There stood Mount Hood in all the glory of the alpen glow, looming immensely high, beaming with intelligence. It seemed neither near nor far.... The whole mountain appeared as one glorious manifestation of divine power, enthusiastic and benevolent, glowing like a countenance with ineffable repose and beauty, before which we could only gaze with devout and lowly admiration.—John Muir.

Dominating all are the snow-peaks, august sentinels upon the horizon. On a clear day, the long line of them begins far down in central Oregon, and numbers six snowy domes. But any average day includes in its glory the three nearest, Hood, Adams, and St. Helens. Spirit-like, they loom above the soft Oregon haze, their glaciers signaling from peak to peak, and their shining summits bidding the sordid world below to look upward.

Nature has painted canvases more colorful, but none more perfect in its strength and rest. Here is no flare of the desert, none of the flamboyant, terrible beauty of the Grand Canyon. It is a land of warm ocean winds and cherishing sunshine, where the emeralds and jades of the valleys quickly give place to the bluer greens of evergreen forests that cover the hill country; and these, in turn, as distance grows, shade into the lavenders and grays of the successive ranges. The white peaks complete the picture with its most characteristic note. They give it distinction.

Such a panorama justifies Ruskin's bold assertion: "Mountains are the beginning and end of all natural scenery." Without its mountains, the view from Council Crest would be as uninteresting as that from any tower in any prairie city. But all mountains are not alike. In beginning our journey to the three great snow-peaks which we have viewed from Portland heights, it is well to define, if we may, the special character of our Northwestern scene. We sometimes hear the Cascade district praised as "the American Switzerland." Such a comparison does injustice alike to our mountains and to the Alps. As a wild, magnificent sea of ice-covered mountain tops, the Alps have no parallel in America. As a far-reaching system of splendid lofty ranges clothed in the green of dense forests and surmounted by towering, isolated summits of snowy volcanoes, the Cascades are wholly without their equal in Europe. This is the testimony of famous travelers and alpinists, among them Ambassador Bryce, who has written of our Northwestern mountain scenery:

We have nothing more beautiful in Switzerland or Tyrol, in Norway or in the Pyrenees. The combination of ice scenery with woodland scenery of the grandest type is to be found nowhere in the Old World, unless it be in the Himalayas, and, so far as we know, nowhere else on the American continent.

In his celebrated chapter of the "Modern Painters" which describes the sculpture of the mountains, Ruskin draws a picture of the Alps that at once sets them apart from the Cascades:

The longer I stayed among the Alps, the more I was struck by their being a vast plateau, upon which nearly all the highest peaks stood like children set upon a table, removed far back from the edge, as if for fear of their falling. The most majestic scenes are produced by one of the great peaks having apparently walked to the edge of the table to look over, and thus showing itself suddenly above the valley in its full height. But the raised table is always intelligibly in existence, even in these exceptional cases; and for the most part, the great peaks are not allowed to come to the edge of it, but remain far withdrawn, surrounded by comparatively level fields of mountain, over which the lapping sheets of glacier writhe and flow. The result is the division of Switzerland into an upper and lower mountain world; the lower world consisting of rich valleys, the upper world, reached after the first steep banks of 3,000 to 4,000 feet have been surmounted, consisting of comparatively level but most desolate tracts, half covered by glacier, and stretching to the feet of the true pinnacles of the chain.

Nothing of this in the Cascades! Instead, we have fold upon fold of the earth-crust, separated by valleys of great depth. The ranges rise from levels but little above the sea. For example, between Portland and Umatilla, although they are separated by the mountains of greatest actual elevation in the United States, there is a difference of less than two hundred and fifty feet, Umatilla, east of the Cascades, being only two hundred and ninety-four feet above tide. Trout Lake, lying below Mount Adams, at the head of one of the great intermountain valleys, has an elevation of less than two thousand feet.

Thus, instead of the Northwestern snow-peaks being set far back upon a general upland and hidden away behind lesser mountains, to be seen only after one has reached the plateau, thousands of feet above sea level, they actually rise either from comparatively low peneplanes on one side of the Cascades, as in the case of St. Helens, or from the summit of one of the narrow, lofty ridges, as do Hood and Adams. But in either case, the full elevation is seen near at hand and from many directions—an elevation, therefore, greater and more impressive than that of most of the celebrated Alpine summits.

Famous as is the valley of Chamonix, and noteworthy as are the glaciers to which it gives close access, its views of Mont Blanc are disappointing. Not until the visitor has scaled one of the neighboring aiguilles, can he command a satisfactory outlook toward the Monarch of the Alps. And nowhere in Switzerland do I recall a picture of such memorable splendor as greets the traveler from the Columbia, journeying either southward, up the Hood River Valley[64]
[65]
[66] toward Mount Hood, or northward, up the White Salmon Valley toward Trout Lake and Mount Adams. Here is unrolled a wealth of fertile lowlands, surrounded by lofty ranges made beautiful by their deep forests and rising to grandeur in their snow-peaks.

Leaving the canyon of the Columbia, in either direction the road follows swift torrents of white glacial water that tell of a source far above. It crosses a famous valley, among its orchards and hayfields, but always in view of the dark blue mountains and of the snow-covered volcanoes that rise before and behind, their glaciers shining like polished steel in the sunlight. So the visitor reaches the foot of his mountain. Losing sight of it for a time, he follows long avenues of stately trees as he climbs the benches. In a few hours he stands upon a barren shoulder of the peak, at timber line. A new world confronts him. The glaciers reach their icy arms to him from the summit, and he breathes the winds that sweep down from their fields of perennial snow.

