Mount Adams

“ Immense and gloomy forests, tangled with fallen timber and impenetrable underbrush, cover mountains, which in the States, would excite the profoundest admiration for their majesty and beauty, but which dwindle into insignificance as they are viewed in presence of the shining glaciers, and massive grandeur of Mount Adams, hanging over them. ”

“ Clouds on the Northern Peaks, Mount Adams seen from Mount Washington summit
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Here is the real mountain and the whole of it laid out for the eye from the beginnings in the low valley of the Peabody River to the corrugated pinnacle which is the crest. It takes the gulf to make us realize the mountain, and great as the gulf is it is forgotten in the mighty creature that rears its head into the clouds beyond it. From Madison the mountain has more than individuality. It has personality. It is as if some great god of Chaos had crushed an image of immensity out of new-formed stone. ”

“ The two most profitable excursions to be made here are undoubtedly the ascent of Mount Adams and the drive to the top of Randolph Hill. I have found on the first summit irrefragable evidence that, next to Washington and Lafayette, Adams is the peak which summer tourists are most desirous of ascending. A good path, on which there is a camp, leads to the summit. Having other views in regard to this mountain, which I had so often admired from a distance, I made a third reconnoisance of its outworks and its remarkable ravine, while en route for Randolph Hill. ”

“ 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.
Dawn on Mount Adams, telephotographed from Guler, at 4 a. m., showing the three summit peaks, of which the middle one is the highest. The route of the climbers is up the south slope, seen on right.
Foraging in the snow. The Mount Adams country supports hundreds of large flocks of sheep. ”

“ We had enjoyed, from the summit of a hill twenty miles south of Salem, one of [Pg 704] the most magnificent views in all earthly scenery. Within a single sweep of vision were seven snow-peaks, the Three Sisters, Mount Jefferson, Mount Hood, Mount Adams, and Mount St. Helen's, with the dim suggestion of an eighth colossal mass, which might be Rainier. All these rose along an arc of not quite half the horizon, measured between ten and eighteen thousand feet in height, were nearly conical, and absolutely covered with snow from base to pinnacle. ”

“ THE ANDROSCOGGIN AT SHELBURNE.
Beyond the river, over gently meeting slopes of the valley, two magnificent shapes, Washington and Madison, rose grandly. Those truly regal summits still wore their winter ermine. They were drawn so widely apart as to show the familiar peaks of Mount Clay protruding between them. It is hardly possible to imagine a more beautiful picture of mountain scenery. Noble river, hoary summits, blanched precipices, over whose haggard visages a little color was beginning to steal, eloquently appealed to every perception of the beautiful and the sublime. ”

“ Nowhere is the unapproachable grandeur of Mount Washington more fully manifested than here. This large and impressive view is at once suggestive of that glorious pre-eminence always associated with high mountains. There are mountains, respectable ones too, in the middle distance; but over these the great peak lords it with undisputed sway. The bold and firm, though gradual, lines of ascent culminating at the apex, extend over leagues of sky. After a clear sunset, Mount Washington takes the same dull lead-color of the clouds hovering like enormous night-birds over its head. ”

“ As I slowly mounted the Ledge the same unnatural appearance was everywhere—the same wreck, same desolation, same discord. The dead cedars, bleaching all around, looked like an army of gigantic crabs crawling up the mountain side, which universal ruin overspread, and which even the soft sunshine rendered more ghastly and more solemn. I looked eagerly along the road; listened. Not a human being; not a sound. I was alone upon the mountain.
MOUNT ADAMS AND THE GREAT GULF.
From here I no longer walked upon earth but on air. Respiration became more and more difficult. ”

“ Mount Adams, seen from Happy Valley, south side. Elevation about 7,000 feet. Mazama glacier is on right.
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, [95] 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. ”

“ In the south-west, specked with clusters of bunch grass, is an open rolling plain, which stretches beyond the reach of vision. In the north rise sharp mountains, thinly clad with evergreen trees; through an opening among the peaks of which, appeared the shining apex of Mount Adams. [229] In the north-east sweep away in brown barrenness, naked cliffs and sandy wastes. I had taken a bird's-eye view of the Dalles and the region round about, when my Indian cried out "Lee house." ”

“ Distance, about 4 miles. Nearly half way up the spur a good camp has been built for the use of climbers. The way over the ledges is marked by cairns. Mount Jefferson may be reached by turning to the right before reaching the summit of the westerly peak; Madison by turning to the left.
*King’s Ravine.—The path branches from the Mount Adams path about 11⁄2 miles from Lowe’s. The bowlders in the Ravine are reached without great difficulty. From the bowlders up the head-wall, and through the gate-way, the climb is arduous ”

“ 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. ”

“ Their incandescent points, thrust upward into the black gulf of the heavens, towered above the blacker gulfs below unspeakably. By degrees the scorching heat cooled. The great Franconia spires successively paled. But long after they seemed reduced to ashes, the red flame still lingered upon the snows of Mount Washington. At last that, too, faded out. Life was extinct. The great summit took on a wan and livid hue. Night kindly spread her mantle over the lifeless form of the mountain, which still disclosed its larger outlines rigid, majestic, even in death. ”

