is outspread before you. At your feet lies the great Central Valley
glowing golden in the sunshine, extending north and south farther than
the eye can reach, one smooth, flowery, lake-like bed of fertile soil.
Along its eastern margin rises the mighty Sierra, miles in height,
reposing like a smooth, cumulous cloud in the sunny sky, and so
gloriously colored, and so luminous, it seems to be not clothed with
light, but wholly composed of it, like the wall of some celestial city.
Along the top, and extending a good way down, you see a pale, pearl-gray
belt of snow; and below it a belt of blue and dark purple, marking the
extension of the forests; and along the base of the range a broad belt
of rose-purple and yellow, where lie the minor's gold-fields and the
foot-hill gardens. All these colored belts blending smoothly make a wall
of light ineffably fine, and as beautiful as a rainbow, yet firm as
adamant.
When I first enjoyed this superb view, one glowing April day, from the
summit of the Pacheco Pass, the Central Valley, but little trampled or
plowed as yet, was one furred, rich sheet of golden compositae, and the
luminous wall of the mountains shone in all its glory. Then it seemed to
me the Sierra should be called not the Nevada, or Snowy Range, but the
Range of Light. And after ten years spent in the heart of it, rejoicing
and wondering, bathing in its glorious floods of light, seeing the
sunbursts of morning among the icy peaks, the noonday radiance on the
trees and rocks and snow, the flush of the alpenglow, and a thousand
dashing waterfalls with their marvelous abundance of irised spray, it
still seems to me above all others the Range of Light, the most divinely
beautiful of all the mountain-chains I have ever seen.
The Sierra is about 500 miles long, 70 miles wide, and from 7000 to
nearly 15,000 feet high. In general views no mark of man is visible on
it, nor anything to suggest the richness of the life it cherishes, or
the depth and grandeur of its sculpture. None of its magnificent
forest-crowned ridges rises much above the general level to publish its
wealth. No great valley or lake is seen, or river, or group of
well-marked features of any kind, standing out in distinct pictures.
Even the summit-peaks, so clear and high in the sky, seem comparatively
smooth and featureless. Nevertheless, glaciers are still at work in the
shadows of the peaks, and thousands of lakes and meadows shine and bloom
beneath them, and the whole range is furrowed with canons to a depth of
from 2000 to 5000 feet, in which once flowed majestic glaciers, and in
which now flow and sing a band of beautiful rivers.
Though of such stupendous depth, these famous canons are not raw,
gloomy, jagged-walled gorges, savage and inaccessible. With rough
passages here and there they still make delightful pathways for the
mountaineer, conducting from the fertile lowlands to the highest icy
fountains, as a kind of mountain streets full of charming life and
light, graded and sculptured by the ancient glaciers, and presenting,
throughout all their courses, a rich variety of novel and attractive
scenery, the most attractive that has yet been discovered in the
mountain-ranges of the world.
In many places, especially in the middle region of the western flank of
the range, the main canons widen into spacious valleys or parks,
diversified like artificial landscape-gardens, with charming groves and
meadows, and thickets of blooming bushes, while the lofty, retiring
walls, infinitely varied in form and sculpture, are fringed with ferns,
flowering-plants of many species, oaks, and evergreens, which find
anchorage on a thousand narrow steps and benches; while the whole is
enlivened and made glorious with rejoicing streams that come dancing and
foaming over the sunny brows of the cliffs to join the shining river
that flows in tranquil beauty down the middle of each one of them.
The walls of these park valleys of the Yosemite kind are made up of
rocks mountains in size, partly separated from each other by narrow
gorges and side-canons; and they are so sheer in front, and so compactly
built together on a level floor, that, comprehensively seen, the parks
they inclose look like immense halls or temples lighted from above.
Every rock seems to glow with life. Some lean back in majestic repose;
others, absolutely sheer, or nearly so, for thousands of feet, advance
their brows in thoughtful attitudes beyond their companions, giving
welcome to storms and calms alike, seemingly conscious yet heedless of
everything going on about them, awful in stern majesty, types of
permanence, yet associated with beauty of the frailest and most fleeting
forms; their feet set in pine-groves and gay emerald meadows, their
brows in the sky; bathed in light, bathed in floods of singing water,
while snow-clouds, avalanches, and the winds shine and surge and wreathe
about them as the years go by, as if into these mountain mansions Nature
had taken pains to gather her choicest treasures to draw her lovers into
close and confiding communion with her.
[Illustration: MOUNT TAMALPAIS--NORTH OF THE GOLDEN GATE.]
Here, too, in the middle region of deepest canons are the grandest
forest-trees, the Sequoia, king of conifers, the noble Sugar and Yellow
Pines, Douglas Spruce, Libocedrus, and the Silver Firs, each a giant of
its kind, assembled together in one and the same forest, surpassing all
other coniferous forests in the world, both in the number of its species
and in the size and beauty of its trees. The winds flow in melody
through their colossal spires, and they are vocal everywhere with the
songs of birds and running water. Miles of fragrant ceanothus and
manzanita bushes bloom beneath them, and lily gardens and meadows, and
damp, ferny glens in endless variety of fragrance and color, compelling
the admiration of every observer. Sweeping on over ridge and valley,
these noble trees extend a continuous belt from end to end of the range,
only slightly interrupted by sheer-walled canons at intervals of about
fifteen and twenty miles. Here the great burly brown bears delight to
roam, harmonizing with the brown boles of the trees beneath which they
feed. Deer, also, dwell here, and find food and shelter in the ceanothus
tangles, with a multitude of smaller people. Above this region of
giants, the trees grow smaller until the utmost limit of the timber line
is reached on the stormy mountain-slopes at a height of from ten to
twelve thousand feet above the sea, where the Dwarf Pine is so lowly and
hard beset by storms and heavy snow, it is pressed into flat tangles,
over the tops of which we may easily walk. Below the main forest belt
the trees likewise diminish in size, frost and burning drought repressing
and blasting alike.
The rose-purple zone along the base of the range comprehends nearly all
the famous gold region of California. And here it was that miners from
every country under the sun assembled in a wild, torrent-like rush to
seek their fortunes. On the banks of every river, ravine, and gully they
have left their marks. Every gravel- and boulder-bed has been
desperately riddled over and over again. But in this region the pick and
shovel, once wielded with savage enthusiasm, have been laid away, and
only quartz-mining is now being carried on to any considerable extent.
The zone in general is made up of low, tawny, waving foot-hills,
roughened here and there with brush and trees, and outcropping masses of
slate, colored gray and red with lichens. The smaller masses of slate,
rising abruptly from the dry, grassy sod in leaning slabs, look like
ancient tombstones in a deserted burying-ground. In early spring, say
from February to April, the whole of this foot-hill belt is a paradise
of bees and flowers. Refreshing rains then fall freely, birds are busy
building their nests, and the sunshine is balmy and delightful. But by
the end of May the soil, plants, and sky seem to have been baked in an
oven. Most of the plants crumble to dust beneath the foot, and the
ground is full of cracks; while the thirsty traveler gazes with eager
longing through the burning glare to the snowy summits looming like hazy
clouds in the distance.
The trees, mostly _Quercus Douglasii_ and _Pinus Sabiniana_,
thirty to forty feet high, with thin, pale-green foliage, stand far
apart and cast but little shade. Lizards glide about on the rocks
enjoying a constitution that no drought can dry, and ants in amazing
numbers, whose tiny sparks of life seem to burn the brighter with the
increasing heat, ramble industriously in long trains in search of food.
Crows, ravens, magpies--friends in distress--gather on the ground
beneath the best shade-trees, panting with drooping wings and bills wide
open, scarce a note from any of them during the midday hours. Quails,
too, seek the shade during the heat of the day about tepid pools in the
channels of the larger mid-river streams. Rabbits scurry from thicket to
thicket among the ceanothus bushes, and occasionally a long-eared hare
is seen cantering gracefully across the wider openings. The nights are
calm and dewless during the summer, and a thousand voices proclaim the
abundance of life, notwithstanding the desolating effect of dry sunshine
on the plants and larger animals. The hylas make a delightfully pure and
tranquil music after sunset; and coyotes, the little, despised dogs of
the wilderness, brave, hardy fellows, looking like withered wisps of
hay, bark in chorus for hours. Mining-towns, most of them dead, and a
few living ones with bright bits of cultivation about them, occur at
long intervals along the belt, and cottages covered with climbing roses,
in the midst of orange and peach orchards, and sweet-scented hay-fields
in fertile flats where water for irrigation may be had. But they are
mostly far apart, and make scarce any mark in general views.
Every winter the High Sierra and the middle forest region get snow in
glorious abundance, and even the foot-hills are at times whitened. Then
all the range looks like a vast beveled wall of purest marble. The rough
places are then made smooth, the death and decay of the year is covered
gently and kindly, and the ground seems as clean as the sky. And though
silent in its flight from the clouds, and when it is taking its place on
rock, or tree, or grassy meadow, how soon the gentle snow finds a voice!
Slipping from the heights, gathering in avalanches, it booms and roars
like thunder, and makes a glorious show as it sweeps down the
mountain-side, arrayed in long, silken streamers and wreathing, swirling
films of crystal dust.
The north half of the range is mostly covered with floods of lava, and
dotted with volcanoes and craters, some of them recent and perfect in
form, others in various stages of decay. The south half is composed of
granite nearly from base to summit, while a considerable number of
peaks, in the middle of the range, are capped with metamorphic slates,
among which are Mounts Dana and Gibbs to the east of Yosemite Valley.
Mount Whitney, the culminating point of the range near its southern
extremity, lifts its helmet-shaped crest to a height of nearly 14,700
feet. Mount Shasta, a colossal volcanic cone, rises to a height of
14,440 feet at the northern extremity, and forms a noble landmark for
all the surrounding region within a radius of a hundred miles. Residual
masses of volcanic rocks occur throughout most of the granitic southern
portion also, and a considerable number of old volcanoes on the flanks,
especially along the eastern base of the range near Mono Lake and
southward. But it is only to the northward that the entire range, from
base to summit, is covered with lava.
From the summit of Mount Whitney only granite is seen. Innumerable peaks
and spires but little lower than its own storm-beaten crags rise in
groups like forest-trees, in full view, segregated by canons of
tremendous depth and ruggedness. On Shasta nearly every feature in the
vast view speaks of the old volcanic fires. Far to the northward, in
Oregon, the icy volcanoes of Mount Pitt and the Three Sisters rise above
the dark evergreen woods. Southward innumerable smaller craters and
cones are distributed along the axis of the range and on each flank. Of
these, Lassen's Butte is the highest, being nearly 11,000 feet above
sea-level. Miles of its flanks are reeking and bubbling with hot
springs, many of them so boisterous and sulphurous they seem over ready
to become spouting geysers like those of the Yellowstone.
The Cinder Cone near marks the most recent volcanic eruption in the
Sierra. It is a symmetrical truncated cone about 700 feet high, covered
with gray cinders and ashes, and has a regular unchanged crater on its
summit, in which a few small Two-leaved Pines are growing. These show
that the age of the cone is not less than eighty years. It stands
between two lakes, which a short time ago were one. Before the cone was
built, a flood of rough vesicular lava was poured into the lake, cutting
it in two, and, overflowing its banks, the fiery flood advanced into the
pine-woods, overwhelming the trees in its way, the charred ends of some
of which may still be seen projecting from beneath the snout of the
lava-stream where it came to rest. Later still there was an eruption of
ashes and loose obsidian cinders, probably from the same vent, which,
besides forming the Cinder Cone, scattered a heavy shower over the
surrounding woods for miles to a depth of from six inches to several
feet.
The history of this last Sierra eruption is also preserved in the
traditions of the Pitt River Indians. They tell of a fearful time of
darkness, when the sky was black with ashes and smoke that threatened
every living thing with death, and that when at length the sun appeared
once more it was red like blood.
