White River Canyon, from the terminal moraine of White Glacier. A fine example of glacial sculpture. The river seen in the distance is 2,000 feet below the plateau through which the glacier has carved this valley.
Telephoto view from near Electron, 20 miles, showing vast summit plateau left when the Mountain blew its head off. 1. Crater Peak, built by the two small, modern craters. 2. South Peak, or Peak Success. 3. North Peak, or Liberty Cap. 4. North Tahoma Glacier. 5. Puyallup Glacier. 6. South Mowich Glacier. 7. North Mowich Glacier. 8. Snow Cap above Carbon Glacier. The summit peaks (1, 2 and 3) form a triangle, each side of which is two miles or more in length.
View of the Mountain from Fox Island, forty-two miles northwest, with part of Puget Sound in the foreground.
I am Tacoma, Monarch of the Coast!
Uncounted ages heaped my shining snows;
The sun by day, by night the starry host,
Crown me with splendor; every breeze that blows
Wafts incense to my altars; never wanes
The glory my adoring children boast,
For one with sun and sea Tacoma reigns.
Tacoma—the Great Snow Peak—mighty name
My dusky tribes revered when time was young!
Their god was I in avalanche and flame—
In grove and mead and songs my rivers sung,
As blithe they ran to make the valleys fair—
Their Shrine of Peace where no avenger came
To vex Tacoma, lord of earth and air.
Ah! when at morn above the mists I tower
And see my cities gleam by slope and strand,
What joy have I in this transcendent dower—
The strength and beauty of my sea-girt land
That holds the future royally in fee!
And lest some danger, undescried, should lower,
From my far height I watch o'er wave and lea.
And cloudless eves when calm in heaven I rest,
All rose-bloom with a glow of paradise,
And through my firs the balm-wind of the west,
Blown over ocean islands, softly sighs,
While placid lakes my radiant image frame—
And know my worshippers, in loving quest,
Will mark my brow and fond lips breathe my name:
Enraptured from my valleys to my snows,
I charm my glow to crimson—soothe to gray;
And when the encircling shadow deeper grows,
Poise, a lone cloud, beside the starry way.
Then, while my realm is hushed from steep to shore,
I yield my grandeur to divine repose,
And know Tacoma reigns forevermore!
South Framingham, Mass.
March, 1911. Edna Dean Proctor
The most kingly of American mountains, seen from beautiful Lake
Washington, Seattle, distance sixty miles.
Copyright, 1906, By Romans Photographic Co.
A party of climbers on Winthrop Glacier.
Long hours we toiled up through the solemn wood,
Beneath moss-banners stretched from tree to tree;
At last upon a barren hill we stood,
And, lo, above loomed Majesty.
—Herbert Bashford: "Mount Rainier."
The great Mountain fascinates us by its diversity. It is an inspiration and yet a riddle to all who are drawn to the mysterious or who love the sublime. Every view which the breaking clouds vouchsafe to us is a surprise. It never becomes commonplace, save to the commonplace.
Ice Terraces on South Tahoma Glacier. These vast steps are often seen where a glacier moves down a steep and irregular slope.
Old Virgil's gibe at mankind's better half—"varium et mutabile semper femina"—might have been written of this fickle shape of rock and ice and vapor. One tries vainly, year after year, to define it in his own mind. The daily, hourly change of distance, size and aspect, tricks which the Indian's mountain god plays with the puny creatures swarming more and more about his foot; his days of frank neighborliness, his swift transformations from smiles to anger, his fits of sullenness and withdrawal, all baffle study. Even though we live at its base, it is impossible to say we know the Mountain, so various are the spells the sun casts over this huge dome which it is slowly chiseling away with its tools of ice, and which, in coming centuries, it will level with the plain.
Mineral Lake and the Mountain. Distance, eighteen miles.
We are lovers of the water as well as the hills, out here in this northwestern corner of the Republic. We spend many days—and should spend more—in cruising among the hidden bays and park-like islands which make Puget Sound the most interesting body of water in America. We grow a bit boastful about the lakes that cluster around our cities. Nowhere better than from sea level, or from the lakes raised but little above it, does one realize the bulk, the dominance, and yet the grace, of this noble peak. Its impressiveness, indeed, arises in part from the fact that it is one of the few great volcanic mountains whose entire height may be seen from tide level. Many of us can recall views of it from Lake Washington at Seattle, or from American or Spanaway Lake at Tacoma, or from the Sound, which will always haunt the memory.
Storm King Peak and Mineral Lake, viewed from near Mineral Lake Inn.
Early one evening, last summer, I went with a friend to Point Defiance, Tacoma's fine park at the end of the promontory on which the city is built. We drank in refreshment from the picture there unrolled of broad channels and evergreen shores. As sunset approached, we watched the western clouds building range upon range of golden mountains above the black, Alp-like crags of the Olympics. Then, entering a small boat, we rowed far out northward into the Sound. Overhead, and about us, the scenes of the great panorama were swiftly shifted. The western sky became a conflagration. Twilight settled upon the bay. The lights of the distant town came out, one by one, and those of the big smelter, near by, grew brilliant. No Turner ever dreamed so glorious a composition of sunlight and shade. But we were held by one vision.
View from Electron, showing west side of the mountain, with a vast intervening country of forested ranges and deep canyons.
View from Electron.
Nisqually Canyon.
