Mount Whitney

“ The Kern Plateau, so green and lovely on my former visit, in 1864, was now a gray sea of rolling granite ridges, darkened at intervals by forest, but no longer velveted with meadows and upland grasses. The indefatigable shepherds have camped everywhere, leaving hardly a spear of grass behind them.
To the sad annoyance of our hungry horses, we found this true until we entered the rough, rocky cañon which leads down from the false Mount Whitney, in whose depths, among glacier erratics and dark pines, we selected a spot where a vocal brook and patches of carex meadow seemed to welcome us. ”

“ From Lone Pine that evening, and from the open carriage in which I rode northward to Independence, I constantly looked back and up into the storm, hoping to catch one more glimpse of Mount Whitney; but all the range lay submerged in dark, rolling cloud, from which now and then a sullen mutter of thunder reverberated.
For years our chief, Professor Whitney, has made brave campaigns into the unknown realm of Nature. Against low prejudice and dull indifference he has led the survey of California onward to success. ”

“ The lofty, jagged crest of the Sierras rises over fourteen thousand feet, culminating in Mount Whitney, the highest peak in the United States south of Alaska, while in marked contrast to the ice and snow of these mountain heights are the hot and scorching wastes of Death Valley, which lies but a short distance to the east, depressed over three hundred feet below the level of the sea. Snow-clad mountain and desert sand, mighty earth blocks, volcanic craters, lava flows, and alkaline lakes—where can be found greater attractions for the student of Nature? ”

“ Everything has an end, and so had that journey, which finally brought us to the goal of our long travel, at the foot of the highest peak of the Sierras, Mount Whitney, which rose above us in tremendous precipices, that looked hopelessly insurmountable and wonderfully near. The whole savage mountain-region, in its slow rises from the west and its descent to the desert plains in the east, is more like the chain called the Apennines, in the moon, than anything I know on the earth. ”

“ From the summit of Mount Whitney only granite is seen. Innumerable peaks and spires but little lower than its own storm-beaten crags rise in groups like forest-trees, in full view, segregated by cañons of tremendous depth and ruggedness. On Shasta nearly every feature in the vast view speaks of the old volcanic fires. Far to the northward, in Oregon, the icy volcanoes of Mount Pitt and the Three Sisters rise above the dark evergreen woods. Southward innumerable smaller craters and cones are distributed along the axis of the range and on each flank. ”

“ Goodyear saw the true Mount Whitney when he reached the summit of my peak of 1871, it is only necessary to state that he had a clear day, and the evident fact stared him in the face. If the reader kindly refers to the preceding part of the chapter, descriptive of my 1871{347} climb, he will note that my visit was, unfortunately, during a great storm, through whose billows of cloud and eddying mists the landscape disclosed itself in fragmentary glimpses: to repeat the expression of my notebook, “as through windows in the storm.” ”

“ The honor of rendering this important service to science was adjudged to the highest summit in the United States. The Sierra Nevada culminates in a granite pile, rising, somewhat in the form of a gigantic helmet fronting eastward, to a height of 14,887 feet. Mount Whitney is thus entitled to rank as the Mont Blanc of its own continent. In order to reach it, a railway journey of 3,400 miles, from Pittsburg to San Francisco, and from San Francisco to Caliente, was a brief and easy preliminary. ”

“ The elevation of Mount Whitney (14,501 ft.) , it may be remembered, was determined by actual leveling, but such procedure would have been impossible on Mount Rainier, as the most practicable route to its summit leads over many miles of snow and ice, and up a precipitous chute several hundred feet in height. On thawing snow accurate leveling is out of the question, for the instrument can not be set up so firmly that [300] it will not settle slightly between back and fore sights. To execute this pottering kind of work in freezing weather would entail both hardship and great expense. ”