Less recent craters in great numbers roughen the adjacent region; some
of them with lakes in their throats, others overgrown with trees and
flowers, Nature in these old hearths and firesides having literally
given beauty for ashes. On the northwest side of Mount Shasta there is a
subordinate cone about 3000 feet below the summit, which, has been
active subsequent to the breaking up of the main ice-cap that once
covered the mountain, as is shown by its comparatively unwasted crater
and the streams of unglaciated lava radiating from it. The main summit
is about a mile and a half in diameter, bounded by small crumbling peaks
and ridges, among which we seek in vain for the outlines of the ancient
crater.
These ruinous masses, and the deep glacial grooves that flute the sides
of the mountain, show that it has been considerably lowered and wasted
by ice; how much we have no sure means of knowing. Just below the
extreme summit hot sulphurous gases and vapor issue from irregular
fissures, mixed with spray derived from melting snow, the last feeble
expression of the mighty force that built the mountain. Not in one great
convulsion was Shasta given birth. The crags of the summit and the
sections exposed by the glaciers down the sides display enough of its
internal framework to prove that comparatively long periods of
quiescence intervened between many distinct eruptions, during which the
cooling lavas ceased to flow, and became permanent additions to the bulk
of the growing mountain. With alternate haste and deliberation eruption
succeeded eruption till the old volcano surpassed even its present
sublime height.
[Illustration: MOUNT SHASTA, LOOKING SOUTHWEST.]
Standing on the icy top of this, the grandest of all the fire-mountains
of the Sierra, we can hardly fail to look forward to its next eruption.
Gardens, vineyards, homes have been planted confidingly on the flanks of
volcanoes which, after remaining steadfast for ages, have suddenly
blazed into violent action, and poured forth overwhelming floods of
fire. It is known that more than a thousand years of cool calm have
intervened between violent eruptions. Like gigantic geysers spouting
molten rock instead of water, volcanoes work and rest, and we have no
sure means of knowing whether they are dead when still, or only
sleeping.
Along the western base of the range a telling series of sedimentary
rocks containing the early history of the Sierra are now being studied.
But leaving for the present these first chapters, we see that only a
very short geological time ago, just before the coming on of that
winter of winters called the glacial period, a vast deluge of molten
rocks poured from many a chasm and crater on the flanks and summit of
the range, filling lake basins and river channels, and obliterating
nearly every existing feature on the northern portion. At length these
all-destroying floods ceased to flow. But while the great volcanic cones
built up along the axis still burned and smoked, the whole Sierra passed
under the domain of ice and snow. Then over the bald, featureless,
fire-blackened mountains, glaciers began to crawl, covering them from
the summits to the sea with a mantle of ice; and then with infinite
deliberation the work went on of sculpturing the range anew. These
mighty agents of erosion, halting never through unnumbered centuries,
crushed and ground the flinty lavas and granites beneath their crystal
folds, wasting and building until in the fullness of time the Sierra was
born again, brought to light nearly as we behold it today, with glaciers
and snow-crushed pines at the top of the range, wheat-fields and
orange-groves at the foot of it.
This change from icy darkness and death to life and beauty was slow, as
we count time, and is still going on, north and south, over all the
world wherever glaciers exist, whether in the form of distinct rivers,
as in Switzerland, Norway, the mountains of Asia, and the Pacific Coast;
or in continuous mantling folds, as in portions of Alaska, Greenland,
Franz-Joseph-Land, Nova Zembla, Spitzbergen, and the lands about the
South Pole. But in no country, as far as I know, may these majestic
changes be studied to better advantage than in the plains and mountains
of California.
Toward the close of the glacial period, when the snow-clouds became less
fertile and the melting waste of sunshine became greater, the lower
folds of the ice-sheet in California, discharging fleets of icebergs
into the sea, began to shallow and recede from the lowlands, and then
move slowly up the flanks of the Sierra in compliance with the changes
of climate. The great white mantle on the mountains broke up into a
series of glaciers more or less distinct and river-like, with many
tributaries, and these again were melted and divided into still smaller
glaciers, until now only a few of the smallest residual topmost branches
of the grand system exist on the cool slopes of the summit peaks.
Plants and animals, biding their time, closely followed the retiring
ice, bestowing quick and joyous animation on the new-born landscapes.
Pine-trees marched up the sun-warmed moraines in long, hopeful files,
taking the ground and establishing themselves as soon as it was ready
for them; brown-spiked sedges fringed the shores of the newborn lakes;
young rivers roared in the abandoned channels of the glaciers; flowers
bloomed around the feet of the great burnished domes,--while with quick
fertility mellow beds of soil, settling and warming, offered food to
multitudes of Nature's waiting children, great and small, animals as
well as plants; mice, squirrels, marmots, deer, bears, elephants, etc.
The ground burst into bloom with magical rapidity, and the young forests
into bird-song: life in every form warming and sweetening and growing
richer as the years passed away over the mighty Sierra so lately
suggestive of death and consummate desolation only.
It is hard without long and loving study to realize the magnitude of the
work done on these mountains during the last glacial period by glaciers,
which are only streams of closely compacted snow-crystals. Careful study
of the phenomena presented goes to show that the pre-glacial condition
of the range was comparatively simple: one vast wave of stone in which a
thousand mountains, domes, canons, ridges, etc., lay concealed. And in
the development of these Nature chose for a tool not the earthquake or
lightning to rend and split asunder, not the stormy torrent or eroding
rain, but the tender snow-flowers noiselessly falling through unnumbered
centuries, the offspring of the sun and sea. Laboring harmoniously in
united strength they crushed and ground and wore away the rocks in their
march, making vast beds of soil, and at the same time developed and
fashioned the landscapes into the delightful variety of hill and dale
and lordly mountain that mortals call beauty. Perhaps more than a mile
in average depth has the range been thus degraded during the last
glacial period,--a quantity of mechanical work almost inconceivably
great. And our admiration must be excited again and again as we toil and
study and learn that this vast job of rockwork, so far-reaching in its
influences, was done by agents so fragile and small as are these flowers
of the mountain clouds. Strong only by force of numbers, they carried
away entire mountains, particle by particle, block by block, and cast
them into the sea; sculptured, fashioned, modeled all the range, and
developed its predestined beauty. All these new Sierra landscapes were
evidently predestined, for the physical structure of the rocks on which
the features of the scenery depend was acquired while they lay at least
a mile deep below the pre-glacial surface. And it was while these
features were taking form in the depths of the range, the particles of
the rocks marching to their appointed places in the dark with reference
to the coming beauty, that the particles of icy vapor in the sky
marching to the same music assembled to bring them to the light. Then,
after their grand task was done, these bands of snow-flowers, these
mighty glaciers, were melted and removed as if of no more importance
than dew destined to last but an hour. Few, however, of Nature's agents
have left monuments so noble and enduring as they. The great granite
domes a mile high, the canons as deep, the noble peaks, the Yosemite
valleys, these, and indeed nearly all other features of the Sierra
scenery, are glacier monuments.
Contemplating the works of these flowers of the sky, one may easily
fancy them endowed with life: messengers sent down to work in the
mountain mines on errands of divine love. Silently flying through the
darkened air, swirling, glinting, to their appointed places, they seem
to have taken counsel together, saying, "Come, we are feeble; let us
help one another. We are many, and together we will be strong. Marching
in close, deep ranks, let us roll away the stones from these mountain
sepulchers, and set the landscapes free. Let us uncover these clustering
domes. Here let us carve a lake basin; there, a Yosemite Valley; here, a
channel for a river with fluted steps and brows for the plunge of
songful cataracts. Yonder let us spread broad sheets of soil, that man
and beast may be fed; and here pile trains of boulders for pines and
giant Sequoias. Here make ground for a meadow; there, for a garden and
grove, making it smooth and fine for small daisies and violets and beds
of heathy bryanthus, spicing it well with crystals, garnet feldspar, and
zircon." Thus and so on it has oftentimes seemed to me sang and planned
and labored the hearty snow-flower crusaders; and nothing that I can
write can possibly exaggerate the grandeur and beauty of their work.
Like morning mist they have vanished in sunshine, all save the few small
companies that still linger on the coolest mountainsides, and, as
residual glaciers, are still busily at work completing the last of the
lake basins, the last beds of soil, and the sculpture of some of the
highest peaks.
[Illustration: MOUNT HOOD.]
CHAPTER II
THE GLACIERS
Of the small residual glaciers mentioned in the preceding chapter, I
have found sixty-five in that portion of the range lying between
latitude 36 deg. 30' and 39 deg.. They occur singly or in small groups on the
north sides of the peaks of the High Sierra, sheltered beneath broad
frosty shadows, in amphitheaters of their own making, where the snow,
shooting down from the surrounding heights in avalanches, is most
abundant. Over two thirds of the entire number lie between latitude 37 deg.
and 38 deg., and form the highest fountains of the San Joaquin, Merced,
Tuolumne, and Owen's rivers.
The glaciers of Switzerland, like those of the Sierra, are mere wasting
remnants of mighty ice-floods that once filled the great valleys and
poured into the sea. So, also, are those of Norway, Asia, and South
America. Even the grand continuous mantles of ice that still cover
Greenland, Spitsbergen, Nova Zembla, Franz-Joseph-Land, parts of Alaska,
and the south polar region are shallowing and shrinking. Every glacier
in the world is smaller than it once was. All the world is growing
warmer, or the crop of snow-flowers is diminishing. But in contemplating
the condition of the glaciers of the world, we must bear in mind while
trying to account for the changes going on that the same sunshine that
wastes them builds them. Every glacier records the expenditure of an
enormous amount of sun-heat in lifting the vapor for the snow of which
it is made from the ocean to the mountains, as Tyndall strikingly shows.
The number of glaciers in the Alps, according to the Schlagintweit
brothers, is 1100, of which 100 may be regarded as primary, and the
total area of ice, snow, and _neve_ is estimated at 1177 square
miles, or an average for each glacier of little more than one square
mile. On the same authority, the average height above sea-level at which
they melt is about 7414 feet. The Grindelwald glacier descends below
4000 feet, and one of the Mont Blanc glaciers reaches nearly as low a
point. One of the largest of the Himalaya glaciers on the head waters of
the Ganges does not, according to Captain Hodgson, descend below 12,914
feet. The largest of the Sierra glaciers on Mount Shasta descends to
within 9500 feet of the level of the sea, which, as far as I have
observed, is the lowest point reached by any glacier within the bounds
of California, the average height of all being not far from 11,000 feet.
The changes that have taken place in the glacial conditions of the
Sierra from the time of greatest extension is well illustrated by the
series of glaciers of every size and form extending along the mountains
of the coast to Alaska. A general exploration of this instructive region
shows that to the north of California, through Oregon and Washington,
groups of active glaciers still exist on all the high volcanic cones of
the Cascade Range,--Mount Pitt, the Three Sisters, Mounts Jefferson,
Hood, St. Helens, Adams, Rainier, Baker, and others,--some of them of
considerable size, though none of them approach the sea. Of these
mountains Rainier, in Washington, is the highest and iciest. Its
dome-like summit, between 14,000 and 15,000 feet high, is capped with
ice, and eight glaciers, seven to twelve miles long, radiate from it as
a center, and form the sources of the principal streams of the State.
The lowest-descending of this fine group flows through beautiful forests
to within 3500 feet of the sea-level, and sends forth a river laden with
glacier mud and sand. On through British Columbia and southeastern
Alaska the broad, sustained mountain-chain, extending along the coast,
is generally glacier-bearing. The upper branches of nearly all the main
canons and fiords are occupied by glaciers, which gradually increase in
size, and descend lower until the high region between Mount Fairweather
and Mount St. Elias is reached, where a considerable number discharge
into the waters of the ocean. This is preeminently the ice-land of
Alaska and of the entire Pacific Coast.
