Wasatch Mountains

“ At the western base of the Wasatch are Salt Lake City, Ogden, Provo and other smaller towns, situated where streams issue from the mountains, soon to disappear on the desert plains. In such places agriculture is made possible by irrigation, and the Mormon villages, both here and farther south along the base of the Hurricane Ledge, depend largely on this industry. Important mining operations are carried on in the Wasatch Mountains and in a number of the basin ranges. ”

“ If a mountain is slowly lifted athwart the course of a stream, the corrasion of the latter is accelerated by the increase of declivity, and instead of being turned aside by the uplift, it persistently holds its place and carves a channel into the mountain as the mountain rises. For example the deep clefts which intersect the Wasatch range owe their existence to the fact that at the time of the beginning of the uplift which has made the range, there were streams flowing across the line of its trend which were too powerful to be turned back by the growing ridge. ”

“ But as the slopes at the foot of the mountains seemed capable of producing food for their support, they stopped and made their homes there. Now in this same region, after half a century, one can ride for many miles through as beautiful and highly cultivated a country as the sun ever looked down upon. In the early days the barren plains were broken only by mountains almost as barren, which rose from them like the islands from the surface of the Great Salt Lake. The only pleasing prospect was toward the east, where stood the steep and rugged Wasatch Range, with its snow-capped peaks. ”

“ These faults are breaks or cracks along which the rocks have been moved up and down. One side of a fault sometimes stands higher than the opposite side, and forms a narrow and frequently high and rugged mountain range. The number of these faults within the Great Basin is as yet unknown, but they certainly number many hundreds. In a cross profile of the region between the Wasatch Mountains on the east and the Sierra Nevada on the west the number of mountain ridges due to faulting is at least a score. ”

“ We might almost say that they are growing to-day. In this region, then, we can actually see how mountains are made; we do not have to depend upon descriptions of the manner in which they are supposed to have been made thousands of years ago.
FIG. 22.—BLUFF FORMED BY AN EARTHQUAKE At the foot of the Wasatch Range, Utah
Any good map will show that the mountains of the Cordilleran region have in general a north and south direction. Their direction was determined by fissures formed long ago in the crust of the earth. ”

“ One side the dale is in shadow; frost spangles give to the other an ethereal, unreal illume. Gable and the Scawfells are snowbound where on ledge and scree snow can lie; the rocks, through which, from the mountain’s heart, hidden springs are driven, are sheathed with ice. Day after day, the deadness of living nature seems to increase; day after day, the unknowable mysteries of the mountains seem to deepen. The loudest voice seems hushed; the most fervid imagination is consciously dwarfed. Then the weather changes; the air turns raw and damp, and day seemingly forgets Wastwater. ”

“ Turning our gaze to the eastward, we beheld the snowy peaks of the Wahsatch Mountains, which we had left behind us, looming up in grandeur; while, to the westward, nothing was visible but an un broken, barren, pathless desert. Here was certainly a prospect anything but charming yet not for a moment did we waver in our determination to press onward. ”

“ Cloud’s Rest is a thousand feet higher than Tissiack. It is a wavelike crest upon a ridge, which begins at Yosemite with Tissiack, and runs continuously eastward to the thicket of peaks and crests around Lake Tenaya. This lofty granite wall is bent this way and that by the restless and weariless action of glaciers just as if it had been made of dough. But the grand circumference of mountains and forests are coming from far and near, densing into one close assemblage; for the sun, their god and father, with love ineffable, is glowing a sunset farewell. ”

“ An unbounded distance opens away to the silvery horizon. On the banks there is no verdure; neither is there any sign of human toil. Nothing lives, nothing moves, save the wind and the river.
Of all the strange peaks we have yet seen, the mountains hereabout are the strangest. Alone or in groups, they start{285} up here and there from the desert, on both sides, like the pieces on a chess-board. They are for the most part conical; but they are not extinct craters, such as are the volcanic cones of Korosko and Dakkeh. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The interminable reaches, broken only by the level uplands marked from the plain by their perpendicular walls, and the Wichita Mountains, as faint and unsubstantial to the eye as curved images of smoke against the sky—these dreary monotonies and remotenesses naturally oppress the traveler with a sense of his insignificance. ”

“ We ascended by a steep hill from the river bottom, which is sandy, to a volcanic plain, around which lofty hills sweep in a regular form. It is cut up by gullies of basaltic rock, escarpments of which appear everywhere in the hills. This plain is called the Taih prairie, and is sprinkled with some scattered pines. The country is now far more interesting to a traveler than the route along the Snake and Columbia rivers. To our right we had always the mountains, from the midst of whose dark pine forests the isolated snowy peaks were looking out like giants. ”

“ The lofty Wahsatch Mountains are close to the city 476 on the northern and eastern sides, while to the south, seen over a hundred miles of almost level plain, is a magnificent range of snow-covered mountains, this being the perpetual and awe-inspiring view from all parts of the city. The streets are wide and lined with shade trees, the residences surrounded by gardens, and irrigation canals border all the thoroughfares, so that the whole place is embosomed in foliage, and the delicious green adds to its scenic attractiveness. ”

“ Its situation leaves nothing to be desired in an ideal mountain village. So completely is it secluded from the rest of the world by its environment of mountains, that you might pass and repass the Pemigewasset Valley a hundred times without once surprising the secret of its existence. All those houses, half hid beneath groves of maples, bespeak luxurious repose. Opposite to Black Mountain, whose dark forest drapery hides the mass of the mountain, is the immense whitish-yellow rock called Welch Mountain. Only a scanty vegetation is suffered to creep among the crevices. ”