It is all very different from Switzerland, this quick ascent from bending orchards and forested hills to a mighty peak standing white and beautiful in its loneliness. But it is so wonderful that Americans who love the heights can no longer neglect it, and each year increasing numbers are discovering that here in the Northwest is mountain scenery worth traveling far to see, with very noble mountains to climb, true glaciers to explore, and the widest views of grandeur and interest to enjoy. Such sport combines recreation and inspiration.

The traveler from Portland to either Mount Hood or Mount Adams may go by rail or steamer to Hood River, Oregon, or White Salmon, Washington. These towns are on opposite banks of the Columbia at its point of greatest beauty. Thence he will journey by automobile or stage up the corresponding valley to the snow-peak at its head. If he is bound for Mount Hood his thirty-mile ride will bring him to a charming mountain hotel, Cloud Cap Inn, placed six thousand feet above the sea, on a ridge overlooking Eliot glacier, Hood's finest ice stream.

If Mount Adams be his destination, a ride of similar length from White Salmon will bring him merely to the foot of the mountain. The stages run only to Guler, on Trout Lake, and to Glenwood. Each of these villages has a comfortable country hotel which may be made the base for fishing and hunting in the neighborhood. Each is about twelve miles from the snow-line. At either place, guides, horses and supplies may be had for the trip to the mountain. Glenwood is nearer to the famous Hellroaring Canyon and the glaciers of the southeast side. Guler is a favorite point of departure for the south slope and for the usual route to the summit.

Another popular starting point for Mount Adams is Goldendale, reached by a branch of the North Bank railway from Lyle on the Columbia. This route also leads to the fine park district on the southeastern slope, and it has a special attraction, as it skirts the remarkable canyon of the Klickitat River. Many parties also journey to the mountain from North Yakima and other towns on the Northern Pacific railway. Hitherto, all such travel from either north or south has meant a trip on foot or horseback over interesting mountain trails, and has involved the necessity of packing in camp equipment and supplies. During the present summer, a hotel is to be erected a short distance from the end of Mazama glacier, at an altitude of about sixty-five hundred feet, overlooking Hellroaring Canyon on one side, and on the other a delightful region of mountain tarns, waterfalls and alpine flower meadows. Its verandas will command the Mazama and Klickitat glaciers, and an easy route will lead to the summit. With practicable roads from Goldendale and Glenwood, it should draw hosts of lovers of scenery and climbing, and aid in making this great mountain as well known as it deserves to be.

Visitors going to Mount Hood from Portland have choice of a second very attractive hotel base in Government Camp, on the south slope at an altitude of thirty-nine hundred feet. This is reached by automobiles from the city, over a fair road that will soon be a good road, thanks to the Portland Automobile Club. The mountain portion of this highway is the historic Barlow road, opened in 1845, the first wagon road constructed across the Cascades. As the motor climbs out of the Sandy River valley, and grapples the steep moraines built by ancient icefields, the traveler gets a very feeling reminder of the pluck of Captain Barlow and his company of Oregon "immigrants" in forcing a way across these rugged heights. But the beauty of the trip makes it well worth while, and Government Camp gives access to a side of the peak that should be visited by all who would know how the sun can shatter a big mountain with his mighty tools of ice.

The hotel here was erected in 1900 by O. C. Yocum, under whose competent guidance many hundreds of climbers reached the summit of Mount Hood. The Hotel is now owned by Elisha Coalman, who has also succeeded to his predecessor's office as guide. During the last year he has enlarged his inn, and he is now also building comfortable quarters for climbers at a camp four miles nearer the snow line, on the ridge separating White River glacier from Zigzag glacier.

MOUNT HOOD.

Mount Hood is the highest mountain in Oregon, and because of a general symmetry in its pyramidal shape and its clear-cut, far-seen features of rock and glacier, it has long been recognized as one of the most beautiful of all American snow peaks. Rising from the crest of the Cascades, it presents its different profiles and variously sculptured faces to the entire valley of the Columbia, east and west, above which it towers in stately magnificence, a very king of the mountains, ruling over a domain of ranges, valleys and cities proud of their allegiance.

On October 20, 1792, Lieutenant Broughton, of Vancouver's exploring expedition in quest of new territories for His Majesty George III., discovered from the Columbia near the mouth of the Willamette, "a very distant high snowy mountain, rising beautifully conspicuous," which he strangely mistook to be the source of the great river. Forthwith he named it in honor of Rear Admiral Samuel Hood, of the British Admiralty who had distinguished himself in divers naval battles during the American and French Revolutions.

The mountain has been climbed more often than any other American snow-peak. The first ascent was made on August 4, 1854, from the south side, by a party under Captain Barlow, builder of the "immigrant road." One of the climbers, Editor Dryer of The Oregonian, published an account[73]
[74]
[75] of the trip in which, with more exactness than accuracy, he placed the height of the mountain at 18,361 feet! The most notable ascent by a large party took place forty years later, when nearly two hundred men and women met on the summit, and there, with parliamentary dispatch bred of a bitter wind, organized a mountain club which has since become famous. For its title they took the name "mazama," Mexican for the mountain goat, close kin to the Alpine chamois. Membership was opened to those who have scaled a snow-peak on foot. By their publications and their annual climbs, the Mazamas have done more than any other agency to promote interest in our Northwestern mountains.