Northward from here the glaciers gradually diminish in size and
thickness, and melt at higher levels. In Prince William Sound and Cook's
Inlet many fine glaciers are displayed, pouring from the surrounding
mountains; but to the north of latitude 62 deg. few, if any, glaciers
remain, the ground being mostly low and the snowfall light. Between
latitude 56 deg. and 60 deg. there are probably more than 5000 glaciers, not
counting the smallest. Hundreds of the largest size descend through the
forests to the level of the sea, or near it, though as far as my own
observations have reached, after a pretty thorough examination of the
region, not more than twenty-five discharge icebergs into the sea. All
the long high-walled fiords into which these great glaciers of the first
class flow are of course crowded with icebergs of every conceivable
form, which are detached with thundering noise at intervals of a few
minutes from an imposing ice-wall that is thrust forward into deep
water. But these Pacific Coast icebergs are small as compared with those
of Greenland and the Antarctic region, and only a few of them escape
from the intricate system of channels, with which this portion of the
coast is fringed, into the open sea. Nearly all of them are swashed and
drifted by wind and tide back and forth in the fiords until finally
melted by the ocean water, the sunshine, the warm winds, and the copious
rains of summer. Only one glacier on the coast, observed by Prof.
Russell, discharges its bergs directly into the open sea, at Icy Cape,
opposite Mount St. Elias. The southernmost of the glaciers that reach
the sea occupies a narrow, picturesque fiord about twenty miles to the
northwest of the mouth of the Stikeen River, in latitude 56 deg. 50'. The
fiord is called by the natives "Hutli," or Thunder Bay, from the noise
made by the discharge of the icebergs. About one degree farther north
there are four of these complete glaciers, discharging at the heads of
the long arms of Holkam Bay. At the head of the Tahkoo Inlet, still
farther north, there is one; and at the head and around the sides of
Glacier Bay, trending in a general northerly direction from Cross Sound
in latitude 58 deg. to 59 deg., there are seven of these complete glaciers
pouring bergs into the bay and its branches, and keeping up an eternal
thundering. The largest of this group, the Muir, has upward of 200
tributaries, and a width below the confluence of the main tributaries of
about twenty-five miles. Between the west side of this icy bay and the
ocean all the ground, high and low, excepting the peaks of the
Fairweather Range, is covered with a mantle of ice from 1000 to probably
3000 feet thick, which discharges by many distinct mouths.
[Illustration: MOUNT RAINIER FROM PARADISE VALLEY--NISQUALLY GLACIER.]
This fragmentary ice-sheet, and the immense glaciers about Mount St.
Elias, together with the multitude of separate river-like glaciers that
load the slopes of the coast mountains, evidently once formed part of a
continuous ice-sheet that flowed over all the region hereabouts, and
only a comparatively short time ago extended as far southward as the
mouth of the Strait of Juan de Fuca, probably farther. All the islands
of the Alexander Archipelago, as well as the headlands and promontories
of the mainland, display telling traces of this great mantle that are
still fresh and unmistakable. They all have the forms of the greatest
strength with reference to the action of a vast rigid press of
oversweeping ice from the north and northwest, and their surfaces have a
smooth, rounded, overrubbed appearance, generally free from angles. The
intricate labyrinth of canals, channels, straits, passages, sounds,
narrows, etc. between the islands, and extending into the mainland, of
course manifest in their forms and trends and general characteristics
the same subordination to the grinding action of universal glaciation as
to their origin, and differ from the islands and banks of the fiords
only in being portions of the pre-glacial margin of the continent more
deeply eroded, and therefore covered by the ocean waters which flowed
into them as the ice was melted out of them. The formation and extension
of fiords in this manner is still going on, and may be witnessed in many
places in Glacier Bay, Yakutat Bay, and adjacent regions. That the
domain of the sea is being extended over the land by the wearing away of
its shores, is well known, but in these icy regions of Alaska, and even
as far south as Vancouver Island, the coast rocks have been so short a
time exposed to wave-action they are but little wasted as yet. In these
regions the extension of the sea effected by its own action in
post-glacial time is scarcely appreciable as compared with that effected
by ice-action.
Traces of the vanished glaciers made during the period of greater
extension abound on the Sierra as far south as latitude 36 deg.. Even the
polished rock surfaces, the most evanescent of glacial records, are
still found in a wonderfully perfect state of preservation on the upper
half of the middle portion of the range, and form the most striking of
all the glacial phenomena. They occur in large irregular patches in the
summit and middle regions, and though they have been subjected to the
action of the weather with its corroding storms for thousands of years,
their mechanical excellence is such that they still reflect the sunbeams
like glass, and attract the attention of every observer. The attention
of the mountaineer is seldom arrested by moraines, however regular and
high they may be, or by canons, however deep, or by rocks, however noble
in form and sculpture; but he stoops and rubs his hands admiringly on
the shining surfaces and trios hard to account for their mysterious
smoothness. He has seen the snow descending in avalanches, but concludes
this cannot be the work of snow, for he finds it where no avalanches
occur. Nor can water have done it, for he sees this smoothness glowing
on the sides and tops of the highest domes. Only the winds of all the
agents he knows seem capable of flowing in the directions indicated by
the scoring. Indians, usually so little curious about geological
phenomena, have come to me occasionally and asked me, "What makeum the
ground so smooth at Lake Tenaya?" Even horses and dogs gaze wonderingly
at the strange brightness of the ground, and smell the polished spaces
and place their feet cautiously on them when they come to them for the
first time, as if afraid of sinking. The most perfect of the polished
pavements and walls lie at an elevation of from 7000 to 9000 feet above
the sea, where the rock is compact silicious granite. Small dim patches
may be found as low as 3000 feet on the driest and most enduring
portions of sheer walls with a southern exposure, and on compact
swelling bosses partially protected from rain by a covering of large
boulders. On the north half of the range the striated and polished
surfaces are less common, not only because this part of the chain is
lower, but because the surface rocks are chiefly porous lavas subject to
comparatively rapid waste. The ancient moraines also, though well
preserved on most of the south half of the range, are nearly obliterated
to the northward, but then material is found scattered and
disintegrated.
A similar blurred condition of the superficial records of glacial action
obtains throughout most of Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, and
Alaska, due in great part to the action of excessive moisture. Even in
southeastern Alaska, where the most extensive glaciers on the continent
are, the more evanescent of the traces of their former greater
extension, though comparatively recent, are more obscure than those of
the ancient California glaciers whore the climate is drier and the rocks
more resisting.
These general views of the glaciers of the Pacific Coast will enable my
readers to see something of the changes that have taken place in
California, and will throw light on the residual glaciers of the High
Sierra.
Prior to the autumn of 1871 the glaciers of the Sierra were unknown. In
October of that year I discovered the Black Mountain Glacier in a
shadowy amphitheater between Black and Rod Mountains, two of the peaks
of the Merced group. This group is the highest portion of a spur that
straggles out from the main axis of the range in the direction of
Yosemite Valley. At the time of this interesting discovery I was
exploring the _neve_ amphitheaters of the group, and tracing the
courses of the ancient glaciers that once poured from its ample
fountains through the Illilouette Basin and the Yosemite Valley, not
expecting to find any active glaciers so far south in the land of
sunshine.
Beginning on the northwestern extremity of the group, I explored the
chief tributary basins in succession, their moraines, roches moutonnees,
and splendid glacier pavements, taking them in regular succession
without any reference to the time consumed in their study. The monuments
of the tributary that poured its ice from between Red and Black
Mountains I found to be the most interesting of them all; and when I saw
its magnificent moraines extending in majestic curves from the spacious
amphitheater between the mountains, I was exhilarated with the work that
lay before me. It was one of the golden days of the Sierra Indian
summer, when the rich sunshine glorifies every landscape however rocky
and cold, and suggests anything rather than glaciers. The path of the
vanished glacier was warm now, and shone in many places as if washed
with silver. The tall pines growing on the moraines stood transfigured
in the glowing light, the poplar groves on the levels of the basin were
masses of orange-yellow, and the late-blooming goldenrods added gold to
gold. Pushing on over my rosy glacial highway, I passed lake after lake
set in solid basins of granite, and many a thicket and meadow watered by
a stream that issues from the amphitheater and links the lakes together;
now wading through plushy bogs knee-deep in yellow and purple sphagnum;
now passing over bare rock. The main lateral moraines that bounded the
view on either hand are from 100 to nearly 200 feet high, and about as
regular as artificial embankments, and covered with a superb growth of
Silver Fir and Pine. But this garden and forest luxuriance was speedily
left behind. The trees were dwarfed as I ascended; patches of the alpine
bryanthus and cassiope began to appear, and arctic willows pressed into
flat carpets by the winter snow. The lakelets, which a few miles down
the valley were so richly embroidered with flowery meadows, had here, at
an elevation of 10,000 feet, only small brown mats of carex, leaving
bare rocks around more than half their shores. Yet amid this alpine
suppression the Mountain Pine bravely tossed his storm-beaten branches
on the ledges and buttresses of Red Mountain, some specimens being over
100 feet high, and 24 feet in circumference, seemingly as fresh and
vigorous as the giants of the lower zones.
Evening came on just as I got fairly within the portal of the main
amphitheater. It is about a mile wide, and a little less than two miles
long. The crumbling spurs and battlements of Red Mountain bound it on
the north, the somber, rudely sculptured precipices of Black Mountain on
the south, and a hacked, splintery _col_, curving around from
mountain to mountain, shuts it in on the east.
I chose a camping-ground on the brink of one of the lakes where a
thicket of Hemlock Spruce sheltered me from the night wind. Then, after
making a tin-cupful of tea, I sat by my camp-fire reflecting on the
grandeur and significance of the glacial records I had seen. As the
night advanced the mighty rock walls of my mountain mansion seemed to
come nearer, while the starry sky in glorious brightness stretched
across like a ceiling from wall to wall, and fitted closely down into
all the spiky irregularities of the summits. Then, after a long fireside
rest and a glance at my note-book, I cut a few leafy branches for a bed,
and fell into the clear, death-like sleep of the tired mountaineer.
Early next morning I set out to trace the grand old glacier that had
done so much for the beauty of the Yosemite region back to its farthest
fountains, enjoying the charm that every explorer feels in Nature's
untrodden wildernesses. The voices of the mountains were still asleep.
The wind scarce stirred the pine-needles. The sun was up, but it was yet
too cold for the birds and the few burrowing animals that dwell here.
Only the stream, cascading from pool to pool, seemed to be wholly awake.
Yet the spirit of the opening day called to action. The sunbeams came
streaming gloriously through the jagged openings of the _col_,
glancing on the burnished pavements and lighting the silvery lakes,
while every sun-touched rock burned white on its edges like melting iron
in a furnace. Passing round the north shore of my camp lake I followed
the central stream past many cascades from lakelet to lakelet. The
scenery became more rigidly arctic, the Dwarf Pines and Hemlocks
disappeared, and the stream was bordered with icicles. As the sun rose
higher rocks were loosened on shattered portions of the cliffs, and came
down in rattling avalanches, echoing wildly from crag to crag.
The main lateral moraines that extend from the jaws of the amphitheater
into the Illilouette Basin are continued in straggling masses along the
walls of the amphitheater, while separate boulders, hundreds of tons in
weight, are left stranded here and there out in the middle of the
channel. Here, also, I observed a series of small terminal moraines
ranged along the south wall of the amphitheater, corresponding in size
and form with the shadows cast by the highest portions. The meaning of
this correspondence between moraines and shadows was afterward made
plain. Tracing the stream back to the last of its chain of lakelets, I
noticed a deposit of fine gray mud on the bottom except where the force
of the entering current had prevented its settling. It looked like the
mud worn from a grindstone, and I at once suspected its glacial origin,
for the stream that was carrying it came gurgling out of the base of a
raw moraine that seemed in process of formation. Not a plant or
weather-stain was visible on its rough, unsettled surface. It is from 60
to over 100 feet high, and plunges forward at an angle of 38 deg..
Cautiously picking my way, I gained the top of the moraine and was
delighted to see a small but well characterized glacier swooping down
from the gloomy precipices of Black Mountain in a finely graduated curve
to the moraine on which I stood. The compact ice appeared on all the
lower portions of the glacier, though gray with dirt and stones embedded
in it. Farther up the ice disappeared beneath coarse granulated snow.
The surface of the glacier was further characterized by dirt bands and
the outcropping edges of the blue veins, showing the laminated structure
of the ice. The uppermost crevasse, or "bergschrund," where the
_neve_ was attached to the mountain, was from 12 to 14 feet wide,
and was bridged in a few places by the remains of snow avalanches.