“ The people in the hills are happy today, for they see not, neither do they hear, the echo which flies in sinister message from peak to peak as the men ride fast and spare not, climbing and climbing still, to reach the tops of the Wasatch hills. ”

“ Applying the same method to the Lake District, it has been calculated that the amount of denudation which that beautiful country has suffered may be represented by twenty-six thousand feet. Turning to the other side of the Atlantic, we find the American geologists estimate that a thickness of five miles has been removed from a large part of the Appalachian chain of mountains (near their east coast) , and that at least one mile has been eroded from the entire region 240 between the Rocky and Wahsatch Mountains (see chapter ix.) ”

“ Standing here in the deep, brooding silence all the wilderness seems motionless, as if the work of creation were done. But in the midst of this outer steadfastness we know there is incessant motion and change. Ever and anon, avalanches are falling from yonder peaks. These cliff-bound glaciers, seemingly wedged and immovable, are flowing like water and grinding the rocks beneath them. The lakes are lapping their granite shores and wearing them away, and every one of these rills and young rivers is fretting the air into music, and carrying the mountains to the plains. ”

“ The sky was again darkened, not with dust and ashes, but with snow which fell in glorious abundance, piling deeper, deeper, slipping from the overladen heights in booming avalanches, compacting into glaciers, that flowed over all the landscape, wiping off forests, grinding, sculpturing, fashioning the comparatively featureless lava beds into the beautiful rhythm of hill and dale and ranges of mountains we behold to-day; forming basins for lakes, channels for streams, few soils for forests, gardens, and meadows. ”

“ Though some of these rise to the region of perpetual snows, and are upwards of eleven thousand feet in real altitude, yet their height from their immediate basis is not so great as might be imagined, as they swell up from elevated plains, several thousand feet above the level of the ocean. These plains are often of a desolate sterility; mere sandy wastes, formed of the detritus of the granite heights, destitute of trees and herbage, scorched by the ardent and reflected rays of the summer’s sun, and in winter swept by chilling blasts from the snow-clad mountains. ”

“ In fact, it is well known that the southern two-thirds of the range is a great tilted fault block, the total displacement having resulted from repeated sudden movements since about the middle of the present geologic era. A great fault also extends along the eastern base of the great Wasatch Range of Utah and the steep slope thousands of feet high is a fault scarp only slightly modified by erosion. ”

“ If the rock is very soft, then the process goes on with each fallen block, until it is reduced to soil and forms a smooth, grassy slope, or a clean shaven but barren slide, like the rich red hills we saw on the other side of Lookout; but if the fragments are hard, then gradually the bushes and grass will creep up, and the forest will follow as high as climate and snow-fall will let it grow, and above will be a rounded crest of broken lava, like Veta mountain—the worst thing to climb in the wide world. ”

“ The Liard, the Peel, the Peace rivers, all have their sources to the west of the Rocky Mountains. Even the parent rill of the Great Athabasca is on the Pacific side also. Nor is this mountain, thus curiously rent in twain by large rivers, a mere ridge, or lofty table-land; but huge and vast, capped by eternal snow, it lifts its peaks full fifteen thousand feet above the sea level. ”

“ The rocks in the vicinity are a loose, fine-grained sandstone, the strata nearly horizontal, and no organic remains have been discovered. We have still a view of the lofty Wind-river mountains on our right hand, and they have for some days served as a guide to determine our course. On the plain, we passed several huge rhomboidal masses of rock, standing alone, and looking, at a little distance, like houses with chimneys. The freaks of nature, as they are called, have often astonished us since we have been journeying in the wilderness. ”

“ From the summit of the Wasach range to the eastern foot of the Sierra Nevada, the whole region, with exceptions, is a howling wilderness, the sole or bed of an inland sweetwater sea, now shrunk into its remnants—the Great Salt and the Utah Lakes. Nothing can be more monotonous than its regular succession of high grisly hills, cut perpendicularly by rough and rocky ravines, and separating bare and barren plains. From the seaward base of the Sierra Nevada to the Pacific—California—the slope is easy, and the land is pleasant, fertile, and populous. ”

“ These Foot Hills, which swell up uninterestingly from the plains on their eastern side, on their western have the appearance of having broken off from the next range, and the break is abrupt, and takes the form of walls and terraces of rock of the most brilliant colour, weathered and stained by ores, and, even under the grey sky, dazzling to the eyes. The driver thought he had understood the directions given, but he was stupid, and once we lost some miles by arriving at a river too rough and deep to be forded, and again we were brought up by an impassable canyon. ”

“ The rocks themselves bear witness to the intense heat which has either cracked them wide open, crumbled them in pieces, or divested them, like oysters, of their outer shell, all along the path of the conflagration.
The walk over the lower summits to the base of the peak occupied another hour, and is a most profitable feature of the ascent. On each side a superb panorama of mountains and lakes, of towns, villages, and hamlets, is being slowly unrolled; while every forward step develops the inaccessible character of the high summit more and more. ”

“ 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.
Carbon River below its Gorge, and Mother Mountains. This range was so named because of a rude resemblance to the up-turned face of a woman seen here in the sky-line, while the view of snowy Liberty Cap beyond and the milky whiteness of the stream gave rise to the pleasing fiction that the Indian name of the peak meant "nourishing breast." "Tacoma" meant simply the Snow Mountain. ”