Mount Hood stands, as I have said, upon the summit of the Cascades. The broad and comparatively level back of the range is here about four thousand feet above the sea. Upon this plane the volcano erected its cone, chiefly by the expulsion of scoriÆ rather than by extensive lava flows, to a farther height of nearly a mile and a half. There is no reason to suppose that it ever greatly exceeded its present altitude, which government observations have fixed at 11,225 feet. Its diameter at its base is approximately seven miles from east to west.

Compared with Mount Adams, its broken and decapitated northern neighbor, Mount Hood, although probably dating from Miocene time, is still young enough to have retained in a remarkable degree the general shape of its original cone. But as we approach it from any direction, we find abundant proof that powerful destructive agents have been busy during the later geological ages. Already the summit plateau upon which the peak was built up has been largely dissected by the glaciers and their streams. The whole neighborhood of the mountain is a vastly rugged district of glacial canyons and eroded water channels, trenched deep in the soft volcanic ashes and the underlying ancient rock of the range. The mountain itself, although still a pyramid, also has its story of age and loss. Its eight glaciers have cut away much of its mass. On three sides they have burrowed so deeply into the cone that its original angle, which surviving ridges show to have been about thirty degrees, has on the upper glacial slopes been doubled. This is well illustrated by the views shown on pages 58, 61, 69 and 71.

This cutting back into the mountain has greatly lessened the area of the upper snow-fields. The reservoirs feeding the glaciers, are therefore much smaller than of old, but, by way of compensation, present a series of most interesting ice formations on the steeper slopes. In this respect, Mount Hood is especially noteworthy among our Northwestern snow-peaks. While larger glaciers are found on other mountains, none are more typical. The glaciers of Hood especially repay study because of their wonderful variety of ice-falls, terraces, seracs, towers, castles, pinnacles and crevasses. Winter has fashioned a colossal architecture of wild forms.

The visitor who begins his acquaintance with Mount Hood on the north side has, from Cloud Cap Inn, four interesting glaciers within a radius of a few miles. Immediately before the Inn, Eliot glacier displays its entire length of two miles, its snout being only a few rods away. West of this, Coe and Ladd glaciers divide the north face with the Eliot. All three have their source in neighboring reservoirs near the summit, which have been greatly reduced in area. This, with the resulting shrinkage in the glaciers, is shown by the high lateral moraines left as the width of the ice streams has lessened. On the east slope is a fine cliff glacier, the Newton Clark, separated from the Eliot by Cooper Spur, a long ridge that furnishes the only feasible north-side route for climbers to the summit.

Climbing Cooper Spur is a tedious struggle up a long cinder slope, but it has its reward in fine views of the near-by glaciers and a wide outlook over the surrounding country. A tramp of three miles from the Inn covers the easier grade, and brings the climber to a height of eight thousand feet. A narrow, snow-covered chine now offers a windy path to the foot of the steeper slope (See p. 60). The climb ends with the conquest of a half-mile of vertical elevation over a grade that tests muscle, wind and nerve. This is real mountaineering, and as the novice clutches the rocks, or carefully follows in the steps cut by the guide, he recalls a command well adapted to such trying situations: "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." But the danger is more apparent than real, and the goal is soon reached.

The south-side route, followed by the Barlow party of 1854, was long deemed the only practicable trail to the summit. Many years later, William A. Langille discovered the route up from Cooper Spur. The only accident charged against this path befell a stranger who was killed in trying to climb it without a guide. Its steepness is, indeed, an advantage, as it requires less time than the other route. Climbers frequently ascend by one trail and descend by the other, thus making the trip between Cloud Cap Inn and Government Camp in a day.

The actual summit of Mount Hood is a narrow but fairly level platform, a quarter of a mile long, which is quickly seen to be part of the rim of the ancient crater. Below it, on the north, are the heads of three glaciers already mentioned, the Eliot, Coe and Ladd; and looking down upon them, the climber perceives that here the mountain has been so much cut away as to be less a slope than a series of precipices, with very limited benches which serve as gathering grounds of snow. (See pp. 55, 67 and 70.) These shelves feed the lower ice-streams with a diet of avalanches that is year by year becoming less bountiful as this front becomes more steep. Soon, indeed, geologically speaking, the present summit, undermined by the ice, must fall, and the mountain take on a new aspect, with a lower, broader top. Thus while the beautiful verse which I have quoted under the view of Mount Hood from White Salmon (p. 56) is admirable poetry, its last line is very poor geology. This, however, need not deter any present-day climbers!

On the south side of the summit ridge a vastly different scene is presented. Looking down over its easy slope, one recognizes even more clearly than from the north-side view that Mount Hood is merely a wreck of its former graceful cone, a torn and disintegrating remnant, with very modest pretensions to symmetry, after all, but still a fascinating exhibit of the work of such Gargantuan forces as hew and whittle such peaks.

The crater had a diameter of about half a mile. Its north rim remains in the ridge on which our climber stands. All the rest of its circumference has been torn away, but huge fragments of its wall are seen far below, on the right and left, in "cleavers" named respectively Illumination Rock and Steel's Cliff. One of these recalls several displays of red fire on the mountain by the Mazamas. The other great abutment was christened in honor of the first president of that organization.