Creeping along the edge of the schrund, holding on with benumbed
fingers, I discovered clear sections where the bedded structure was
beautifully revealed. The surface snow, though sprinkled with stones
shot down from the cliffs, was in some places almost pure, gradually
becoming crystalline and changing to whitish porous ice of different
shades of color, and this again changing at a depth of 20 or 30 feet to
blue ice, some of the ribbon-like bands of which were nearly pure, and
blended with the paler bands in the most gradual and delicate manner
imaginable. A series of rugged zigzags enabled me to make my way down
into the weird under-world of the crevasse. Its chambered hollows were
hung with a multitude of clustered icicles, amid which pale, subdued
light pulsed and shimmered with indescribable loveliness. Water dripped
and tinkled overhead, and from far below came strange, solemn murmurings
from currents that were feeling their way through veins and fissures in
the dark. The chambers of a glacier are perfectly enchanting,
notwithstanding one feels out of place in their frosty beauty. I was
soon cold in my shirt-sleeves, and the leaning wall threatened to engulf
me; yet it was hard to leave the delicious music of the water and the
lovely light. Coming again to the surface, I noticed boulders of every
size on their journeys to the terminal moraine--journeys of more than a
hundred years, without a single stop, night or day, winter or summer.
The sun gave birth to a network of sweet-voiced rills that ran
gracefully down the glacier, curling and swirling in their shining
channels, and cutting clear sections through the porous surface-ice into
the solid blue, where the structure of the glacier was beautifully
illustrated.
The series of small terminal moraines which I had observed in the
morning, along the south wall of the amphitheater, correspond in every
way with the moraine of this glacier, and their distribution with
reference to shadows was now understood. When the climatic changes came
on that caused the melting and retreat of the main glacier that filled
the amphitheater, a series of residual glaciers were left in the cliff
shadows, under the protection of which they lingered, until they formed
the moraines we are studying. Then, as the snow became still less
abundant, all of them vanished in succession, except the one just
described; and the cause of its longer life is sufficiently apparent in
the greater area of snow-basin it drains, and its more perfect
protection from wasting sunshine. How much longer this little glacier
will last depends, of course, on the amount of snow it receives from
year to year, as compared with melting waste.
After this discovery, I made excursions over all the High Sierra,
pushing my explorations summer after summer, and discovered that what at
first sight in the distance looked like extensive snow-fields, wore in
great part glaciers, busily at work completing the sculpture of the
summit-peaks so grandly blocked out by their giant predecessors.
On August 21, I set a series of stakes in the Maclure Glacier, near
Mount Lyell, and found its rate of motion to be little more than an inch
a day in the middle, showing a great contrast to the Muir Glacier in
Alaska, which, near the front, flows at a rate of from five to ten feet
in twenty-four hours. Mount Shasta has three glaciers, but Mount
Whitney, although it is the highest mountain in the range, does not now
cherish a single glacier. Small patches of lasting snow and ice occur on
its northern slopes, but they are shallow, and present no well marked
evidence of glacial motion. Its sides, however, are scored and polished
in many places by the action of its ancient glaciers that flowed east
and west as tributaries of the great glaciers that once filled the
valleys of the Kern and Owen's rivers.
CHAPTER III
THE SNOW
The first snow that whitens the Sierra, usually falls about the end of
October or early in November, to a depth of a few inches, after months
of the most charming Indian summer weather imaginable. But in a few
days, this light covering mostly melts from the slopes exposed to the
sun and causes but little apprehension on the part of mountaineers who
may be lingering among the high peaks at this time. The first general
winter storm that yields snow that is to form a lasting portion of the
season's supply, seldom breaks on the mountains before the end of
November. Then, warned by the sky, cautions mountaineers, together with
the wild sheep, deer, and most of the birds and bears, make haste to the
lowlands or foot-hills; and burrowing marmots, mountain beavers,
wood-rats, and such people go into winter quarters, some of them not
again to see the light of day until the general awakening and
resurrection of the spring in June or July. The first heavy fall is
usually from about two to four feet in depth. Then, with intervals of
splendid sunshine, storm succeeds storm, heaping snow on snow, until
thirty to fifty feet has fallen. But on account of its settling and
compacting, and the almost constant waste from melting and evaporation,
the average depth actually found at any time seldom exceeds ten feet in
the forest region, or fifteen feet along the slopes of the summit peaks.
Even during the coldest weather evaporation never wholly ceases, and the
sunshine that abounds between the storms is sufficiently powerful to
melt the surface more or less through all the winter months. Waste from
melting also goes on to some extent on the bottom from heat stored up in
the rocks, and given off slowly to the snow in contact with them, as is
shown by the rising of the streams on all the higher regions after the
first snowfall, and their steady sustained flow all winter.
The greater portion of the snow deposited around the lofty summits of
the range falls in small crisp flakes and broken crystals, or, when
accompanied by strong winds and low temperature, the crystals, instead
of being locked together in their fall to form tufted flakes, are beaten
and broken into meal and fine dust. But down in the forest region the
greater portion comes gently to the ground, light and feathery, some of
the flakes in mild weather being nearly an inch in diameter, and it is
evenly distributed and kept from drifting to any great extent by the
shelter afforded by the large trees. Every tree during the progress of
gentle storms is loaded with, fairy bloom at the coldest and darkest
time of year, bending the branches, and hushing every singing needle.
But as soon as the storm is over, and the sun shines, the snow at once
begins to shift and settle and fall from the branches in miniature
avalanches, and the white forest soon becomes green again. The snow on
the ground also settles and thaws every bright day, and freezes at
night, until it becomes coarsely granulated, and loses every trace of
its rayed crystalline structure, and then a man may walk firmly over its
frozen surface as if on ice. The forest region up to an elevation of
7000 feet is usually in great part free from snow in June, but at this
time the higher regions are still heavy-laden, and are not touched by
spring weather to any considerable extent before the middle or end of
July.
One of the most striking effects of the snow on the mountains is the
burial of the rivers and small lakes.
As the snow fa's in the river
A moment white, then lost forever,
sang Burns, in illustrating the fleeting character of human pleasure.
The first snowflakes that fall into the Sierra rivers vanish thus
suddenly; but in great storms, when the temperature is low, the
abundance of the snow at length chills the water nearly to the
freezing-point, and then, of course, it ceases to melt and consume the
snow so suddenly. The falling flakes and crystals form, cloud-like
masses of blue sludge, which are swept forward with the current and
carried down to warmer climates many miles distant, while some are
lodged against logs and rocks and projecting points of the banks, and
last for days, piled high above the level of the water, and show white
again, instead of being at once "lost forever," while the rivers
themselves are at length lost for months during the snowy period. The
snow is first built out from the banks in bossy, over-curling drifts,
compacting and cementing until the streams are spanned. They then flow
in the dark beneath a continuous covering across the snowy zone, which
is about thirty miles wide. All the Sierra rivers and their tributaries
in these high regions are thus lost every winter, as if another glacial
period had come on. Not a drop of running water is to be seen excepting
at a few points where large falls occur, though the rush and rumble of
the heavier currents may still be heard. Toward spring, when the weather
is warm during the day and frosty at night, repeated thawing and
freezing and new layers of snow render the bridging-masses dense and
firm, so that one may safely walk across the streams, or even lead a
horse across them without danger of falling through. In June the
thinnest parts of the winter ceiling, and those most exposed to
sunshine, begin to give way, forming dark, rugged-edged, pit-like sinks,
at the bottom of which the rushing water may be seen. At the end of June
only here and there may the mountaineer find a secure snow-bridge. The
most lasting of the winter bridges, thawing from below as well as from
above, because of warm currents of air passing through the tunnels, are
strikingly arched and sculptured; and by the occasional freezing of the
oozing, dripping water of the ceiling they become brightly and
picturesquely icy. In some of the reaches, where there is a free margin,
we may walk through them. Small skylights appearing here and there,
these tunnels are not very dark. The roaring river fills all the arching
way with impressively loud reverberating music, which is sweetened at
times by the ouzel, a bird that is not afraid to go wherever a stream
may go, and to sing wherever a stream sings.
All the small alpine pools and lakelets are in like manner obliterated
from the winter landscapes, either by being first frozen and then
covered by snow, or by being filled in by avalanches. The first
avalanche of the season shot into a lake basin may perhaps find the
surface frozen. Then there is a grand crashing of breaking ice and
dashing of waves mingled with the low, deep booming of the avalanche.
Detached masses of the invading snow, mixed with fragments of ice, drift
about in sludgy, island-like heaps, while the main body of it forms a
talus with its base wholly or in part resting on the bottom of the
basin, as controlled by its depth and the size of the avalanche. The
next avalanche, of course, encroaches still farther, and so on with each
in succession until the entire basin may be filled and its water sponged
up or displaced. This huge mass of sludge, more or less mixed with sand,
stones, and perhaps timber, is frozen to a considerable depth, and much
sun-heat is required to thaw it. Some of these unfortunate lakelets are
not clear of ice and snow until near the end of summer. Others are never
quite free, opening only on the side opposite the entrance of the
avalanches. Some show only a narrow crescent of water lying between the
shore and sheer bluffs of icy compacted snow, masses of which breaking
off float in front like icebergs in a miniature Arctic Ocean, while the
avalanche heaps leaning back against the mountains look like small
glaciers. The frontal cliffs are in some instances quite picturesque,
and with the berg-dotted waters in front of them lighted with sunshine
are exceedingly beautiful. It often happens that while one side of a
lake basin is hopelessly snow-buried and frozen, the other, enjoying
sunshine, is adorned with beautiful flower-gardens. Some of the smaller
lakes are extinguished in an instant by a heavy avalanche either of
rocks or snow. The rolling, sliding, ponderous mass entering on one side
sweeps across the bottom and up the opposite side, displacing the water
and even scraping the basin clean, and shoving the accumulated rocks and
sediments up the farther bank and taking full possession. The dislodged
water is in part absorbed, but most of it is sent around the front of
the avalanche and down the channel of the outlet, roaring and hurrying
as if frightened and glad to escape.
SNOW-BANNERS
The most magnificent storm phenomenon I ever saw, surpassing in showy
grandeur the most imposing effects of clouds, floods, or avalanches, was
the peaks of the High Sierra, back of Yosemite Valley, decorated with
snow-banners. Many of the starry snow-flowers, out of which these
banners are made, fall before they are ripe, while most of those that do
attain perfect development as six-rayed crystals glint and chafe against
one another in their fall through the frosty air, and are broken into
fragments. This dry fragmentary snow is still further prepared for the
formation of banners by the action of the wind. For, instead of finding
rest at once, like the snow which falls into the tranquil depths of the
forests, it is rolled over and over, beaten against rock-ridges, and
swirled in pits and hollows, like boulders, pebbles, and sand in the
pot-holes of a river, until finally the delicate angles of the crystals
are worn off, and the whole mass is reduced to dust. And whenever
storm-winds find this prepared snow-dust in a loose condition on exposed
slopes, where there is a free upward sweep to leeward, it is tossed back
into the sky, and borne onward from peak to peak in the form of banners
or cloudy drifts, according to the velocity of the wind and the
conformation of the slopes up or around which it is driven. While thus
flying through the air, a small portion makes good its escape, and
remains in the sky as vapor. But far the greater part, after being
driven into the sky again and again, is at length locked fast in bossy
drifts, or in the wombs of glaciers, some of it to remain silent and
rigid for centuries before it is finally melted and sent singing down
the mountainsides to the sea.
Yet, notwithstanding the abundance of winter snow-dust in the mountains,
and the frequency of high winds, and the length of time the dust remains
loose and exposed to their action, the occurrence of well-formed banners
is, for causes we shall hereafter note, comparatively rare. I have seen
only one display of this kind that seemed in every way perfect. This was
in the winter of 1873, when the snow-laden summits were swept by a wild
"norther." I happened at the time to be wintering in Yosemite Valley,
that sublime Sierra temple where every day one may see the grandest
sights. Yet even here the wild gala-day of the north wind seemed
surpassingly glorious. I was awakened in the morning by the rocking of
my cabin and the beating of pine-burs on the roof. Detached torrents and
avalanches from the main wind-flood overhead were rushing wildly down
the narrow side canons, and over the precipitous walls, with loud
resounding roar, rousing the pines to enthusiastic action, and making
the whole valley vibrate as though it were an instrument being played.
