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About The west shore. (Portland, Or.) 1875-1891 | View Entire Issue (Sept. 1, 1885)
266 THE WEST SHORE. crack breaks over the rocks and plunge down five hun dred feet Up the front if the glacier first brown and covered with debris, than frray and blue, creviced and bored like a boneyoomb, then whiter and higher till it shades off into the clear white of the mountain side. Above all b the old mountain itoolf, rising in its pare, shining whiteness higher than the winter's sun. The road soon tarns np again, and after a thousand font of npward windings, passes the timber line on the Inum of the mountain. There we made our permanent camp; walls of sod with the tent for a roof, a few scrub firs furnishing ns with wood and a snow bank giving us water. It was Friday night when we were ready to turn in on our bed of fir boughs. Two weeks was the time calculated for the ascent, but that evening, as we threw on the biggest logs for our night fire and sat around waiting for them to light np, we were happily confident that before our next night fire was lighted we would have explored the summit Saturday morning, bright and early, we started up, one carrying a small axe and aneroid baromofor, another the lunch, and the third one hundred foot of light rope. Each bad a good ash alpinetock, steel pointed, and six feet long. Uufortuuataly we had oome without ice. creepers, but had logger's corks (nails an inch long) in our shoes. There was first a short grassy slope and half mile of rocks to climb, then came the snow. This snow was hard, having thawed every day and froson every night for weeks, and so made quite easy walking when at all level, and on the slopes was no more difficult than rock climbing. In the fresh of the morning we took the ascent very bravely, but by degrees it became rather monotonous lifting one foot above the othor, even when the snow was an easy slope and we did not slip. Then orevaaeos began to appear. We did not quite understand them at first; we would walk up near them, try the snow all about with our staves, then creep up gently and, holding our breath, peep over and gaise down their depths with greatest awe. But how familiarity breeds con tempt; within three days we would with the utmost non chalanoe walk np to their very edge, poke down pieces of snow, oonfcmptuously spit into the abyss, and discuss the id of jumping across when not more than twelve feet wide. These crevasses are all through the sides of the mountain; they are made by the snow contracting by the cold or eliding down a little. They vary from a few inches to a hundred feet in width, and are the depth of the snow. Often hundreds of feet of their walls of cold blue ice can be soon, with seemingly no bottom. They are great hindrauee to the climber, and frequently it is necessary to go half a mile to got around one, then often to find the way blocked by another. But they were not our greafawt difficulty that first day. We bad marked out a course over the long snow incline between two rwk peaks, np a rocky spur, then by a depression of the main cone to the lop, very nearly straight np the north side of the mountain. We had climbed the first rocks quickly and ploddd np the long fiel.Is of snow, though our feet did wt pick themselves up quits so briskly as at fir.t Noon had passed before the barometer told off ten thou sand feet, bat we clambered np the highest spur of rock to eleven thousand feet, when we were brought to a snd den halt by finding ourselves on the verge of an immense abyss. What we had supposed to be simply a protrud ing ridge of rock was the rim of a great crater basin, and instead of being on the main mountain we found our selves cut off from it by this valley five hundred feet deep, terminating in almost perpendicular walls of rock thousands of feet in height As far as we could see on either side it was the same, save in one little ravine, where the snow lay at an angle of about seventy degrees, but seamed with ugly looking crevasses. Everywhere else were walls of black, forbidding rock. The lawyer managed to cross over to the foot of the main dome, in search of a point where these walls could be scaled, but turned back without discovering a spot offering the least encouragement After shivering awhile on the sonny side of the rocks we returned to camp, satisfied that it was next to impossible to make the ascent from the north. Thnt evening as we sat about the camp-fire, and the huge white mass of mountain loomed up in the moonlight, oar admiration of its beauty was aocompanied by a respect for its ruggedness we had not the night before possessed. Sunday was a much-needed day of rest We slept late, enjoying the pure, light air and the restful stillness. Thoso mountain tops are by no means an uninhabited dosort The hundreds of park-like valleys furnish pas turage for oik and door, and the mountain goat follows the molting snow to crop the freshest herbage. Almost every open space contains the burrows of the marmot the mountain woodchuok, and their shrill whistle as they dart into their holes sounds much like a man's signal call. As we came down the mountain Saturday afternoon we passed within easy shot of a flock of ptarmigan, on the rocks way up among the snow. They are a species of grouse, twice as large as the ruffled variety, almost pure white, and a native of the higher latitudes. Saturday evening about dusk a flock came down by our camp, and I missed an easy shot at one trying to take his head off. The whole flock lit on the snow a couple of hundred yards away, and we all tried our skill on them with our only weapon, a Winchester rifle, but with no othor result than to frighten them away. Sunday morning I was up early and busily chopping kindling wood when there came trotting over the snow drift toward me what at first eemed a huge collie dog, but which I was soon satisfied was a wolf. He was a great gray fellow, twice as large as a Newfoundland dog, long and lank. As he came up within about fifty foet he grinned savagely, showing his long white teeth. I called to the boys, who were still in bed, to hand out the rifle quick. As they came crouch mg up the wolf ran off about eighty yards and turned, when I fired quickly at his shoulder, feeling perfectly certain that his skin was ours. But the ball most have struck too far back, for he doubled np and started with his tail between his legs on the keen jump down the snow drift There were no more cartridges in the rifle so I could not shoot again. We expected at every jump