Apart from these ridges, the entire rim is missing; but below the spectator, at what must have been the center of its circle, towers a great cone of lava, harder than the andesitic rocks and the scoriÆ which compose the bulk of the mountain. This is known as Crater Rock. It is the core of the crater, formed when the molten lava filling its neck cooled and hardened. Around it the softer mass has worn down to the general grade of the south slope, which extends five miles from just below the remaining north rim at the head of the glaciers to the neighborhood of Government Camp, far down on the Cascade plateau. The grade is much less than thirty degrees. Over the slope flow down two glaciers, the Zigzag on the west, and the White River glacier on the east, of Crater Rock.

It is sometimes said that the south side of the old summit was blown away by a terrific explosion. That is improbable, in view of Crater Rock, which indicates a dormant volcano when the south side was destroyed. The mountain was doubtless rent by ice rather than by fire. The mass of ice and snow in and upon the crater broke apart the comparatively loose wall, and pushed its shattered tuffs and cinders far down the slopes. Forests were buried, old canyons were filled, and the whole southwest side of the mountain was covered with the fan-shaped outwash from the breach. Through this debris of the ancient crater the streams at the feet of the glaciers below are cutting vast ravines which can be seen from the heights above. (See illustrations, pp. 77-81.)

The central situation of Mount Hood makes the view from its summit especially worth seeking. From the Pacific to the Blue Mountains, south almost to the California line, and north as far, it embraces an area equal to a great state, with four hundred miles of the undulating Cascade summits and a dozen calm and radiant snow-peaks. The Columbia winds almost at its foot, and a multitude of lakes, dammed by glacial moraines and lava dikes, nestle in its shadow. This view "covers more history," as Lyman points out, than that from any other of our peaks. About its base the Indians hunted, fished and warred. Across its flank rolled the great tide of Oregon immigration, in the days of the ox-team and settler's wagon. It has seen the building of two states. It now looks benignly down upon the prosperous agriculture and growing cities of the modern Columbia basin, and no doubt contemplates with serenity the time when its empire shall be one of the most populous as it is one of the most beautiful and fertile regions in America. No wonder the shapely mountain lifts its head with pride!

Returning to the glaciers of the north side, we note that all three end at an altitude close to six thousand feet. None of them has cut a deep, broad bed for itself like the great radiating canyons which dissect the Rainier National Park and protect its glaciers down to a level averaging four thousand feet. Instead, these glaciers lie up on the side of Mount Hood, in shallow beds which they no longer fill; and are banked between double and even triple border moraines, showing successive advances and retreats of the glaciers. (See illustration, top of p. 59.) The larger moraines stand fifty to a hundred feet above the present ice-streams, thus indicating the former glacier levels. No vegetation appears on these desolate rock and gravel dikes. The retreat of the glaciers was therefore comparatively recent.

Eliot glacier has been found by measurement near its end, to have a movement of about fifty feet a year. On the steeper slope above, it is doubtless much greater. All the three glaciers are heavily covered, for their last half mile, with rocks and dirt which they have freighted down from the cliffs above, or dug up from their own beds in transit. None of the lateral moraines extends more than two or three hundred yards below the snout of its glacier. Each glacier, at its end, drops its remnant of ice into a deep V-shaped ravine, in which, not far below, trees of good size are growing. Hence it would not seem that these north-side glaciers have ever extended much farther than they do at present. The ravine below Eliot glacier, however, half a mile from the snout, is said to show glacial markings on its rocky sides. It is evident, in any case, that the deep V cuttings now found below the glaciers are work of the streams. If these glaciers extended farther, it was at higher levels than their present stream channels. As the glaciers receded, their streams have cut the deep gorges in the soft conglomerates. Between Eliot and Coe glaciers are large snow-fields, ending much farther up than do the glaciers; and below these, too, the streams have trenched the slope. (See illustration, p. 57.)

Between Coe and Ladd glaciers is a high rocky ridge known as Barrett Spur, from which, at nearly 8,000 feet, one may obtain glorious views of the peak above, the two glaciers sweeping down its steep face and the sea of ranges stretching westward. (See illustrations, pp. 69 and 75.) Barrett Spur may have been part of the original surface of the mountain, but is more likely the remnant of a secondary cone, ice and weathering having destroyed its conical shape. From its top, the climber looks over into the broad-bottomed canyon of Sandy River, fed by the large and small Sandy glaciers of the west slope. (See pp. 71 and 76.) This canyon and that of the Zigzag River, south of it, from Zigzag glacier, are "plainly glacier-sculptured," as Sylvester declares. The same is true of the canyon lying below the White River glacier, on the southeast slope. In journeying to Government Camp, one may see abundant evidence of the glacial origin of the Sandy and Zigzag canyons. The White River Canyon has been thoroughly explored and described by Prof. Reid.

All three of these wide U-shaped canyons were once occupied by great glaciers, which left their record in the scorings upon the sides of the gorges; in the mesas of finely ground moraine which they spread over the bottoms and through which the modern rivers have cut deep ravines; in trees broken and buried by the glaciers in this drift; in the fossil ice lying beneath it, and in huge angular boulders left standing on the valley floors, several miles from the mountain.