“ The casual tourist who has looked at the Snowy Range of the Rockies from the distant comfort of Estes Park, or the High Sierra from the dining-porch of the Glacier Point Hotel, receives an invigorating shock of astonishment at beholding Mount Rainier even at a distance. Its isolation gives it enormous scenic advantage. Mount Whitney of the Sierra, our loftiest summit, which overtops it ninety-three feet, is merely the climax in a tempestuous ocean of snowy [Pg 161] neighbors which are only less lofty ”

“ Along the route are 148 peaks more than 13,000 feet in height. The Sierra crest, itself, is more than 13,000 feet above the sea for eight and one-half miles adjacent to Mount Whitney. The trail traverses one of the most extensive areas yet remaining practically free from automobile roads.
In Sequoia National Park, the High Sierra Trail from Giant Forest to Mount Whitney enters the John Muir Trail on Wallace Creek, a tributary of the Kern. Thus does the John Muir Trail connect the national parks of the Sierra, traversing in some 260 miles most of the grandest regions of the High Sierra. ”

“ The Sierra Nevada is bare of forests in its highest portions. The high region about Mount Whitney is, where not snow-covered, nothing but an entirely bare mass of granite domes and needles. In the central part of the Sierra, in the vicinity of the Yosemite valley, forest vegetation is extremely scanty above 9000 feet, and the upper 3000 feet of the highest peaks is entirely bare of trees. If large areas of the United States are destitute of trees, and other regions but very poorly supplied, the chief cause of this is want of sufficient moisture. ”

“ Still the trail is on the direct route to Mount Whitney, and year by year the ascent of this "top of the Republic" is becoming more the proper thing to do. Every camping party stops for a try at the Golden Trout, and of course the fish-hog is a sure occasional migrant. ”

“ To the right and below, three thousand feet down from our tower, I could trace the line of my attempted climb of 1864, to where it disappeared around a projecting buttress at the foot of the great precipice, which forms the eastern face of Mount Whitney and the subordinate pinnacles to the south. ”

“ John Muir reached the summit of Mount Lyell later that year. Muir undoubtedly climbed in part as a response to the challenge of summits but could hardly be considered a casual tourist.
Four years later another summit, of which Whitney had said, it “never has been, and never will be trodden by human foot,” was ascended by a man climbing merely for the fun of it. In 1875, George G. Anderson, continuing where John Conway, a valley resident, had been stopped by difficulty and danger, tackled the climb of Half Dome with ideas of his own. ”

“ Then they came round and up again, over a southerly ridge, by beautiful Garland Lane, that she knew only in its summer look, when the wild grape festooned itself wantonly from branch to branch, and sometimes, even, from side to side; and so gave the narrow forest road its name.
Quite into fairyland they had come now, in truth; as if, skirting the dark peak that shut it off from ordinary espial, they had lighted on a bypath that led them covertly in. ”

“ Last night had lain there, underneath them, the great basin between Starr King, behind, and the roots of that lesser range, far down, above which the blue Lafayette uprears itself: an enormous valley, filled with evergreen forest, over whose tall pines and cedars one looked, as if they were but juniper and blueberry bushes; far up above whose heads the real average of the vast mountain-country heaped itself in swelling masses,—miles and miles of beetling height and solid breadth. ”

“ But our conversation seemed to have stirred to the surface something in Whitney’s brain that had been at work there a long time, for after that he would never let me alone about his Ten Strike Mine and the mountains that hid it. ‘Over there!’ he would say, and point to the north. From the porch of his bungalow the sleeping hills were plainly visible above the shimmering desert. He would chew on the end of a cigar and consider. ‘It isn’t very far, you know. Two days—maybe three. All we need’s water. No water there—at least, none found. All those fellows who’ve prospected are fools. ”

“ The country through which Whitman had chosen to travel was beautiful in the extreme; at times the road lay through the great heights of the Rockies, with a panorama of wonderful charm stretched on the horizon; at times it lay beside broad rivers where the clearness of the air brought out all the colors of late summer foliage. The party of hunters were also scouts for the caravan, searching the rivers for the most promising fords. Having found one to their liking, they would signal with a flag to the pilot and his guides to show in which direction to lead the wagons. ”