“ 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.
Mount Adams, seen from the northeast, with the Lyman glaciers in center, Rusk glacier on extreme left, and Lava glacier, right. The ridge beyond Lava glacier is the north-side route to the summit. ”

“ It constitutes quite too important a feature of the landscape to escape notice. Dominated by the towering mass of the Dome, infolded by undulating slopes descending from opposite braces of Mount Washington, and resembling gigantic draperies, we see an enormous, funnel-shaped, hollow sunk in the very heart of the mountain. ”

“ We spent the remaining hours of this memorable afternoon sauntering through the Notch, which is dripping with cascades, and noisy with mountain torrents. The Saco, here nothing but a brook, crawls languidly along its bed of broken rock. From dizzy summit to where they meet the river, the old wasted mountains sit warming their scarred sides in the sun. Looking up at the passage of the railway around Mount Willey, it impressed us as a single fractured stone might have done on the Great Pyramid, or a pin’s scratch on the face of a giant. ”

“ They laugh and run on.
We stood facing the south. Far down beneath us, at our left, was the valley of Mount Washington River. A dark, serpentine rift in the unbroken forest indicated the course of the stream. Mechanically we turned to follow it up the long gorge through which it flows, to where it issues, in secret, from the side of Mount Washington itself. In front of us arose the great Notch Mountains; beyond, mountains were piled on mountains; higher still, like grander edifices of some imperial city, towered the pinnacles of Lafayette, Carrigain, Chocorua, Kearsarge, and the rest. ”

“ Except for the lake, the whole aspect would be irredeemably savage and forbidding—a blind landscape; but when the sun sinks behind the long ridge of Mount Cannon, purpling all these grisly crags, and the cloaked shadows, groping their way foot by foot up the ravines, seem spectres risen from the depths of the lake, you see, underneath the cliffs, long and slender spears of golden light thrust deep into its black and glossy tide, crimsoning it as with its own life-blood. ”

“ Mount Lafayette presents toward Franconia two enormous green billows, rolled apart, the deep hollow between being the great ravine dividing the mountain from base to summit. Over this deep incision, which, from the irregularity of one of its ridges, looks widest at the top, presides, with matchless dignity, the bared and craggy peak whose dusky brown gradually mingles with the scant verdure checked hundreds of feet down. With what hauteur it seems to regard this effort of Nature to place a garland on its bronzed and knotted forehead! ”

“ What power has taken one of those dazzling clouds, floating over the great summit, and pinned it to the mountain side, from which it strives to rise and soar away?
We are now in the wildest depths of the Pinkham defile. The road is gloomy enough, edging its way always through a dense wood around a spur of Mount Washington, which it closely hugs. Upon reaching the summit, thirteen hundred and fifty feet above the Saco, at Bartlett, a sign-board showed where to leave the highway, but now the noise of the fall coming clearer and clearer was an even surer guide. ”

“ The road up is rough, tedious, and, until the ridge at the foot of the south peak is reached, uninteresting. It crooks and turns with absolute lawlessness while climbing the flanks of the southern peak, skirting also the side of the profound ravine eating its way into the mountain from the south. Nearing this summit we obtained through an opening a glimpse of Mount Washington, veiled in the clouds. ”

“ Visitors to Paradise Valley, who climb above the Camp of the Clouds to the snowfields, are sure to be attracted to McClure Rock. It is the scene of one of the mountain's earliest tragedies, in which Professor Edgar McClure of the University of Oregon lost his life. He was trying to measure accurately the height of the great mountain as he had already done for Mount Adams and other peaks.
The record of his extensive observations was computed with the greatest care by his colleague, Professor H. H. McAlister of the University of Oregon. ”

“ 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.
Mount Adams from the southwest, with White Salmon glacier (left) and Avalanche glacier (right) flowing from a common source, the cleft between North and Middle Peaks. ”

“ Enlarge Climbers on South Butte, the hard lava neck of a crater on south slope, left by weathering of the softer materials of its cone. Elevation, 7,800 feet. The usual route to summit leads up the talus on right. 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. ”

“ After a little promenade of two hours, or two hours and a half, I reached the cairn on the summit, from which a tattered signal flag fluttered in the breeze. Without extravagance, the view is one of the most engaging that the eye ever looked upon. I had before me that beautiful valley extending between the Sandwich chain on the left and the Ossipee range on the right, the distance filled by a background of mountains. It was across this valley that we saw Mount Washington, while coming up the lake. But that noble peak was now hid. ”

“ Subterranean ice was brought to my notice by a mere accident, late in the month of September, 1877, while on a descent of King’s Ravine, on Mount Adams, in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. We had just descended the rock wall of the mountain and had reached the head of the gorge, when my companion, Mr. ”

“ One can never get over his admiration for the savage grace with which the mountain, which at first sight seems literally thrown together, develops a beauty, a harmony, and an intelligence giving such absolute superiority to works of Nature over those of man.
The side of Mount Cannon turned toward the village now elevates two almost regular triangular masses, one rising behind the other, and both surmounted by the rounded summit, which, except in its mass, has little resemblance to a mountain. It is seen that on two-thirds of these elevations a new forest has replaced the original growth. ”