Sandy glacier extends three hundred feet farther down the slope than do the north-side glaciers, but the Zigzag and White River glaciers, flowing out of the crater, end a thousand feet higher. This is due not only to the smaller reservoirs which feed them and to their southern exposure, but also doubtless to the easier grade, which holds the ice longer on the slope. On the east side of the peak is a broad ice-stream, the Newton Clark glacier, which also ends at a high altitude, dropping its ice over a cliff into deep ravines at the head of East Fork of Hood River. This glacier, well seen from Cooper Spur, completes the circuit of the mountain. (See pp. 83 and 84.)

Sylvester suggests that Mount Hood may not be extinct but sleeping. For this, however, there is little more evidence that may be discovered on other Northwestern peaks. About Crater Rock, steam jets are found, gas escapes, and the rocks are warm in many places. "Fumaroles" exist, where the residuary heat causes openings in the snow bed. Sylvester reports dense smoke and steam issuing from Crater Rock by day and a brilliant illumination there at night, in August, 1907. But volcanoes sometimes contradict prophecy, and no further intimations of trouble having since been offered, this display may be deemed the last gasp of a dying monster rather than an awakening toward new life.

MOUNT ADAMS.

Going up the White Salmon Valley toward Mount Adams, the visitor quickly realizes that he is in a different geological district from that around Mount Hood. The Oregon peak is mainly a pile of volcanic rocks and cinders ejected from its crater. Little hard basalt is found, and in all its circumference I know of only one large surface area of new lava. This is a few miles north of Cloud Cap, and so recent that no trees grow on it. But north of the Columbia, one meets evidences of comparatively recent lava sheets in many parts of the valley. Some obviously have no connection with Mount Adams; they flowed out of fissures on the ridges. But these beds of volcanic rock become more apparent, and are less covered with soil, as we approach the mountain, until, long before timber line is reached, dikes and streams of basalt, as yet hardly beginning to disintegrate, are found on all sides of the peak.

The form and slope of Mount Adams tell of an age far greater than Mount Hood's, but its story is not, like that of Hood, the legible record of a simple volcanic cone. It wholly lacks the symmetry of such a pile. Viewed from a distance, it sits very majestically upon the summit of one of the eastern ranges of the Cascades. As we approach, however, it is seen to have little of the conical shape of Hood, still less that of graceful St. Helens, which is young and as yet practically unbroken. Its summit has been much worn down by ice or perhaps by[91]
[92]
[93] explosions. Some of its sides are deeply indented, and all are vastly irregular in angle and markings—here a face now too steeply cut to hold a glacier, but showing old glacial scorings far down its slope; there another terraced and ribbed with waves and dikes of lava. The mountain is a long ridge rather than a round peak, and close inspection shows it to be a composite of several great cones, leaning one upon another,—the product of many craters acting in successive ages. On its ancient, scarred slopes, a hundred modern vents have added to the ruggedness and interest of the peak. Many of these blowholes built parasitic cones, from which the snows of later centuries have eroded the loose external mass, leaving only the hard lava cores upstanding like obelisks. Other vents belched out vast sheets of rock that will require a century more of weathering to make hospitable even to the sub-alpine trees most humble in their demands for soil.

Mount Adams therefore presents a greater variety of history, a more complex and fascinating problem for the student to unravel, than any of its neighbors. This interest extends to the district about it, a country of new lava flows covering much of the older surface. The same conditions mark the region surrounding the newer peak, St. Helens, thirty miles west. In each district, sheets of molten rock have been poured across an ancient and heavily forested land. Thus as we travel up the rich valleys leading from the Columbia to either peak, we meet everywhere the phenomena of vulcanism.

The lava sheet flowing around or over a standing or fallen tree took a perfect impression of its trunk and bark. Thousands of these old tree casts are found near both Adams and St. Helens. Where the lava reached a watercourse, it flowed down in a deeper stream, a river of liquid rock. Lava is a poor conductor of heat; hence the stream cooled more quickly on the surface than below. Soon a crust was formed, like the ice over a creek in winter. Under it the lava flowed on and out, as the flood stopped, leaving a gallery or flume. Later flows filled the great drain again and again, adding new strata to its roof, floor and sides, and lessening its bore. Long after the outflows ceased, weathering by heat and frost broke openings here and there. Many of the flumes were choked with drift. But others, in the newer lava beds, may be explored for miles. It was from the lava caves of northern California that the Modoc Indians waged their famous war in the Seventies.

The disintegration of the lava galleries in the Mount Adams field has of course produced caves of all sorts and sizes. Where one of these is closed at one end with debris, so that the summer air cannot circulate to displace the heavier cold remaining from winter, the cave, if it has a water supply, becomes an ice factory. The Trout Lake district has several interesting examples of such glacieres, as they have been named, where one may take refuge from July or August heat above ground, and, forty feet below, in a cave well protected from sun and summer breeze, find great masses of ice, with more perhaps still forming as water filters in from a surface lake or an underground spring. The Columbia River towns as far away as Portland and The Dalles formerly obtained ice from the Trout Lake caves, but at present they supply only some near-by farmers.

Mount Adams is ascended without difficulty by either its north or south slope. On the east and west faces, the cliffs and ice cascades appall even the expert alpinist. As yet, so far as I can learn, no ascents have been made over these slopes. The southern route is the more popular one. It leads by well-marked trails up from Guler or Glenwood, over a succession of terraces clad in fine, open forest; ascends McDonald Ridge, amid increasing barriers of lava; passes South Butte, a decaying pillar of red silhouetted against the black rocks and white snow-fields; crosses many a caldron of twisted and broken basalt,—"Devil's Half Acres" that once were the hot, vomiting mouths of drains from the fiery heart of the peak; scales a giants' stairway tilted to forty degrees, overlooking the west branch of Mazama glacier on one side and a small unnamed glacier on the other; and at last gains the broad shoulder which projects far on the south slope. (See illustrations, pp. 89 and 93.)

