Page:The Overland Monthly Volume 56 Issue 2.djvu/13

THE RAINIER FOREST RESERVE. 155 pears to be black basalt, and on its sides no snow clings. Standing as it does next the shimmering slopes of Rainier, it has a striking appearance. Soon we came to what seemed the jumping off place. The Hunting Ground breaks in a sheer preci- pice a thousand feet or so down, and across from the brink rises Rainier, mightier than we had yet felt him. He seemed for a moment to compel the memory of the old legend of Tyee Sahgalee, the home of the Great Spirit, the place where no Indian dare set foot. Down the side that faced us, the North and the South Tahoma Gla- ciers lay, breaking off far, far below us.

Upon going back a few hundred yards, we found Mirror Lake, only a little lake- let, but in it the mountain is so faithfully pictured that for a moment we draw back dizzily, not knowing which is mountain and which is picture. . We follow the pre- cipice to our right, which runs at right angles to the one across which we have just been gazing, and watch for a place to get down to the glaciers below. A diagonal watercourse finally breaks the sheerness, and we work our way down slowly. For the first time we have found a place where the hob-nailed mountain boots are a necessity, though at all times their stout leather and low, flat heels would have been a comfort and an aid.

As we work lower, we begin to feel that our climb is hazardous, but we all get a good view of the dingy glacial surface, and some of us have an opportunity to dig those precious hob-nails into the ice.

We trail back slowly toward the camp again through the bright fields of brilliant bloom. Every point and pinnacle seems to beckon us, every little mound, and every tiny bend in the streams. It always seems imperative to reach that point just beyond, and vet the atmosphere in the brilliant morning is lazy. When we reach the camp we throw ourselves down beside the stream and feast our eyes on the beauties around us: then suddenly, without argument, we are all up and climbing in the other direc- tion. Mount Ararat has drawn us.

Mount Ararat seems very different from the surrounding peaks. Instead of the

bold, broken lines of granite and black, basalt or snow limned slopes, Mount Ara- rat seems to catch the warmth of the bright sunshine. A little soil has clung to the rock, and the flowers extend as far up its sides as the eye can reach. There are many ravines torn out by _ swiftly- rushing mountain torrents, mostly dry at this time of the year, but the flowers spread over all, one beautiful, brilliant tapestry. They offer little foothold, how- ever, and we make our way over the boul- ders in a dry water course. We climb here without any of the element of hazard, just a good stiff rise, working back and forth over the boulders with an occasional help- ing hand over a long step. There is no trail, and the whole mountain-side is spread before our view to choose from.

But when we have reached the top, we stand upon the edge of a black precipice. Thousands of feet below us is a valley and a tiver winding through it like a thin silver ribbon. Across on the other side extends mountain ridge after mountain ridge far away into the blue haze of the distance. Even the snow robed Olympics rise behind the nearer ridges of the Cas- cades. There is immensity here that is almost beyond the power of the human mind to grasp. Our words fall flat. Few of us can stand on the brink of that preci- pice and glance down, but we can all look across to the mountains beyond. We walk on the edge of that precipice around three sides of the mountain, and the valley nar- rows, and we look across at the Tatoosh Range and the Sawtooth Ridge, with many another unnamed ridge beyond. Mount Adams, Mount Hood, Mount St. Helens, and Mount Baker shimmer against the azure sky, and always Rainier is with us. The low valleys below these lofty peaks enable us to grasp fully their grandeur, to realize their immensity. Back in our childhood there were the beautiful Blue Mountains of fairy land; but here we find not only ridge upon ridge of them, with all their fairyland atmosphere, but also the bold white peaks and the snow-clad ranges of this newer land, this summer land of the fiery young Yakima.