But afar on the lofty exposed peaks of the range standing so high in the
sky, the storm was expressing itself in still grander characters, which
I was soon to see in all their glory. I had long been anxious to study
some points in the structure of the ice-cone that is formed every winter
at the foot of the upper Yosemite fall, but the blinding spray by which
it is invested had hitherto prevented me from making a sufficiently near
approach. This morning the entire body of the fall was torn into gauzy
shreds, and blown horizontally along the face of the cliff, leaving the
cone dry; and while making my way to the top of an overlooking ledge to
seize so favorable an opportunity to examine the interior of the cone,
the peaks of the Merced group came in sight over the shoulder of the
South Dome, each waving a resplendent banner against the blue sky, as
regular in form, and as firm in texture, as if woven of fine silk. So
rare and splendid a phenomenon, of course, overbore all other
considerations, and I at once let the ice-cone go, and began to force my
way out of the valley to some dome or ridge sufficiently lofty to
command a general view of the main summits, feeling assured that I
should find them bannered still more gloriously; nor was I in the least
disappointed. Indian Canon, through which I climbed, was choked with
snow that had been shot down in avalanches from the high cliffs on
either side, rendering the ascent difficult; but inspired by the roaring
storm, the tedious wallowing brought no fatigue, and in four hours I
gained the top of a ridge above the valley, 8000 feet high. And there in
bold relief, like a clear painting, appeared a most imposing scene.
Innumerable peaks, black and sharp, rose grandly into the dark blue sky,
their bases set in solid white, their sides streaked and splashed with
snow, like ocean rocks with foam; and from every summit, all free and
unconfused, was streaming a beautiful silky silvery banner, from half a
mile to a mile in length, slender at the point of attachment, then
widening gradually as it extended from the peak until it was about 1000
or 1500 feet in breadth, as near as I could estimate. The cluster of
peaks called the "Crown of the Sierra," at the head of the Merced and
Tuolumne rivers,--Mounts Dana, Gibbs, Conness, Lyell, Maclure, Ritter,
with their nameless compeers,--each had its own refulgent banner, waving
with a clearly visible motion in the sunglow, and there was not a single
cloud in the sky to mar their simple grandeur. Fancy yourself standing
on this Yosemite ridge looking eastward. You notice a strange garish
glitter in the air. The gale drives wildly overhead with a fierce,
tempestuous roar, but its violence is not felt, for you are looking
through a sheltered opening in the woods as through a window. There, in
the immediate foreground of your picture, rises a majestic forest of
Silver Fir blooming in eternal freshness, the foliage yellow-green, and
the snow beneath the trees strewn with their beautiful plumes, plucked
off by the wind. Beyond, and extending over all the middle ground, are
somber swaths of pine, interrupted by huge swelling ridges and domes;
and just beyond the dark forest you see the monarchs of the High Sierra
waving their magnificent banners. They are twenty miles away, but you
would not wish them nearer, for every feature is distinct, and the whole
glorious show is seen in its right proportions. After this general view,
mark how sharply the dark snowless ribs and buttresses and summits of
the peaks are defined, excepting the portions veiled by the banners, and
how delicately their sides are streaked with snow, where it has come to
rest in narrow flutings and gorges. Mark, too, how grandly the banners
wave as the wind is deflected against their sides, and how trimly each
is attached to the very summit of its peak, like a streamer at a
masthead; how smooth and silky they are in texture, and how finely their
fading fringes are penciled on the azure sky. See how dense and opaque
they are at the point of attachment, and how filmy and translucent
toward the end, so that the peaks back of them are seen dimly, as though
you were looking through ground glass. Yet again observe how some of the
longest, belonging to the loftiest summits, stream perfectly free all
the way across intervening notches and passes from peak to peak, while
others overlap and partly hide each other. And consider how keenly every
particle of this wondrous cloth of snow is flashing out jets of light.
These are the main features of the beautiful and terrible picture as
seen from the forest window; and it would still be surpassingly glorious
were the fore- and middle-grounds obliterated altogether, leaving only
the black peaks, the white banners, and the blue sky.
Glancing now in a general way at the formation of snow-banners, we find
that the main causes of the wondrous beauty and perfection of those we
have been contemplating were the favorable direction and great force of
the wind, the abundance of snow-dust, and the peculiar conformation of
the slopes of the peaks. It is essential not only that the wind should
move with great velocity and steadiness to supply a sufficiently copious
and continuous stream of snow-dust, but that it should come from the
north. No perfect banner is ever hung on the Sierra peaks by a south
wind. Had the gale that day blown from the south, leaving other
conditions unchanged, only a dull, confused, fog-like drift would have
been produced; for the snow, instead of being spouted up over the tops
of the peaks in concentrated currents to be drawn out as streamers,
would have been shed off around the sides, and piled down into the
glacier wombs. The cause of the concentrated action of the north wind is
found in the peculiar form of the north sides of the peaks, where the
amphitheaters of the residual glaciers are. In general the south sides
are convex and irregular, while the north sides are concave both in
their vertical and horizontal sections; the wind in ascending these
curves converges toward the summits, carrying the snow in concentrating
currents with it, shooting it almost straight up into the air above the
peaks, from which it is then carried away in a horizontal direction.
This difference in form between the north and south sides of the peaks
was almost wholly produced by the difference in the kind and quantity of
the glaciation to which they have been subjected, the north sides having
been hollowed by residual shadow-glaciers of a form that never existed
on the sun-beaten sides.
It appears, therefore, that shadows in great part determine not only the
forms of lofty icy mountains, but also those of the snow-banners that
the wild winds hang on them.
CHAPTER IV
A NEAR VIEW OF THE HIGH SIERRA
Early one bright morning in the middle of Indian summer, while the
glacier meadows were still crisp with frost crystals, I set out from the
foot of Mount Lyell, on my way down to Yosemite Valley, to replenish my
exhausted store of bread and tea. I had spent the past summer, as many
preceding ones, exploring the glaciers that lie on the head waters of
the San Joaquin, Tuolumne, Merced, and Owen's rivers; measuring and
studying their movements, trends, crevasses, moraines, etc., and the
part they had played during the period of their greater extension in the
creation and development of the landscapes of this alpine wonderland.
The time for this kind of work was nearly over for the year, and I began
to look forward with delight to the approaching winter with its wondrous
storms, when I would be warmly snow-bound in my Yosemite cabin with
plenty of bread and books; but a tinge of regret came on when I
considered that possibly I might not see this favorite region again
until the next summer, excepting distant views from the heights about
the Yosemite walls.
To artists, few portions of the High Sierra are, strictly speaking,
picturesque. The whole massive uplift of the range is one great picture,
not clearly divisible into smaller ones; differing much in this respect
from the older, and what may be called, riper mountains of the Coast
Range. All the landscapes of the Sierra, as we have seen, were born
again, remodeled from base to summit by the developing ice-floods of the
last glacial winter. But all those new landscapes were not brought forth
simultaneously; some of the highest, where the ice lingered longest, are
tens of centuries younger than those of the warmer regions below them.
In general, the younger the mountain-landscapes,--younger, I mean, with
reference to the time of their emergence from the ice of the glacial
period,--the less separable are they into artistic bits capable of being
made into warm, sympathetic, lovable pictures with appreciable humanity
in them.
Here, however, on the head waters of the Tuolumne, is a group of wild
peaks on which the geologist may say that the sun has but just begun to
shine, which is yet in a high degree picturesque, and in its main
features so regular and evenly balanced as almost to appear
conventional--one somber cluster of snow-laden peaks with gray
pine-fringed granite bosses braided around its base, the whole surging
free into the sky from the head of a magnificent valley, whose lofty
walls are beveled away on both sides so as to embrace it all without
admitting anything not strictly belonging to it. The foreground was now
aflame with autumn colors, brown and purple and gold, ripe in the mellow
sunshine; contrasting brightly with the deep, cobalt blue of the sky,
and the black and gray, and pure, spiritual white of the rocks and
glaciers. Down through the midst, the young Tuolumne was seen pouring
from its crystal fountains, now resting in glassy pools as if changing
back again into ice, now leaping in white cascades as if turning to
snow; gliding right and left between granite bosses, then sweeping on
through the smooth, meadowy levels of the valley, swaying pensively from
side to side with calm, stately gestures past dipping willows and
sedges, and around groves of arrowy pine; and throughout its whole
eventful course, whether flowing fast or slow, singing loud or low, ever
filling the landscape with spiritual animation, and manifesting the
grandeur of its sources in every movement and tone.
Pursuing my lonely way down the valley, I turned again and again to gaze
on the glorious picture, throwing up my arms to inclose it as in a
frame. After long ages of growth in the darkness beneath the glaciers,
through sunshine and storms, it seemed now to be ready and waiting for
the elected artist, like yellow wheat for the reaper; and I could not
help wishing that I might carry colors and brushes with me on my
travels, and learn to paint. In the mean time I had to be content with
photographs on my mind and sketches in my note-books. At length, after I
had rounded a precipitous headland that puts out from the west wall of
the valley, every peak vanished from sight, and I pushed rapidly along
the frozen meadows, over the divide between the waters of the Merced and
Tuolumne, and down through the forests that clothe the slopes of Cloud's
Rest, arriving in Yosemite in due time--which, with me, is _any_
time. And, strange to say, among the first people I met here were two
artists who, with letters of introduction, were awaiting my return. They
inquired whether in the course of my explorations in the adjacent
mountains I had ever come upon a landscape suitable for a large
painting; whereupon I began a description of the one that had so lately
excited my admiration. Then, as I went on further and further into
details, their faces began to glow, and I offered to guide them to it,
while they declared that they would gladly follow, far or near,
whithersoever I could spare the time to lead them.
Since storms might come breaking down through the fine weather at any
time, burying the colors in snow, and cutting off the artists' retreat,
I advised getting ready at once.
I led them out of the valley by the Vernal and Nevada Falls, thence over
the main dividing ridge to the Big Tuolumne Meadows, by the old Mono
trail, and thence along the upper Tuolumne River to its head. This was
my companions' first excursion into the High Sierra, and as I was almost
always alone in my mountaineering, the way that the fresh beauty was
reflected in their faces made for me a novel and interesting study. They
naturally were affected most of all by the colors--the intense azure of
the sky, the purplish grays of the granite, the red and browns of dry
meadows, and the translucent purple and crimson of huckleberry bogs; the
flaming yellow of aspen groves, the silvery flashing of the streams, and
the bright green and blue of the glacier lakes. But the general
expression of the scenery--rocky and savage--seemed sadly disappointing;
and as they threaded the forest from ridge to ridge, eagerly scanning
the landscapes as they were unfolded, they said: "All this is huge and
sublime, but we see nothing as yet at all available for effective
pictures. Art is long, and art is limited, you know; and here are
foregrounds, middle-grounds, backgrounds, all alike; bare rock-waves,
woods, groves, diminutive flecks of meadow, and strips of glittering
water." "Never mind," I replied, "only bide a wee, and I will show you
something you will like."
At length, toward the end of the second day, the Sierra Crown began to
come into view, and when we had fairly rounded the projecting headland
before mentioned, the whole picture stood revealed in the flush of the
alpenglow. Their enthusiasm was excited beyond bounds, and the more
impulsive of the two, a young Scotchman, dashed ahead, shouting and
gesticulating and tossing his arms in the air like a madman. Here, at
last, was a typical alpine landscape.
After feasting awhile on the view, I proceeded to make camp in a
sheltered grove a little way back from the meadow, where pine-boughs
could be obtained for beds, and where there was plenty of dry wood for
fires, while the artists ran here and there, along the river-bends and
up the sides of the canon, choosing foregrounds for sketches. After
dark, when our tea was made and a rousing fire had been built, we began
to make our plans. They decided to remain several days, at the least,
while I concluded to make an excursion in the mean time to the untouched
summit of Ritter.