Here, from a height of nine thousand feet, we look down on the low, wide reservoir of Mazama glacier on the east, and up to the ice-falls above Klickitat glacier on the higher slopes beyond. The great platform on which we stand was built up by a crater, three thousand feet below the summit. The climb to it has disclosed the fact that the mountain is composed mostly of lava. Some of the ravine cuttings have shown lapilli and cinders, but these are rarer than on the other Northwestern peaks. The harder structure has resisted the erosion which is cutting so deeply into the lower slopes of Hood. On Mount Adams, not only do the glaciers, with one or two notable exceptions, lie up on the general surface of the mountain, banked by their moraines; but their streams have cut few deep ravines.

From this point, the route becomes steeper, but is still over talus, until the first of the three summit elevations, known as South Peak, is reached. This is only five hundred feet below the actual summit, Middle Peak, which is gained by a short, hard pull, generally[98]
[99]
[100] over snow. (See p. 94.) The north-side route is up a long, sharp ridge between Lava and Adams glaciers (p. 104). Like the other path, its grade is at first easy; but its last half mile of elevation is achieved over a slope even steeper, and ending in a longer climb over the snow. Neither route, however, offers so hard a finish as that which ends the Mount Hood climb. From the timber-line on either side, the ascent requires six or seven hours.

The summit ridge is nearly a mile long and two-thirds as wide. It is the gathering ground of the snows that feed Klickitat, Lyman, Adams and White Salmon glaciers. (See map, p. 87.) Mazama, Rusk, Lava, Pinnacle and Avalanche glaciers lie beneath cliffs too steep to carry ice-streams. Their income is mainly collected from the slopes, and if they receive snow from the broad summit at all, it is chiefly in the avalanches of early summer. Nearly all the glaciers, however, are thus fed in part, the steep east and west faces making Mount Adams famous for its avalanches.

From the summit on either side, the climber may look down sheer for half a mile to the reservoirs and great ice cascades of the glaciers below. It is[101]
[102] seen that with the exception of the Rusk and Klickitat, which are deeply embedded in canyons, the glaciers spread out, fan-like, on the lower slopes, and are held up by their moraines. Most of them end at elevations considerably above six thousand five hundred feet. The difference in this respect between Adams and Hood is due, no doubt, to lighter rainfall.

Of the two glaciers just mentioned the Klickitat is the larger and more typical. The Rusk, however, is of interest because it flows, greatly crevassed, down a narrow flume or couloir on the east slope. Its bed, Reid suggests, may have been the channel of "a former lava flow, which, hardening on the surface, allowed the liquid lava inside to flow out; and later the top broke in." The Klickitat glacier lies in a much larger canyon, which it has evidently cut for itself. This is one of the most characteristic glacial amphitheaters in America, resembling, though on a smaller scale, the vast Carbon glacier cirque which is the crowning glory of the Rainier National Park. The Klickitat basin is a mile wide. Into it two steep ice-streams cascade from the summit, and avalanches fall from a cliff which rises two thousand feet between them. (See pp. 98 and 99.)

The glacier is more than two miles long. It ends at an elevation of less than six thousand feet, covered with debris from a large medial moraine formed by the junction of the two tributary glaciers. Like the other Mount Adams glaciers, and indeed nearly all glaciers in the northern hemisphere, it is shrinking, and has built several moraines on each side. These extend half a mile below its present snout, and the inner moraines are underlaid with ice, showing the retreat has been recent.

South of the Klickitat glacier, a part of the original surface of the peak remains in the great Ridge of Wonders. Rising a thousand feet above the floor of Hellroaring Canyon, which was formerly occupied by Mazama glacier, now withdrawn to the slope above, this is the finest observation point on the mountain. "The wonderful views of the eastern precipices and glaciers," says Reid, "the numerous dikes, the well preserved parasitic cone of Little Mount Adams, and the curious forms of volcanic bombs scattered over its surface entirely justify the name Mr. Rusk has given to this ridge."

Adams glacier, upon the northwest slope, with a length of three miles, is the largest on the mountain. This and the two beautiful ice streams on the northeast, named after Prof. W. D. Lyman, are notable for their ice-falls, half-mile drops of tumbling, frozen rivers.

The naming of the mountain was a result of the movement started by Hall J. Kelley, the Oregon enthusiast, in 1839. The northwestern snow-peaks, so far as shown in maps of the period, bore the names given by Vancouver as part of his annexation for George III. The utility, beauty and historic fitness of the significant Indian place names did not occur to a generation busy in ousting the Indian from his land; but our grandfathers remembered George III. Kelley and other patriotic men of the time proposed to call the Cascades the "Presidents' Range," and to christen the several snow-peaks for individual ex-presidents of the United States. But the second quarter of the last century knew little about Oregon, and cared less. The well-meant but premature effort failed, and the only names of the presidents which have stuck are Adams and Jefferson. Lewis and Clark mistook Mount Adams for St. Helens, and estimated it "perhaps the highest pinnacle in America." The Geological Survey has found its height to be 12,307 feet. Mount Adams was first climbed in 1854 by a party in which were Col. B. F. Shaw, Glenn Aiken and Edward J. Allen.

