The Mountain that was 'God' Part 6

No foot of man had ever trampled those pure snows. It was a virginal mountain, distant from human inquisitiveness as a marble G.o.ddess is from human loves. Yet there was nothing unsympathetic in its isolation, or despotic in its distant majesty. Only the thought of eternal peace arose from this heaven-upbearing monument like incense, and, overflowing, filled the world with deep and holy calm.

Our lives demand visual images that can be symbols to us of the grandeur or the sweetness of repose. The n.o.ble works of nature, and mountains most of all,

"have power to make Our noisy years seem moments in the being Of the eternal silence."

And, studying the light and the majesty of Tacoma, there pa.s.sed from it and entered into my being a thought and image of solemn beauty, which I could thenceforth evoke whenever in the world I must {p.104} have peace or die. For such emotion years of pilgrimage were worthily spent. ("_The Canoe and the Saddle_,"

published posthumously in 1862).

[Ill.u.s.tration: Russell Peak, from Avalanche Camp, 2,500 feet below.

Named for Prof. Israel C. Russell, geologist.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Looking up Winthrop Glacier from Avalanche Camp.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Looking across Winthrop Glacier from Avalanche Camp to Steamboat Prow (the Wedge) and St. Elmo Pa.s.s. Elevation of camera, 11,000 feet.]

In the controversy over the Mountain's name, some persons have been misled into imaging Winthrop a fabricator of pseudo-Indian nomenclature. But his work bears scrutiny. He wrote before there was any dispute as to the name, or any rivalry between towns to confound partisans.h.i.+p with scholars.h.i.+p. He was in the Territory while Captain George B. McClellan, was surveying the Cascades to find a pa.s.s for a railroad. He was in close touch with McClellan's party, and doubtless knew well its able ethnologist, George Gibbs, the Harvard man whose works on the Indian languages of the Northwest are the foundation of all later books in that field. Although he first learned it from the Indians, in all likelihood he discussed the name "Tacoma" with Gibbs, who was already collecting material for his writings, published in the {p.107} report of the Survey and in the "Contributions" of the Smithsonian Inst.i.tution. Among these are the vocabularies of a score of Indian dialects, which must be mentioned here because they are conclusive as to the form, meaning and application of the name.

[Ill.u.s.tration {p.105}: View south from the Sluiskin Mountains across Moraine Park to the head of Carbon Glacier. Elevation of camera, 6,500 feet. Moraine Park, below, was until recently the bed of an interglacier. On the extreme left, Avalanche Camp and Russell Peak are seen between Carbon and Winthrop Glaciers.]

[Ill.u.s.tration {p.106}: Portion of Spray Park, with north-side view of the Mountain, showing Observation Rock and timber line. Elevation of camera, 7,000 feet.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Climbing the seracs of Winthrop Glacier.]

In his vocabulary of the Winatsha (Wenatchee) language, Gibbs entered: "T'koma, snow peak." In that of the Niswalli (Nisqually), he noted: "Takob, the name of Mt. Rainier." "T'kope," Chinook for white, is evidently closely allied. Gibbs himself tells us that the Northwestern dialects treated b and m as convertible. "Takob" is equivalent to "Takom" or "T'koma." Far, then, from coining the word, Winthrop did not even change its Indian form, as some have supposed, by modifying the mouth-filling "Tahoma" of the Yakimas into the simpler, stronger and more musical "Tacoma." This is as pure Indian as the other, and Winthrop's popularization of the word was a public service, as perpetuating one of the most significant of our Indian place-names.

I have said thus much, not to revive a musty and, to me, very amusing quarrel, but because correspondents in different parts of the country have asked regarding facts that are naturally part of the history of the Mountain. Some would even have me stir the embers of that ancient controversy. For instance, here is the _Bulletin of the Geographical Society of Philadelphia_ taking me to task:

This book would also do a great service if it would help popularize the name "Tacoma" in spite of the Mountain's official designation "Rainier"--a name to which it has no right when its old Indian name is at once so beautiful and appropriate. It is to be regretted that a more vigorous protest has not been made against the modern name, and also against such propositions as that of changing "Narada Falls" to "Cushman Falls."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Ice pinnacles on the Carbon.]