It was now about the middle of October, the springtime of snow-flowers.
The first winter-clouds had already bloomed, and the peaks were strewn
with fresh crystals, without, however, affecting the climbing to any
dangerous extent. And as the weather was still profoundly calm, and the
distance to the foot of the mountain only a little more than a day, I
felt that I was running no great risk of being storm-bound.
Mount Ritter is king of the mountains of the middle portion of the High
Sierra, as Shasta of the north and Whitney of the south sections.
Moreover, as far as I know, it had never been climbed. I had explored
the adjacent wilderness summer after summer, but my studies thus far had
never drawn me to the top of it. Its height above sea-level is about
13,300 feet, and it is fenced round by steeply inclined glaciers, and
canons of tremendous depth and ruggedness, which render it almost
inaccessible. But difficulties of this kind only exhilarate the
mountaineer.
Next morning, the artists went heartily to their work and I to mine.
Former experiences had given good reason to know that passionate storms,
invisible as yet, might be brooding in the calm sun-gold; therefore,
before bidding farewell, I warned the artists not to be alarmed should I
fail to appear before a week or ten days, and advised them, in case a
snow-storm should set in, to keep up big fires and shelter themselves as
best they could, and on no account to become frightened and attempt to
seek their way back to Yosemite alone through the drifts.
My general plan was simply this: to scale the canon, wall, cross over to
the eastern flank of the range, and then make my way southward to the
northern spurs of Mount Ritter in compliance with the intervening
topography; for to push on directly southward from camp through the
innumerable peaks and pinnacles that adorn this portion of the axis of
the range, however interesting, would take too much time, besides being
extremely difficult and dangerous at this time of year.
All my first day was pure pleasure; simply mountaineering indulgence,
crossing the dry pathways of the ancient glaciers, tracing happy
streams, and learning the habits of the birds and marmots in the groves
and rocks. Before I had gone a mile from camp, I came to the foot of a
white cascade that beats its way down a rugged gorge in the canon wall,
from a height of about nine hundred feet, and pours its throbbing waters
into the Tuolumne. I was acquainted with its fountains, which,
fortunately, lay in my course. What a fine traveling companion it proved
to be, what songs it sang, and how passionately it told the mountain's
own joy! Gladly I climbed along its dashing border, absorbing its divine
music, and bathing from time to time in waftings of irised spray.
Climbing higher, higher, now beauty came streaming on the sight: painted
meadows, late-blooming gardens, peaks of rare architecture, lakes here
and there, shining like silver, and glimpses of the forested middle
region and the yellow lowlands far in the west. Beyond the range I saw
the so-called Mono Desert, lying dreamily silent in thick purple
light--a desert of heavy sun-glare beheld from a desert of ice-burnished
granite. Here the waters divide, shouting in glorious enthusiasm, and
falling eastward to vanish in the volcanic sands and dry sky of the
Great Basin, or westward to the Great Valley of California, and thence
through the Bay of San Francisco and the Golden Gate to the sea.
Passing a little way down over the summit until I had reached an
elevation of about 10,000 feet, I pushed on southward toward a group of
savage peaks that stand guard about Ritter on the north and west,
groping my way, and dealing instinctively with every obstacle as it
presented itself. Here a huge gorge would be found cutting across my
path, along the dizzy edge of which I scrambled until some less
precipitous point was discovered where I might safely venture to the
bottom and then, selecting some feasible portion of the opposite wall,
reascend with the same slow caution. Massive, flat-topped spurs
alternate with the gorges, plunging abruptly from the shoulders of the
snowy peaks, and planting their feet in the warm desert. These were
everywhere marked and adorned with characteristic sculptures of the
ancient glaciers that swept over this entire region like one vast
ice-wind, and the polished surfaces produced by the ponderous flood are
still so perfectly preserved that in many places the sunlight reflected
from them is about as trying to the eyes as sheets of snow.
God's glacial-mills grind slowly, but they have been kept in motion long
enough in California to grind sufficient soil for a glorious abundance
of life, though most of the grist has been carried to the lowlands,
leaving these high regions comparatively lean and bare; while the
post-glacial agents of erosion have not yet furnished sufficient
available food over the general surface for more than a few tufts of the
hardiest plants, chiefly carices and eriogonae. And it is interesting to
learn in this connection that the sparseness and repressed character of
the vegetation at this height is caused more by want of soil than by
harshness of climate; for, here and there, in sheltered hollows
(countersunk beneath the general surface) into which a few rods of
well-ground moraine chips have been dumped, we find groves of spruce and
pine thirty to forty feet high, trimmed around the edges with willow and
huckleberry bushes, and oftentimes still further by an outer ring of
tall grasses, bright with lupines, larkspurs, and showy columbines,
suggesting a climate by no means repressingly severe. All the streams,
too, and the pools at this elevation are furnished with little gardens
wherever soil can be made to lie, which, though making scarce any show
at a distance, constitute charming surprises to the appreciative
observer. In these bits of leanness a few birds find grateful homes.
Having no acquaintance with man, they fear no ill, and flock curiously
about the stranger, almost allowing themselves to be taken in the hand.
In so wild and so beautiful a region was spent my first day, every sight
and sound inspiring, leading one far out of himself, yet feeding and
building up his individuality.
Now came the solemn, silent evening. Long, blue, spiky shadows crept out
across the snow-fields, while a rosy glow, at first scarce discernible,
gradually deepened and suffused every mountain-top, flushing the
glaciers and the harsh crags above them. This was the alpenglow, to me
one of the most impressive of all the terrestrial manifestations of God.
At the touch of this divine light, the mountains seemed to kindle to a
rapt, religious consciousness, and stood hushed and waiting like devout
worshipers. Just before the alpenglow began to fade, two crimson clouds
came streaming across the summit like wings of flame, rendering the
sublime scene yet more impressive; then came darkness and the stars.
Icy Ritter was still miles away, but I could proceed no farther that
night. I found a good campground on the rim of a glacier basin about
11,000 feet above the sea. A small lake nestles in the bottom of it,
from which I got water for my tea, and a storm-beaten thicket near by
furnished abundance of resiny fire-wood. Somber peaks, hacked and
shattered, circled half-way around the horizon, wearing a savage aspect
in the gloaming, and a waterfall chanted solemnly across the lake on its
way down from the foot of a glacier. The fall and the lake and the
glacier were almost equally bare; while the scraggy pines anchored in
the rock-fissures were so dwarfed and shorn by storm-winds that you
might walk over their tops. In tone and aspect the scene was one of the
most desolate I ever beheld. But the darkest scriptures of the mountains
are illumined with bright passages of love that never fail to make
themselves felt when one is alone.
I made my bed in a nook of the pine-thicket, where the branches were
pressed and crinkled overhead like a roof, and bent down around the
sides. These are the best bedchambers the high mountains afford--snug as
squirrel-nests, well ventilated, full of spicy odors, and with plenty of
wind-played needles to sing one asleep. I little expected company, but,
creeping in through a low side-door, I found five or six birds nestling
among the tassels. The night-wind began to blow soon after dark; at
first only a gentle breathing, but increasing toward midnight to a rough
gale that fell upon my leafy roof in ragged surges like a cascade,
bearing wild sounds from the crags overhead. The waterfall sang in
chorus, filling the old ice-fountain with its solemn roar, and seeming
to increase in power as the night advanced--fit voice for such a
landscape. I had to creep out many times to the fire during the night,
for it was biting cold and I had no blankets. Gladly I welcomed the
morning star.
The dawn in the dry, wavering air of the desert was glorious. Everything
encouraged my undertaking and betokened success. There was no cloud in
the sky, no storm-tone in the wind. Breakfast of bread and tea was soon
made. I fastened a hard, durable crust to my belt by way of provision,
in case I should be compelled to pass a night on the mountain-top; then,
securing the remainder of my little stock against wolves and wood-rats,
I set forth free and hopeful.
How glorious a greeting the sun gives the mountains! To behold this
alone is worth the pains of any excursion a thousand times over. The
highest peaks burned like islands in a sea of liquid shade. Then the
lower peaks and spires caught the glow, and long lances of light,
streaming through many a notch and pass, fell thick on the frozen
meadows. The majestic form of Ritter was full in sight, and I pushed
rapidly on over rounded rock-bosses and pavements, my iron-shod shoes
making a clanking sound, suddenly hushed now and then in rugs of
bryanthus, and sedgy lake-margins soft as moss. Here, too, in this
so-called "land of desolation," I met cassiope, growing in fringes among
the battered rocks. Her blossoms had faded long ago, but they were still
clinging with happy memories to the evergreen sprays, and still so
beautiful as to thrill every fiber of one's being. Winter and summer,
you may hear her voice, the low, sweet melody of her purple bells. No
evangel among all the mountain plants speaks Nature's love more plainly
than cassiope. Where she dwells, the redemption of the coldest solitude
is complete. The very rocks and glaciers seem to feel her presence, and
become imbued with her own fountain sweetness. All things were warming
and awakening. Frozen rills began to flow, the marmots came out of their
nests in boulder-piles and climbed sunny rocks to bask, and the
dun-headed sparrows were flitting about seeking their breakfasts. The
lakes seen from every ridge-top were brilliantly rippled and spangled,
shimmering like the thickets of the low Dwarf Pines. The rocks, too,
seemed responsive to the vital heat--rock-crystals and snow-crystals
thrilling alike. I strode on exhilarated, as if never more to feel
fatigue, limbs moving of themselves, every sense unfolding like the
thawing flowers, to take part in the new day harmony.
All along my course thus far, excepting when down in the canons, the
landscapes were mostly open to me, and expansive, at least on one side.
On the left were the purple plains of Mono, reposing dreamily and warm;
on the right, the near peaks springing keenly into the thin sky with
more and more impressive sublimity. But these larger views were at
length lost. Rugged spurs, and moraines, and huge, projecting buttresses
began to shut me in. Every feature became more rigidly alpine, without,
however, producing any chilling effect; for going to the mountains is
like going home. We always find that the strangest objects in these
fountain wilds are in some degree familiar, and we look upon them with a
vague sense of having seen them before.
On the southern shore of a frozen lake, I encountered an extensive field
of hard, granular snow, up which I scampered in fine tone, intending to
follow it to its head, and cross the rocky spur against which it leans,
hoping thus to come direct upon the base of the main Ritter peak. The
surface was pitted with oval hollows, made by stones and drifted
pine-needles that had melted themselves into the mass by the radiation
of absorbed sun-heat. These afforded good footholds, but the surface
curved more and more steeply at the head, and the pits became shallower
and less abundant, until I found myself in danger of being shed off like
avalanching snow. I persisted, however, creeping on all fours, and
shuffling up the smoothest places on my back, as I had often done on
burnished granite, until, after slipping several times, I was compelled
to retrace my course to the bottom, and make my way around the west end
of the lake, and thence up to the summit of the divide between the head
waters of Rush Creek and the northernmost tributaries of the San
Joaquin.
Arriving on the summit of this dividing crest, one of the most exciting
pieces of pure wilderness was disclosed that I ever discovered in all my
mountaineering. There, immediately in front, loomed the majestic mass of
Mount Ritter, with a glacier swooping down its face nearly to my feet,
then curving westward and pouring its frozen flood into a dark blue
lake, whose shores were bound with precipices of crystalline snow; while
a deep chasm drawn between the divide and the glacier separated the
massive picture from everything else. I could see only the one sublime
mountain, the one glacier, the one lake; the whole veiled with one blue
shadow--rock, ice, and water close together without a single leaf or
sign of life. After gazing spellbound, I began instinctively to
scrutinize every notch and gorge and weathered buttress of the mountain,
with reference to making the ascent. The entire front above the glacier
appeared as one tremendous precipice, slightly receding at the top, and
bristling with spires and pinnacles set above one another in formidable
array. Massive lichen-stained battlements stood forward here and there,
hacked at the top with angular notches, and separated by frosty gullies
and recesses that have been veiled in shadow ever since their creation;
while to right and left, as far as I could see, were huge, crumbling
buttresses, offering no hope to the climber. The head of the glacier
sends up a few finger-like branches through narrow _couloirs_; but
these seemed too steep and short to be available, especially as I had no
ax with which to cut steps, and the numerous narrow-throated gullies
down which stones and snow are avalanched seemed hopelessly steep,
besides being interrupted by vertical cliffs; while the whole front was
rendered still more terribly forbidding by the chill shadow and the
gloomy blackness of the rocks.
