Chapter IV: The Climbers

Climb the mountains, and get their good tidings. Nature's peace
will flow into you as sunshine 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 altitudes. Such preparation will save much discomfort, including, perhaps, a visit of "mountain sickness."

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 crevasses and shifting snow-slopes save in company of those who know its fickle trails.

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 arêtes, 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.

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.

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

Going to the summit by this route, the important thing is to pass Gibraltar early, before the sun starts the daily shower of icicles and rocks from the cliff over the narrow trail (see p. 83). This is the most dangerous point, but no lives have been lost here. Everywhere, of course, caution is needed, and strict obedience to the {p.117} guide. Once up the steep flume caused by the melting of the ice where it borders the rock (p. 85), the climber threads his way among the crevasses and snow-mounds for nearly two miles, until the crater is reached (pp. 86, 88, 89).

The east-side route (p. 100) involves less danger, perhaps, but it is a longer climb, with no resting places or wind-breaks. It has been used less, because it is farther from Paradise Valley. Starting from a night's encampment on the Wedge (p. 97), parties descend to White glacier, and, over its steep incline of dazzling ice, gain the summit in eight or nine hours.

The first attempt to scale the Mountain was made in 1857 by Lieutenant (later General) A. V. Kautz. There is no foundation for the claim sometimes heard that Dr. W. F. Tolmie, Hudson's Bay Company agent at Fort Nisqually, who made a botanizing trip to the lower slopes in 1833, attempted the peak. Lieutenant Kautz, with two companions from fort Steilacoom, climbed the arête between the glacier now named after him and the Nisqually glacier, but fearing a night on the summit, and knowing nothing of the steam caves in the crater, he turned back when probably at the crest of the south peak. Writing in the _Overland Monthly_ for May, 1875, he says that, "although there were points higher yet, the {p.120} Mountain spread out comparatively flat," having the form of "a ridge perhaps two miles in length, with an angle about half-way, and depressions between the angle and each end of the ridge, which gave the summit the appearance of three small peaks."

It was not until August 17, 1870, thirteen years after Kautz's partial victory, that the Mountain was really conquered. This was by P. B. Van Trump of Yelm and Hazard Stevens, son of the first governor of Washington, who had distinguished himself in the Civil War, and was then living at Olympia as a Federal revenue officer. Each of these pioneers on the summit has published an interesting account of how they got there, General Stevens in the _Atlantic Monthly_ for November, 1876, and Mr. Van Trump in the second volume of _Mazama_. In Stevens's article, "The Ascent of Takhoma," his acquaintance with the Indians of the early territorial period, gives weight to this note:

Tak-ho-ma or Ta-ho-ma among the Yakimas, Klickitats, Puyallups,
Nisquallys and allied tribes is the generic term for mountain,
used precisely as we use the word "Mount," as Takhoma Wynatchie,
or Mount Wynatchie. But they all designate Rainier simply as
Takhoma, or The Mountain, just as the mountain men used to call
it "Old He."

Sluiskin, an Indian celebrity whom they employed as a guide, led the young men the longest and hardest way, taking them over the Tatoosh mountains instead of directly up the Nisqually and Paradise canyons. From the summit of that range, they at last looked across the Paradise valley, and beheld the great peak "directly in front, filling up the whole view with an indescribable aspect of magnitude {p.121} and grandeur." Below them lay "long green ridges projected from the snow belt, with deep valleys between, each at its upper end forming the bed of a glacier."

Descending from the Tatoosh, the explorers camped near a waterfall which they named Sluiskin Falls, in honor of their guide. Sluiskin now endeavored, in a long oration, to dissuade them from their folly. Avalanches and winds, he said, would sweep them from the peak, and even if they should reach the summit, the awful being dwelling there would surely punish their sacrilege. Finding his oratory vain, he chanted a dismal dirge till late in the night, and next morning took solemn leave of them.

Stevens describes their ascent by the now familiar path, over Cowlitz Cleaver and past Gibraltar. From the top of that "vast, square rock embedded in the side of the Mountain," they turned west over the upper snow-fields, and thus first reached the southern peak, which they named "Peak Success," to commemorate their victory.

This is a long, exceedingly sharp, narrow ridge, springing out
from the main dome for a mile into mid-air. On the right, the
snow descended in a steep, unbroken sheet into the tremendous
{p.124} basin which lies between the southern and the northern
peaks, and which is enclosed by them as by two mighty arms.[6]
Sheltered behind a pinnacle of ice, we fastened our flags upon
the Alpine staffs, and then, standing erect in the furious blast,
waved them in triumph with three cheers.

[Footnote 6: See illustration, page 14.]