The mistaken attempt to displace the name of Narada Falls was still-born from the start, and needed no help to kill it. There are many unnamed landmarks {p.108} in the National Park ready to commemorate Mr. Cushman's ambition to make the Mountain a real possession of all the people. As to the other matter--the name of the peak itself,--that may safely be left to the American sense of humor.

But what I have said is due in justice to Winthrop, one of the finest figures in our literary history. His work in making the peak known demands that his name, given by local grat.i.tude to one of its important glaciers, shall not be removed.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Among the ice bridges of the Carbon.]

A word about the industrial value of the Mountain may not be without interest in this day of electricity. Within a radius of sixty miles of the head of Puget Sound, more water descends from high levels to the sea than in any other similar area in the United States. A great part of this is collected on the largest peak. Hydraulic engineers have estimated, on investigation, an average annual precipitation, for the summit and upper slopes, of at least 180 inches, or four times the rainfall in Tacoma or Seattle. The melting snows feed the White, Puyallup and Nisqually rivers, large streams flowing into the Sound, and the Cowlitz, an important tributary of the Columbia. The minimum flow of these streams is computed at more than 1200 second feet, while their average flow is nearly twice that total.

The utilization of this large water supply on the steep mountain slopes began in 1904 with the erection of the Electron plant of the Puget Sound Power Company. For this the water is diverted from the Puyallup river ten miles from the end of its glacier, and 1750 feet above sea level, and carried ten miles more in an open flume to a reservoir, from which four steel penstocks, each four feet in diameter, drop it to the power house 900 feet below. The plant generates 28,000 horse power, which is conveyed to Tacoma, twenty-five miles distant, at a pressure of 60,000 volts, and there is distributed for the operation of street railways, lights and factories in that city and Seattle.

[Ill.u.s.tration {p.109}: Mountain Climbers in Creva.s.se on Carbon Glacier.]

A more important development is in progress on the larger White river near Buckley, where the Pacific Coast Power Company is diverting the water by a dam and eight-mile ca.n.a.l to Lake Tapps, elevation 540 feet above tide. From this {p.111} great reservoir it will be taken through a tunnel and pipe line to the generating plant at Dieringer, elevation 65 feet. The 100,000 horse power ultimately to be produced here will be carried fifteen miles to Tacoma, for sale to manufacturers in the Puget Sound cities.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Building Tacoma's Electric Power Plant on the Nisqually Canyon. Upper view shows site of retention dam, above tunnel; middle view, end of tunnel, where pipeline crosses the canyon on a bridge; lower view, site of the generating plant (see p. 21).]

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Both these plants are enterprises of Stone & Webster, of Boston. A compet.i.tive plant is now nearing completion by the city of Tacoma, utilizing the third of the rivers emptying into the Sound. The Nisqually is dammed above its famous canyon, at an elevation of 970 feet, where its minimum flow is 300 second feet. The water will be carried through a 10,000-foot tunnel and over a bridge to a reservoir at La Grande, from which the penstocks will carry it down the side of the canyon {p.112} to the 40,000 horse-power generating plant built on a narrow shelf a few feet above the river. The city expects to be able to produce power for its own use, with a considerable margin for sale, at a cost at least as low as can be attained anywhere in the United States.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Hydro-electric plant at Electron, on the Puyallup River, producing 28,000 h. p.]

The rocks of which the Mountain is composed are mainly andesites of different cla.s.ses and basalt. But the peak rests upon a platform of granite, into which the glaciers have cut in their progress. Fine exposures of the older and harder rock are seen on the Nisqually, just below the present end of its glacier, as well as on the Carbon and in Moraine Park. This accounts for the fact that the river beds are full of granite bowlders, which are grinding the softer volcanic s.h.i.+ngle into soil. Thus the glaciers are not only fast deforming the peak.

They are "sowing the seeds of continents to be."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Cutting ca.n.a.l to divert White River into Lake Tapps.]

{p.113} [Ill.u.s.tration: Mystic Lake in Moraine Park.]

IV.

THE CLIMBERS.

Climb the mountains, and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as suns.h.i.+ne flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves.--_John Muir._

Upwards--towards the peaks, towards the stars, and towards the great silence!--_Ibsen._

Given good muscles and wind, the other requisites for an ascent of the Mountain are a competent guide and grit. It offers few problems like those confronting the climber of the older and more crag-like Alps.