MOUNT ST. HELENS.

The world was indebted for its first knowledge of Mount St. Helens to Vancouver. Its name is one of the batch which he fastened in 1792 upon our Northwestern landmarks. These honored a variety of persons, ranging from Lord St. Helens, the diplomat, and pudgy Peter Rainier, of the British Admiralty, down to members of the explorer's crew.

The youngest of the Cascade snow-peaks, St. Helens is also the most symmetrical in its form, and to many of its admirers the most beautiful. Unlike Hood and Adams, it does not stand upon the narrow summit of one of[105]
[106] the Cascade ranges, but rises west of the main ridges of that system from valley levels about one thousand feet above the sea. Surrounded by comparatively low ridges, it thus presents its perfect and impressive cone for almost its entire height of ten thousand feet.

The mountain is set well back from the main traveled roads, in the great forest of southwestern Washington. It is the center of a fine lake and river district which attracts sportsmen as well as mountain climbers. A large company visiting it must carry in supplies and camp equipment, but small parties may find accommodation at Spirit Lake on the north, and Peterson's ranch on Lewis River, south of the peak. The first is four, the second is eight, miles from the snow line. Visitors from Portland, Tacoma or Seattle, bound for the north side, leave the railway at Castle Rock, whence a good automobile road (forty-eight miles) leads to the south side of Spirit Lake. Peterson's may be reached by road from Woodland (forty-five miles) or from Yacolt (thirty miles). Well-marked trails lead from either base to camping grounds at timber line. The mountain is climbed by a long, easy slope on the south, or by a much steeper path on the north.

Like Mount Adams, St. Helens is largely built of lava, but the outflows have been more recent here than upon or near the greater peak. The volcano was in eruption several times between 1830 and 1845. The sky at Vancouver was often darkened, and ashes were carried as far as The Dalles. To these disturbances, probably, are due the great outflows of new lava covering the south and west sides of the mountain, and much of the country between it and the North Fork of Lewis River. The molten stream flowed westward to Goat Mountain and the "Buttes," of which it made islands; threw a dike across a watercourse and created Lake Merrill; and turning southward, filled valleys and overwhelmed good forest with sheets of basalt. Upon the slope just north of Peterson's, a great synclinal thus buried presents one of the latest pages in the volcanic history of the Columbia basin.

Many hours may be spent with interest upon this lava bed. It is an area of the wildest violence, cast in stone. Swift, ropy streams, cascades, whirling eddies, all have been caught in their course. "Devil's Punch Bowl," "Hell's Kitchen," "Satan's Stairway" are suggestive phrases of local description. The underground galleries here are well worth visiting. Tree tunnels and wells abound. Most important of all, the struggle seen everywhere of the forest to gain a foothold on this iron surface illustrates Nature's method of hiding so vast and terrible a callus upon her face. It is evident that the healing of the wound began as soon as the lava cooled, and that, while still incomplete, it is unceasingly prosecuted. (See p. 111.)

The first volcanic dust from the uneasy crater of St. Helens had no sooner lodged in some cleft opened by the contraction of cooling than a spore or seed carried by the wind or dropped by a bird made a start toward vegetation. Failing moisture, and checked by lack of soil, the lichen or grass or tiny shrub quickly yielded its feeble existence in preparation for its successor. The procession of rain and sun encouraged other futile efforts to find rootage. Each of these growths[109]
[110]
[111] lengthened by its decay the life of the next. With winter came frost, scaling flakes from the hard surface, or penetrating the joints and opening fissures in the basalt. Further refuge was thus made ready for the dust and seeds and moisture of another season. The moss and plants were promoters as well as beneficiaries of this disintegration. Their smallest rootlets found the water in the heart of the rocks, and growing strong upon it, shattered their benefactors.

Soon more ambitious enterprises were undertaken. Huckleberry bushes, fearless even of so unfriendly a surface, started from every depression among the rocks. The first small trees appeared. Weakling pines, dwarf firs and alders, shot up for a few feet of hurried growth in the spring moisture, taking the unlikely chance of surviving the later drought. Here and there a seedling outlasted the long, dry summer, and began to be a real tree. Quickly exhausting its little handful of new earth, the daring upstart must have perished had not the melting snows brought help. They filled the hollows with wash from the higher slopes. The treelets found that their day had come, and seizing upon these rich but shallow soil beds, soon covered them with thickets of spindling lodgepole pines and deciduous brush. Such pygmy forests are at length common upon this great field of torn and decaying rock, and all are making their contributions of humus year by year to the support of future tree giants. These will rise by survival of the fittest as the forest floor deepens and spreads.

St. Helens, although much visited, has not yet been officially surveyed or mapped. Its glaciers are not named, nor has the number of true ice-streams been determined. Those on the south and southwest are insignificant. Elsewhere, the glaciers are short and broad, and with one exception, occupy shallow beds. On the southeast, there is a remarkable cleft, shown on page 115, which is doubtless due to volcanic causes rather than erosion, and from which the largest glacier issues. Another typical glacier, distinguished by the finest crevasses and ice-falls on the peak, tumbles down a steep, shallow depression on the north slope, west of the battered parasitic cone of "Black Butte." West of this glacier, in turn, ridges known as the "Lizard" and the "Boot" mark the customary north-side path to the summit. (See p. 118.)[113]
[114]
[115] Beyond these landmarks, on the west side of the peak, a third considerable glacier feeds South Toutle River. The ravines cut by this stream will repay a visit. (See p. 116.)