Descending the divide in a hesitating mood, I picked my way across the
yawning chasm at the foot, and climbed out upon the glacier. There were
no meadows now to cheer with their brave colors, nor could I hear the
dun-headed sparrows, whose cheery notes so often relieve the silence of
our highest mountains. The only sounds were the gurgling of small rills
down in the veins and crevasses of the glacier, and now and then the
rattling report of falling stones, with the echoes they shot out into
the crisp air.
I could not distinctly hope to reach the summit from this side, yet I
moved on across the glacier as if driven by fate. Contending with
myself, the season is too far spent, I said, and even should I be
successful, I might be storm-bound on the mountain; and in the
cloud-darkness, with the cliffs and crevasses covered with snow, how
could I escape? No; I must wait till next summer. I would only approach
the mountain now, and inspect it, creep about its flanks, learn what I
could of its history, holding myself ready to flee on the approach of
the first storm-cloud. But we little know until tried how much of the
uncontrollable there is in us, urging across glaciers and torrents, and
up dangerous heights, let the judgment forbid as it may.
I succeeded in gaining the foot of the cliff on the eastern extremity of
the glacier, and there discovered the mouth of a narrow avalanche gully,
through which I began to climb, intending to follow it as far as
possible, and at least obtain some fine wild views for my pains. Its
general course is oblique to the plane of the mountain-face, and the
metamorphic slates of which the mountain is built are cut by cleavage
planes in such a way that they weather off in angular blocks, giving
rise to irregular steps that greatly facilitate climbing on the sheer
places. I thus made my way into a wilderness of crumbling spires and
battlements, built together in bewildering combinations, and glazed in
many places with a thin coating of ice, which I had to hammer off with
stones. The situation was becoming gradually more perilous; but, having
passed several dangerous spots, I dared not think of descending; for, so
steep was the entire ascent, one would inevitably fall to the glacier in
case a single misstep were made. Knowing, therefore, the tried danger
beneath, I became all the more anxious concerning the developments to be
made above, and began to be conscious of a vague foreboding of what
actually befell; not that I was given to fear, but rather because my
instincts, usually so positive and true, seemed vitiated in some way,
and were leading me astray. At length, after attaining an elevation of
about 12,800 feet, I found myself at the foot of a sheer drop in the bed
of the avalanche channel I was tracing, which seemed absolutely to bar
further progress. It was only about forty-five or fifty feet high, and
somewhat roughened by fissures and projections; but these seemed so
slight and insecure, as footholds, that I tried hard to avoid the
precipice altogether, by scaling the wall of the channel on either side.
But, though less steep, the walls were smoother than the obstructing
rock, and repeated efforts only showed that I must either go right ahead
or turn back. The tried dangers beneath seemed even greater than that of
the cliff in front; therefore, after scanning its face again and again,
I began to scale it, picking my holds with intense caution. After
gaining a point about halfway to the top, I was suddenly brought to a
dead stop, with arms outspread, clinging close to the face of the rock,
unable to move hand or foot either up or down. My doom appeared fixed. I
_must_ fall. There would be a moment of bewilderment, and then a
lifeless rumble down the one general precipice to the glacier below.
When this final danger flashed upon me, I became nerve-shaken for the
first time since setting foot on the mountains, and my mind seemed to
fill with a stifling smoke. But this terrible eclipse lasted only a
moment, when life blazed forth again with preternatural clearness. I
seemed suddenly to become possessed of a new sense. The other self,
bygone experiences, Instinct, or Guardian Angel,--call it what you
will,--came forward and assumed control. Then my trembling muscles
became firm again, every rift and flaw in the rock was seen as through a
microscope, and my limbs moved with a positiveness and precision with
which I seemed to have nothing at all to do. Had I been borne aloft upon
wings, my deliverance could not have been more complete.
Above this memorable spot, the face of the mountain is still more
savagely hacked and torn. It is a maze of yawning chasms and gullies, in
the angles of which rise beetling crags and piles of detached boulders
that seem to have been gotten ready to be launched below. But the
strange influx of strength I had received seemed inexhaustible. I found
a way without effort, and soon stood upon the topmost crag in the
blessed light.
How truly glorious the landscape circled around this noble
summit!--giant mountains, valleys innumerable, glaciers and meadows,
rivers and lakes, with the wide blue sky bent tenderly over them all.
But in my first hour of freedom from that terrible shadow, the sunlight
in which I was laving seemed all in all.
Looking southward along the axis of the range, the eye is first caught
by a row of exceedingly sharp and slender spires, which rise openly to a
height of about a thousand feet, above a series of short, residual
glaciers that lean back against their bases; their fantastic sculpture
and the unrelieved sharpness with which they spring out of the ice
rendering them peculiarly wild and striking. These are "The Minarets."
Beyond them you behold a sublime wilderness of mountains, their snowy
summits towering together in crowded abundance, peak beyond peak,
swelling higher, higher as they sweep on southward, until the
culminating point of the range is reached on Mount Whitney, near the
head of the Kern River, at an elevation of nearly 14,700 feet above the
level of the sea.
Westward, the general flank of the range is seen flowing sublimely away
from the sharp summits, in smooth undulations; a sea of huge gray
granite waves dotted with lakes and meadows, and fluted with stupendous
canons that grow steadily deeper as they recede in the distance. Below
this gray region lies the dark forest zone, broken here and there by
upswelling ridges and domes; and yet beyond lies a yellow, hazy belt,
marking the broad plain of the San Joaquin, bounded on its farther side
by the blue mountains of the coast.
Turning now to the northward, there in the immediate foreground is the
glorious Sierra Crown, with Cathedral Peak, a temple of marvelous
architecture, a few degrees to the left of it; the gray, massive form of
Mammoth Mountain to the right; while Mounts Ord, Gibbs, Dana, Conness,
Tower Peak, Castle Peak, Silver Mountain, and a host of noble
companions, as yet nameless, make a sublime show along the axis of the
range.
Eastward, the whole region seems a land of desolation covered with
beautiful light. The torrid volcanic basin of Mono, with its one bare
lake fourteen miles long; Owen's Valley and the broad lava table-land at
its head, dotted with craters, and the massive Inyo Range, rivaling even
the Sierra in height; these are spread, map-like, beneath you, with
countless ranges beyond, passing and overlapping one another and fading
on the glowing horizon.
[Illustration: MAP OF THE YOSEMITE VALLEY.]
At a distance of less than 3000 feet below the summit of Mount Ritter
you may find tributaries of the San Joaquin and Owen's rivers, bursting
forth from the ice and snow of the glaciers that load its flanks; while
a little to the north of here are found the highest affluents of the
Tuolumne and Merced. Thus, the fountains of four of the principal rivers
of California are within a radius of four or five miles.
Lakes are seen gleaming in all sorts of places,--round, or oval, or
square, like very mirrors; others narrow and sinuous, drawn close around
the peaks like silver zones, the highest reflecting only rocks, snow,
and the sky. But neither these nor the glaciers, nor the bits of brown
meadow and moorland that occur here and there, are large enough to make
any marked impression upon the mighty wilderness of mountains. The eye,
rejoicing in its freedom, roves about the vast expanse, yet returns
again and again to the fountain peaks. Perhaps some one of the multitude
excites special attention, some gigantic castle with turret and
battlement, or some Gothic cathedral more abundantly spired than
Milan's. But, generally, when looking for the first time from an
all-embracing standpoint like this, the inexperienced observer is
oppressed by the incomprehensible grandeur, variety, and abundance of
the mountains rising shoulder to shoulder beyond the reach of vision;
and it is only after they have been studied one by one, long and
lovingly, that their far-reaching harmonies become manifest. Then,
penetrate the wilderness where you may, the main telling features, to
which all the surrounding topography is subordinate, are quickly
perceived, and the most complicated clusters of peaks stand revealed
harmoniously correlated and fashioned like works of art--eloquent
monuments of the ancient ice-rivers that brought them into relief from
the general mass of the range. The canons, too, some of them a mile
deep, mazing wildly through the mighty host of mountains, however
lawless and ungovernable at first sight they appear, are at length
recognized as the necessary effects of causes which followed each other
in harmonious sequence--Nature's poems carved on tables of stone--the
simplest and most emphatic of her glacial compositions.
Could we have been here to observe during the glacial period, we should
have overlooked a wrinkled ocean of ice as continuous as that now
covering the landscapes of Greenland; filling every valley and canon
with only the tops of the fountain peaks rising darkly above the
rock-encumbered ice-waves like islets in a stormy sea--those islets the
only hints of the glorious landscapes now smiling in the sun. Standing
here in the deep, brooding silence all the wilderness seems motionless,
as if the work of creation were done. But in the midst of this outer
steadfastness we know there is incessant motion and change. Ever and
anon, avalanches are falling from yonder peaks. These cliff-bound
glaciers, seemingly wedged and immovable, are flowing like water and
grinding the rocks beneath them. The lakes are lapping their granite
shores and wearing them away, and every one of these rills and young
rivers is fretting the air into music, and carrying the mountains to the
plains. Here are the roots of all the life of the valleys, and here more
simply than elsewhere is the eternal flux of nature manifested. Ice
changing to water, lakes to meadows, and mountains to plains. And while
we thus contemplate Nature's methods of landscape creation, and, reading
the records she has carved on the rocks, reconstruct, however
imperfectly, the landscapes of the past, we also learn that as these we
now behold have succeeded those of the pre-glacial age, so they in turn
are withering and vanishing to be succeeded by others yet unborn.
But in the midst of these fine lessons and landscapes, I had to remember
that the sun was wheeling far to the west, while a new way down the
mountain had to be discovered to some point on the timber line where I
could have a fire; for I had not even burdened myself with a coat. I
first scanned the western spurs, hoping some way might appear through
which I might reach the northern glacier, and cross its snout; or pass
around the lake into which it flows, and thus strike my morning track.
This route was soon sufficiently unfolded to show that, if practicable
at all, it would require so much time that reaching camp that night
would be out of the question. I therefore scrambled back eastward,
descending the southern slopes obliquely at the same time. Here the
crags seemed less formidable, and the head of a glacier that flows
northeast came in sight, which I determined to follow as far as
possible, hoping thus to make my way to the foot of the peak on the east
side, and thence across the intervening canons and ridges to camp.
The inclination of the glacier is quite moderate at the head, and, as
the sun had softened the _neve_, I made safe and rapid progress,
running and sliding, and keeping up a sharp outlook for crevasses. About
half a mile from the head, there is an ice-cascade, where the glacier
pours over a sharp declivity and is shattered into massive blocks
separated by deep, blue fissures. To thread my way through the slippery
mazes of this crevassed portion seemed impossible, and I endeavored to
avoid it by climbing off to the shoulder of the mountain. But the slopes
rapidly steepened and at length fell away in sheer precipices,
compelling a return to the ice. Fortunately, the day had been warm
enough to loosen the ice-crystals so as to admit of hollows being dug in
the rotten portions of the blocks, thus enabling me to pick my way with
far less difficulty than I had anticipated. Continuing down over the
snout, and along the left lateral moraine, was only a confident saunter,
showing that the ascent of the mountain by way of this glacier is easy,
provided one is armed with an ax to cut steps here and there.
The lower end of the glacier was beautifully waved and barred by the
outcropping edges of the bedded ice-layers which represent the annual
snowfalls, and to some extent the irregularities of structure caused by
the weathering of the walls of crevasses, and by separate snowfalls
which have been followed by rain, hail, thawing and freezing, etc. Small
rills were gliding and swirling over the melting surface with a smooth,
oily appearance, in channels of pure ice--their quick, compliant
movements contrasting most impressively with the rigid, invisible flow
of the glacier itself, on whose back they all were riding.