There are no perpendicular cliffs to scale, no abysses to swing across on a rope. If you can stand the punishment of a long up-hill pull, over loose volcanic talus and the rough ice, you may safely join a party for Gibraltar Rock and the summit. But the ascent should not be attempted without first spending some time in "try-outs" on lower elevations, both to prepare one's muscles for climbing and descending steep slopes, and to accustom one's lungs to the rarer atmosphere of high alt.i.tudes. Such preparation will save much discomfort, including, perhaps, a visit of "mountain sickness."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Glacier Table on Winthrop Glacier. This phenomenon is due to the melting of the glacier, save where sheltered by the rock.

Under the sun's rays, these "tables" incline more and more to the south, until they slide off their pedestals.]

Another warning must be given to the general tourist. Do not try to climb the Mountain without guides. The seasoned alpinist, of course, will trust to previous experience on other peaks, and may find his climb here comparatively safe and easy. But the fate of {p.115} T.

Y. Callaghan and Joseph W. Stevens, of Trenton, N. J., who perished on the glaciers in August, 1909, should serve as a warning against over-confidence. Unless one has intimate acquaintance with the ways of the great ice peaks, he should never attack such a wilderness of creva.s.ses and s.h.i.+fting snow-slopes save in company of those who know its fickle trails.

[Ill.u.s.tration {p.114}: Carbon River below its Gorge, and Mother Mountains. This range was so named because of a rude resemblance to the up-turned face of a woman seen here in the sky-line, while the view of snowy Liberty Cap beyond and the milky whiteness of the stream gave rise to the pleasing fiction that the Indian name of the peak meant "nouris.h.i.+ng breast." "Tacoma" meant simply the Snow Mountain.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Copyright, 1910, By C. E. Cutter. Oldest and youngest climbers, Gen. Hazard Stevens and Jesse McRae. General Stevens, with P. B. Van Trump, in 1870, made the first ascent. In 1905, he came west from Boston and joined the Mazamas in their climb. The picture shows him before his tent in Paradise Park. He was then 63 years old.]

Under the experienced guides, many climbers reach Crater Peak each summer, and no accidents of a serious nature have occurred. The successful climbers numbered one hundred and fifty-nine in 1910. Many more go only as far as Gibraltar, or even to McClure Rock (Elevation, 7,385 feet), and are well rewarded by the magnificent views which these points command of the south-side glaciers and aretes, with the ranges lying below. The name "McClure Rock" is a memorial of the saddest tragedy of the Mountain. Over the slope below this landmark Prof. Edgar McClure of the University of Oregon fell to his death on the night of July 27, 1897. He had spent the day in severe scientific labor on the summit, and was hurrying down in the moonlight, much wearied, to Reese's Camp for the night. Going ahead of his companions, to find a safe path for them, he called back that the ice was too steep. Then there was silence. Either he slipped in trying to re-ascend the slope, or he fainted from exhaustion. His body was found on the rocks below by his comrades of the Mazama Club.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Copyright, 1897, By E. S. Curtis. P. B. Van Trump, on his old campground, above Sluiskin Falls, where he and Gen. Stevens camped in 1870.]

If one is going the popular route and is equal to so long and unbroken a climb, he may start with his guide from Reese's before dawn, and be on Columbia's Crest by 11 o'clock. But climbers frequently go up Cowlitz Cleaver in the evening, and spend the night at Camp Muir (see pp. 60 and 80). This ledge below Gibraltar gets its name from John Muir, the famous mountaineer, who, on his ascent in 1888, suggested it as a camping place because the presence of pumice indicated the {p.116} absence of severe winds. It offers none of the conveniences of a camp save a wind-break, and even in that respect no one has ever suffered for want of fresh air. It is highly desirable that a cabin be erected here for the convenience of climbers. Such shelters as the Alpine clubs have built on the high shoulders of many peaks in Switzerland are much needed, not only at Muir, but also on the Wedge, as well as inside one of the craters, where, doubtless a way might be found to utilize the residuary heat of the volcano for the comfort of the climbers.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Lower Spray Park, with Mother Mountains beyond. One of the most beautiful alpine vales in the great Spray Park region.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Copyright, 1909, By J. Edward B. Greene.

John Muir, President of the Sierra Club and foremost of American mountaineers

"His daily teachers had been woods and rills, The silence that is in the starry sky, The sleep that is among the lonely hills."]