“ Between two rocks [Pg 77] that made, as it were, a gateway, and around whose bases were grouped sentinel evergreens, they came into this wider space, floored with flat rock, the surface of a hidden ledge, carpeted with crisp mosses in the summer, whose every cup and hollow held a jewel now—and inclosed with lofty oaks and pines, while, straight beyond, where the woods shut in again far closer than below, rose a bold crag, over whose brow hung pendent birches that in their icy robing drooped like glittering wings of cherubim above an altar. ”

“ Her father took the horse by the bit, and Mr. Armstrong kept at his side holding Faith firmly to her seat. In this fashion, grasping the bridle with one hand, and resting the other on Mr. Armstrong's shoulder, she was transported to the sleigh at the foot of the hill.
"We were talking about long journeys in small circuits," said Faith, when she was well tucked in, and they had set off on a level and not utterly untracked road. "I think I have been to the Alhambra, and to Rome, and have had a peep into fairyland, and come back, at last, over the Alps!" ”

“ Their next point was Bent's Fort on the head waters of the Arkansas River, now in Colorado. It was a cheerless, dreary plains journey, with none of the magnificent scenery of the mountain route to keep them company. Water was often scarce, as well as wood, except along the small streams. The intensely cold winter and deep snows had made the big gray wolves a menace to life of men and beasts. One very cold night they reached a little river which had no wood on the side they camped, but was plentiful on the opposite bank. Whitman seized his ax, but found the ice would break under his feet. ”

“ Their eyes were not upon the lofty mountain peaks, but far along unknown trails towards the nation's capital. After they had succeeded in passing the well-nigh impassable mountains, they struck a more level country with sheltered valleys having a bountiful supply of wood and good water. I have often asked myself, when pondering over these events, was it a simple accident that the old scouts reached Fort Hall that October night and turned Whitman and Lovejoy a thousand miles off their direct route? That year the snow lay unusually deep all over the great plains. ”

“ A great cliff-side rearing itself up, rough with inaccessible crags, bristling with old, ragged pines, and dark with glooms of close cedars and hemlocks, above a jutting table of rock that reaches out and makes a huge semicircular base for the mountain, and is in itself a precipice-pedestal eighty feet sheer up from the river-bank ”

“ No thrilling Alpine feat is the ascent of our loftiest summit. But those who want to measure human strength and skill in terms of perpendicular granite may find among Whitney's neighbors peaks which will present harder problems than those offered abroad, peaks which themselves well may become as celebrated in future years.
[Pg 80]
The John Muir Trail is destined to a fame and a use perhaps many times as great as those men thought who conceived it as a memorial to a lover of the trail, and of all that that implies. ”

“ The Panjandrums were new people at West Hill; very new and very grand, as only new things and new people can be, turned out in the latest style pushed to the last agony. Mrs. Panjandrum's dress was all in two shades of brown, to the tips of her feathers, and the toes of her boots, and the frill of her parasol; and her carriage was all in two shades of brown, likewise; cushions, and tassels, and panels; the horses themselves were cream-color, with dark manes and tails. ”

“ Standing on the summit of Whitcomb, one of the finest views of pure wild mountain scenery in the East is disclosed. Immediately in front of you loom vast numbers of wooded slopes with their varied tints of green in grand variety, stretching shoulder to shoulder like works of art. A great many peaks, rivers and dark blue lakes, all saturated in the warm, purple light, lie dreamily silent in the far distance. Rounded summits rise up from the vast undulating mass like a never-ending sea, whose surface is broken as far as the eye can reach with their immense billows of blue and green. ”

“ There is a great level basin, around which slope the uplands, rising farther and farther on every side except the south, until you get among the real mountain regions. On these slopes are the farms; the Jeffords', and the Applebees', and the Patchons', and the Stilphins'. Aren't they quaint, comfortable old country names? I think they only have such names among farmers. The name of the place,—or rather neighborhood, for I don't know where the place actually is—there are three places, and they are all four or five miles off—Mill Village, and Pemunk, and Sandon ”