It was now five o'clock. They had spent eleven hours in the ascent, and knowing it would be impossible to descend before nightfall, they saw nothing to do but burrow in the loose rock and spend the night as best they could. The middle peak, however, was evidently higher, and they determined first to visit it. Climbing the long ridge and over the rim of the crater, they found jets of steam and smoke issuing from vents on the north side.

Never was a discovery more welcome! Hastening forward, we both
exclaimed, as we warmed our benumbed extremities over one of
Pluto's fires, that here we would pass the night, secure against
freezing to death, at least.... A deep cavern extended under the
ice. Forty feet within its mouth we built a wall of stones around
a jet of steam. Inclosed within this shelter, we ate our lunch
and warmed ourselves at our natural register. The heat at the
orifice was too great to bear for more than an instant. The steam
wet us, the smell of sulphur was nauseating, and the cold was so
severe that our clothes froze stiff when turned away from the
heated jet. We passed a miserable night, freezing on one side and
in a hot steam-sulphur bath on the other.

In October of the same year, S. F. Emmons and A. D. Wilson, of the Geological Survey, reached the snow-line by way of the Cowlitz valley and glacier, and ascended the peak over the same route which Stevens and Van Trump had discovered and which has since been the popular path to Crater Peak. The Kautz route, by the cleaver between Kautz and Nisqually glaciers, has recently been found {p.125} practicable, though extremely difficult. In 1891 and again the next summer, Mr. Van Trump made an ascent along the ridge dividing the Tahoma glaciers. In 1905, Raglan Glascock and Ernest Dudley, members of the Sierra Club party visiting the Mountain, climbed the Kautz glacier, and finding their way barred by ice cascades, reached the summit by a thrilling rock climb over the cliff above the South Tahoma glacier. This precipice (see p. 37) they found to be a series of rock terraces, often testing the strength and nerve of the climbers. In _Sunset Magazine_ for November, 1895, Mr. Glascock has told the story of their struggle and reward.

Here the basalt terminated, and a red porous formation began,
which crumbled in the hand. This part of the cliff lay a little
out from the perpendicular, and there was apparently no way of
surmounting it. I looked at my watch. It was 4:15. In a flash the
whole situation came to me. It would be impossible to return and
cross the crevasses before dark. We could not stay where we were.
Already the icy wind cut to the bone.

"We must make it. There is no going back," I said to Dudley. I
gave him the ice ax, and started to the ascent of the remaining
cliff. I climbed six feet, and was helpless. I could not get
back, nor go forward. One of my feet swung loose, and I felt my
hands slipping. Then I noticed above me, about six or eight
inches to my right a sharp, projecting rock. It was here or
never. I gave a swing, and letting go my feet entirely, I reached
the rock. It held, and I was swinging by my hands over a
two-hundred-foot void. I literally glued myself to the face of
the rock, searching frantically for knob or crevasse with my
feet. By sheer luck, my toe found a small projection, and from
here I gradually worked myself up until I came to a broken cleft
in the cliff where it was possible to brace myself and lower the
rope to Dudley. This last ascent had only been fifteen feet, and,
in reality, had taken but three or four minutes, but to me it
seemed hours.

At 7:45, we reached the summit of the south peak. Here we stopped
to look down on Camp Sierra. Long shadows spread their mantle
across the glaciers, and in the east lay the phantom {p.126}
mountain--the shadow of Rainier. A flash of light attracted our
attention. We saw that our companions had been watching our
progress.

The White glacier route on the east side was first used in 1885 by a party from Snohomish. The same glacier was traversed by the Willis-Russell party in 1896. The first woman to make the ascent was Miss Fay Fuller, of Tacoma, in 1890, over the Gibraltar route.

The north and northwest sides, as I have said, are as yet unconquered. Some members of the Mountaineers have a theory that the summit can be reached from Avalanche Camp by climbing along the face of Russell Peak, and so around to the upper snowfield of Winthrop glacier. They have seen mountain goats making the trip, and propose to try it themselves. Whether they succeed or not, this trail will never be popular, owing to daily landslides in the loose rock of the cliff.

In 1897 and 1905, the Mazama Club of Portland sent parties to the Mountain, each making the ascent over the Gibraltar route. The Sierra Club of California was also represented in the latter year by a delegation of climbers who took the same path to the summit. In 1909, the Mountaineers Club of Seattle spent several weeks on the Mountain, entering the National Park by the Carbon trail, camping in Moraine Park on the north side, exploring Spray Park and the Carbon glacier, crossing Winthrop glacier to the Wedge, and thence climbing White glacier to the summit. Many members of the Appalachian Club and American Alpine Clubs and of European organizations of similar purpose have climbed to Crater Peak, either in company with the Western clubs named, or in smaller parties. Noteworthy accounts of these ascents have been printed in the publications of the several clubs, as well as in magazines of wider circulation, and have done much to make the Mountain known to the public. The principal articles are cited in a bibliographical note at the end of this volume.

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