Night drew near before I reached the eastern base of the mountain, and
my camp lay many a rugged mile to the north; but ultimate success was
assured. It was now only a matter of endurance and ordinary
mountain-craft. The sunset was, if possible, yet more beautiful than
that of the day before. The Mono landscape seemed to be fairly saturated
with warm, purple light. The peaks marshaled along the summit were in
shadow, but through every notch and pass streamed vivid sun-fire,
soothing and irradiating their rough, black angles, while companies of
small, luminous clouds hovered above them like very angels of light.
Darkness came on, but I found my way by the trends of the canons and the
peaks projected against the sky. All excitement died with the light, and
then I was weary. But the joyful sound of the waterfall across the lake
was heard at last, and soon the stars were seen reflected in the lake
itself. Taking my bearings from these, I discovered the little pine
thicket in which my nest was, and then I had a rest such as only a tired
mountaineer may enjoy. After lying loose and lost for awhile, I made a
sunrise fire, went down to the lake, dashed water on my head, and dipped
a cupful for tea. The revival brought about by bread and tea was as
complete as the exhaustion from excessive enjoyment and toil. Then I
crept beneath the pine-tassels to bed. The wind was frosty and the fire
burned low, but my sleep was none the less sound, and the evening
constellations had swept far to the west before I awoke.
After thawing and resting in the morning sunshine, I sauntered
home,--that is, back to the Tuolumne camp,--bearing away toward a
cluster of peaks that hold the fountain snows of one of the north
tributaries of Rush Creek. Here I discovered a group of beautiful
glacier lakes, nestled together in a grand amphitheater. Toward evening,
I crossed the divide separating the Mono waters from those of the
Tuolumne, and entered the glacier basin that now holds the fountain
snows of the stream that forms the upper Tuolumne cascades. This stream
I traced down through its many dells and gorges, meadows and bogs,
reaching the brink of the main Tuolumne at dusk.
A loud whoop for the artists was answered again and again. Their
camp-fire came in sight, and half an hour afterward I was with them.
They seemed unreasonably glad to see me. I had been absent only three
days; nevertheless, though the weather was fine, they had already been
weighing chances as to whether I would ever return, and trying to decide
whether they should wait longer or begin to seek their way back to the
lowlands. Now their curious troubles were over. They packed their
precious sketches, and next morning we set out homeward bound, and in
two days entered the Yosemite Valley from the north by way of Indian
Canon.
CHAPTER V
THE PASSES
The sustained grandeur of the High Sierra is strikingly illustrated by
the great height of the passes. Between latitude 36 deg. 20' and 38 deg. the
lowest pass, gap, gorge, or notch of any kind cutting across the axis of
the range, as far as I have discovered, exceeds 9000 feet in height
above the level of the sea; while the average height of all that are in
use, either by Indians or whites, is perhaps not less than 11,000 feet,
and not one of these is a carriage-pass.
Farther north a carriage-road has been constructed through what is known
as the Sonora Pass, on the head waters of the Stanislaus and Walker's
rivers, the summit of which is about 10,000 feet above the sea.
Substantial wagon-roads have also been built through the Carson and
Johnson passes, near the head of Lake Tahoe, over which immense
quantities of freight were hauled from California to the mining regions
of Nevada, before the construction of the Central Pacific Railroad.
Still farther north, a considerable number of comparatively low passes
occur, some of which are accessible to wheeled vehicles, and through
these rugged defiles during the exciting years of the gold period long
emigrant-trains with foot-sore cattle wearily toiled. After the
toil-worn adventurers had escaped a thousand dangers and had crawled
thousands of miles across the plains the snowy Sierra at last loomed in
sight, the eastern wall of the land of gold. And as with shaded eyes
they gazed through the tremulous haze of the desert, with what joy must
they have descried the pass through which they were to enter the better
land of their hopes and dreams!
Between the Sonora Pass and the southern extremity of the High Sierra, a
distance of nearly 160 miles, there are only five passes through which
trails conduct from one side of the range to the other. These are barely
practicable for animals; a pass in these regions meaning simply any
notch or canon through which one may, by the exercise of unlimited
patience, make out to lead a mule, or a sure-footed mustang; animals
that can slide or jump as well as walk. Only three of the five passes
may be said to be in use, viz.: the Kearsarge, Mono, and Virginia Creek;
the tracks leading through the others being only obscure Indian trails,
not graded in the least, and scarcely traceable by white men; for much
of the way is over solid rock and earthquake avalanche taluses, where
the unshod ponies of the Indians leave no appreciable sign. Only skilled
mountaineers are able to detect the marks that serve to guide the
Indians, such as slight abrasions of the looser rocks, the displacement
of stones here and there, and bent bushes and weeds. A general knowledge
of the topography is, then, the main guide, enabling one to determine
where the trail ought to go--_must_ go. One of these Indian trails
crosses the range by a nameless pass between the head waters of the
south and middle forks of the San Joaquin, the other between the north
and middle forks of the same river, just to the south of "The Minarets";
this last being about 9000 feet high, is the lowest of the five. The
Kearsarge is the highest, crossing the summit near the head of the south
fork of King's River, about eight miles to the north of Mount Tyndall,
through the midst of the most stupendous rock-scenery. The summit of
this pass is over 12,000 feet above sea-level; nevertheless, it is one
of the safest of the five, and is used every summer, from July to
October or November, by hunters, prospectors, and stock-owners, and to
some extent by enterprising pleasure-seekers also. For, besides the
surpassing grandeur of the scenery about the summit, the trail, in
ascending the western flank of the range, conducts through a grove of
the giant Sequoias, and through the magnificent Yosemite Valley of the
south fork of King's River. This is, perhaps, the highest traveled pass
on the North American continent.
[Illustration: MAP OF THE YOSEMITE VALLEY, SHOWING PRESENT RESERVATION
BOUNDARY.]
The Mono Pass lies to the east of Yosemite Valley, at the head of one of
the tributaries of the south fork of the Tuolumne. This is the best
known and most extensively traveled of all that exist in the High
Sierra. A trail was made through it about the time of the Mono gold
excitement, in the year 1858, by adventurous miners and prospectors--men
who would build a trail down the throat of darkest Erebus on the way to
gold. Though more than a thousand feet lower than the Kearsarge, it is
scarcely less sublime in rock-scenery, while in snowy, falling water it
far surpasses it. Being so favorably situated for the stream of Yosemite
travel, the more adventurous tourists cross over through this glorious
gateway to the volcanic region around Mono Lake. It has therefore gained
a name and fame above every other pass in the range. According to the
few barometrical observations made upon it, its highest point is 10,765
feet above the sea. The other pass of the five we have been considering
is somewhat lower, and crosses the axis of the range a few miles to the
north of the Mono Pass, at the head of the southernmost tributary of
Walker's River. It is used chiefly by roaming bands of the Pah Ute
Indians and "sheepmen."
But, leaving wheels and animals out of the question, the free
mountaineer with a sack of bread on his shoulders and an ax to cut steps
in ice and frozen snow can make his way across the range almost
everywhere, and at any time of year when the weather is calm. To him
nearly every notch between the peaks is a pass, though much patient
step-cutting is at times required up and down steeply inclined glaciers,
with cautious climbing over precipices that at first sight would seem
hopelessly inaccessible.
In pursuing my studies, I have crossed from side to side of the range at
intervals of a few miles all along the highest portion of the chain,
with far less real danger than one would naturally count on. And what
fine wildness was thus revealed--storms and avalanches, lakes and
waterfalls, gardens and meadows, and interesting animals--only those
will ever know who give the freest and most buoyant portion of their
lives to climbing and seeing for themselves.
To the timid traveler, fresh from the sedimentary levels of the
lowlands, these highways, however picturesque and grand, seem terribly
forbidding--cold, dead, gloomy gashes in the bones of the mountains, and
of all Nature's ways the ones to be most cautiously avoided. Yet they
are full of the finest and most telling examples of Nature's love; and
though hard to travel, none are safer. For they lead through regions
that lie far above the ordinary haunts of the devil, and of the
pestilence that walks in darkness. True, there are innumerable places
where the careless step will be the last step; and a rock falling from
the cliffs may crush without warning like lightning from the sky; but
what then! Accidents in the mountains are less common than in the
lowlands, and these mountain mansions are decent, delightful, even
divine, places to die in, compared with the doleful chambers of
civilization. Few places in this world are more dangerous than home.
Fear not, therefore, to try the mountain-passes. They will kill care,
save you from deadly apathy, set you free, and call forth every faculty
into vigorous, enthusiastic action. Even the sick should try these
so-called dangerous passes, because for every unfortunate they kill,
they cure a thousand.
All the passes make their steepest ascents on the eastern flank. On this
side the average rise is not far from a thousand feet to the mile, while
on the west it is about two hundred feet. Another marked difference
between the eastern and western portions of the passes is that the
former begin at the very foot of the range, while the latter can hardly
be said to begin lower than an elevation of from seven to ten thousand
feet. Approaching the range from the gray levels of Mono and Owen's
Valley on the east, the traveler sees before him the steep, short passes
in full view, fenced in by rugged spurs that come plunging down from the
shoulders of the peaks on either side, the courses of the more direct
being disclosed from top to bottom without interruption. But from the
west one sees nothing of the way he may be seeking until near the
summit, after days have been spent in threading the forests growing on
the main dividing ridges between the river canons.
It is interesting to observe how surely the alp-crossing animals of
every kind fall into the same trails. The more rugged and inaccessible
the general character of the topography of any particular region, the
more surely will the trails of white men, Indians, bears, wild sheep,
etc., be found converging into the best passes. The Indians of the
western slope venture cautiously over the passes in settled weather to
attend dances, and obtain loads of pine-nuts and the larvae of a small
fly that breeds in Mono and Owen's lakes, which, when dried, forms an
important article of food; while the Pah Utes cross over from the east
to hunt the deer and obtain supplies of acorns; and it is truly
astonishing to see what immense loads the haggard old squaws make out to
carry bare-footed through these rough passes, oftentimes for a distance
of sixty or seventy miles. They are always accompanied by the men, who
stride on, unburdened and erect, a little in advance, kindly stooping at
difficult places to pile stepping-stones for their patient, pack-animal
wives, just as they would prepare the way for their ponies.
Bears evince great sagacity as mountaineers, but although they are
tireless and enterprising travelers they seldom cross the range. I have
several times tracked them through the Mono Pass, but only in late
years, after cattle and sheep had passed that way, when they doubtless
were following to feed on the stragglers and on those that had been
killed by falling over the rocks. Even the wild sheep, the best
mountaineers of all, choose regular passes in making journeys across the
summits. Deer seldom cross the range in either direction. I have never
yet observed a single specimen of the mule-deer of the Great Basin west
of the summit, and rarely one of the black-tailed species on the eastern
slope, notwithstanding many of the latter ascend the range nearly to the
summit every summer, to feed in the wild gardens and bring forth their
young.
The glaciers are the pass-makers, and it is by them that the courses of
all mountaineers are predestined. Without exception every pass in the
Sierra was created by them without the slightest aid or predetermining
guidance from any of the cataclysmic agents. I have seen elaborate
statements of the amount of drilling and blasting accomplished in the
construction of the railroad across the Sierra, above Donner Lake; but
for every pound of rock moved in this way, the glaciers which descended
east and west through this same pass, crushed and carried away more than
a hundred tons.
The so-called practicable road-passes are simply those portions of the
range more degraded by glacial action than the adjacent portions, and
degraded in such a way as to leave the summits rounded, instead of
sharp; while the peaks, from the superior strength and hardness of their
rocks, or from more favorable position, having suffered less
degradation, are left towering above the passes as if they had been
heaved into the sky by some force acting from beneath.
The scenery of all the passes, especially at the head, is of the wildest
and grandest description,--lofty peaks massed together and laden around
their bases with ice and snow; chains of glacier lakes; cascading
streams in endless variety, with glorious views, westward over a sea of
rocks and woods, and eastward over strange ashy plains, volcanoes, and
the dry, dead-looking ranges of the Great Basin. Every pass, however,
Back to Full Books
|