The slopes not covered with new lava sheets and dikes exhibit, below the snow-line, countless bombs hurled up from the crater, with great fields of pumice embedding huge angular rocks that tell a story not written on our other peaks. These hard boulders, curiously different from the soft materials in which they lie, were fragments of the tertiary platform on which the cone was erected. Torn off by the volcano, as it enlarged its bore, they were shot out without melting or change in substance. On every hand is proof that this now peaceful snow-mountain, which resembles nothing else so much as a well-filled saucer of ice cream, had a hot temper in its youth, and has passed some bad days even since the coming of the white man.

The mountain was first climbed in August, 1853, by a party which included the same T. J. Dryer who, a year later, took part in the first ascent of Mount Hood. In a letter to The Oregonian he said the party consisted of "Messrs. Wilson, Smith, Drew and myself." They ascended the south side. The other slopes were long thought too steep to climb, but in 1893 Fred G. Plummer, of Tacoma, now Geographer of the United States Forest Service, ascended the north side. His party included Leschi, a Klickitat Indian, probably the first of his superstitious race to scale a snow-peak. The climbers found evidence of recent activity in two craters on the north slope, and photographed a curious "diagonal moraine," as regular in shape as a railway embankment, which connected the border moraines of a small glacier. The north side has since seen frequent ascents.

The Mazamas, who had climbed St. Helens from the south in 1898, again ascended it in 1908, climbing by the Lizard and Boot. This outing furnished the most stirring chapter in the annals of American mountaineering.

The north-side route proved unexpectedly hard. After an all-day climb, the party reached the summit only at seven o'clock. The descent after nightfall required seven hours. The risk was great. Over the collar of ice[117]
[118]
[119]
[120] near the summit, at a grade of more than sixty degrees, the twenty-five men and women slowly crept in steps cut by the leaders, and clutching a single fifty-foot rope. Later came the bombardment of loose rocks, as the party scattered down the slope. I quote from an account by Frank B. Riley, secretary of the club, who was one of the leaders:

The safety of the entire party was in the keeping of each member. One touch of hysteria, one slip of the foot, one instant's loss of self-control, would have precipitated the line, like a row of bricks, on the long plunge down the ice cliff. Eight times the party stood poised on its scanty foothold while the rope was lowered. When, after an hour and a half, its last member stepped in safety upon the rocks, there yet lay before it five hours of work ere the little red eyes below should widen into welcoming campfires.

Over great ridges, down into vast snowfields, for hours they plunged and slid, while scouts ahead shouted back warning of the crevasses. On, out of the icy clutch of the silent mountain, they plodded. And then, at last, the timber, and the fires and the hot drinks and the warm blankets and the springy hemlock boughs!

Even this was not the most noteworthy adventure of the outing. One evening, while the Mazamas gathered about their campfire at Spirit Lake, a haggard man dragged himself out of the forest, and told of an injured comrade lying helpless on the other side of the peak. The messenger and two companions—Swedish loggers, all three—had crossed the mountain the morning before. After they gained the summit and began the descent, a plunging rock had struck one of the men, breaking his leg. His friends had dragged him down to the first timber, and while one kept watch, the other had encircled the mountain, in search of aid from the Mazamas.

Immediately a relief party of seven strong men, led by C. E. Forsyth of Castle Rock, Washington, started back over the trailless route by which the messenger had come. All night they scaled ridges, climbed into and out of canyons, waded icy streams. Before dawn they reached the wounded laborer. Mr. Riley says:

It was impossible to carry the man back through the wild country around the peak. Below, the first cabin on the Lewis River lay beyond a moat of forbidding canyons. Above slanted the smooth slopes of St. Helens. Placing the injured man upon a litter of canvas and alpine stocks, they began the ascent of the mountain with their burden. The day dawned and grew old, and still these men crawled upward in frightful, body-breaking struggle. Twelve hours passed, and they had no food and no sleep, save as they fell unconscious downward in the snow, as they did many times, from fatigue and lack of nourishment. At four o'clock, Anderson was again on the summit. Then, without rest, came the descent to the north. Down precipitous cliffs of ice they lowered him, as tenderly as might be; down snow-slopes seared with crevasses, shielding him from the falling rocks; over ridges of ragged lava, until in the deepening darkness of the second night they found themselves again at timber. But in the net-work of canyons they had selected the wrong one, and were lost. Here, at three o'clock, they were found by a second relief party, and guided over a painful five-mile journey home.

It was day when camp was reached. In an improvised hospital, a young surgeon, aided by a trained nurse, both Mazamas, quickly set the broken bones. Then they sent their patient comfortably away to the railroad and a Portland hospital. Before the wagon started, Anderson, who had uttered no groan in his two days of agony, struggled to a sitting posture, and searched the faces of all in the crowd about him.

"Ay don't want ever to forget how you look," he said simply; "you who have done all this yust for me."

It is fitting that such an event should be commemorated. With the approval of Mr. Riley and other Mazamas who were present at the time, I would propose that the north-side glacier already described, the most beautiful of the St. Helens ice-streams, be named "Forsyth glacier," in honor of the leader of this heroic rescue.