... "Where the mountain wall
Is piled to heaven, and through the narrow rift
Of the vast rocks, against whose rugged feet
Beats the mad torrent with perpetual roar:
Where noonday is as twilight, and the wind
Comes burdened with the everlasting moan
Of forests and far-off waterfalls."—Whittier.
Yonder, in the southeast, towering above the lower shadows of harbor and hills, rose a vast pyramid of soft flame. The setting sun had thrown a mantle of rose pink over the ice of the glaciers and the great cleavers of rock which buttress the mighty dome. The rounded summit was warm with beautiful orange light. Soon the colors upon its slope changed to deeper reds, and then to amethyst, and violet, and pearl gray. The sun-forsaken ranges below fell away to dark neutral tints. But the fires upon the crest burned on, deepening from gold to burnished copper, a colossal beacon flaming high against the sunset purple of the eastern skies. Finally, even this great light paled to a ghostly white, as the supporting foundation of mountain ridges dropped into the darkness of the long northern twilight, until the snowy summit seemed no longer a part of earth, but a veil of uncanny mist, caught up by the winds from the Pacific and floating far above the black sky-line of the solid Cascades, that
* * * heaven-sustaining bulwark, reared
Between the East and West.
North Peak, or Liberty Cap, and South Mowich Glacier in storm, seen
from an altitude of 6,000 feet, on ridge between South Mowich and
Puyallup Glaciers. The glacier, 2,000 feet below, is nearly half a
mile wide. Note the tremendous wall of ice in which it ends.
Copyright, 1900, By A. H. Waite.
Basaltic Columns, part of the "Colonnade" on south side of South Mowich Glacier. These
curious six-sided columns of volcanic rock are similar to those
bordering the Cowlitz Glacier.
Copyright, 1900, By A. H. Waite.
Mountain Goat, an accidental snap-shot of the fleet and wary Mazama; godfather of the famous Portland mountain club.
And when even that apparition had faded, and the Mountain appeared only as an uncertain bulk shadowed upon the night, then came the miracle. Gradually, the east, beyond the great hills, showed a faint silver glow. Silhouetted against this dim background, the profile of the peak grew definite. With no other warning, suddenly from its summit the full moon shot forth, huge, majestic and gracious, flooding the lower world with brightness. Clouds and mountain ranges alike shone with its glory. But the great peak loomed blacker and more sullen. Only, on its head, the wide crown of snow gleamed white under the cold rays of the moon.
West Side of the summit, seen from Tahoma Fork of the Nisqually, on road to Longmire Springs. Note the whiteness of the glacial water. This stream is fed by the united Tahoma glaciers. See pp. 32 and 37.
Iron and Copper Mountains (right) in Indian Henry's. The top of Pyramid Peak shows in the saddle beyond with Peak Success towering far above.
No wonder that this mountain of changing moods, overtopping every other eminence in the Northwest, answered the idea of God to the simple, imaginative mind of the Indians who hunted in the forest on its slopes or fished in the waters of Whulge that ebbed and flowed at its base. Primitive peoples in every land have deified superlative manifestations of nature—the sun, the wind, great rivers, and waterfalls, the high mountains. By all the tribes within sight of its summit, this pre-eminent peak, variously called by them Tacoma (Tach-ho´ma), Tahoma or Tacob, as who should say "The Great Snow," was deemed a power to be feared and conciliated. Even when the missionaries taught them a better faith, they continued to hold the Mountain in superstitious reverence—an awe that still has power to silence their "civilized" and very unromantic descendants.
Cutting steps up Paradise Glacier.
The Puget Sound tribes, with the Yakimas, Klickitats and others living just beyond the Cascades, had substantially the same language and beliefs, though differing much in physical and mental type. East of the range, they lived by the chase. They were great horsemen and famous runners, a breed of lithe, upstanding, competent men, as keen of wit as they were stately in appearance. These were "the noble Red Men" of tradition. Fennimore Cooper might have found many a hero worthy of his pen among the savages inhabiting the fertile valley of the Columbia, which we now call the Inland Empire. But here on the Coast were the "Digger" tribes, who subsisted chiefly by spearing salmon and digging clams. Their stooped figures, flat faces, downcast eyes and low mentality reflected the life they led. Contrasting their heavy bodies with their feeble legs, which grew shorter with disuse, a Tacoma humorist last summer gravely proved to a party of English visitors that in a few generations more, had not the white man seized their fishing grounds, the squatting Siwashes would have had no legs at all!
Great Crag on the ridge separating the North and South Tahoma Glaciers, with Tahoma Fork of the Nisqually visible several miles below. This rock is seen right of center on page 27.
The Marmot, whose shrill whistle is often heard among the crags.
Stolid and uninspired as he seemed to the whites, the Indian of the Sound was not without his touch of poetry. He had that imaginative curiosity which marked the native American everywhere. He was ever peering into the causes of things, and seeing the supernatural in the world around him.[1]
View from Beljica, showing the deeply indented west side of the Mountain. Beginning at extreme right, the glaciers are, successively: Kautz, South Tahoma, North Tahoma and Puyallup. In the left foreground is the canyon of Tahoma Fork of the Nisqually, which is fed by the Tahoma glaciers.
Mountain Pine, one of
the last outposts of the forest below the line of eternal snow.
Copyright, 1897, By E. S. Curtis.
To the great Snow Mountain the Indians made frequent pilgrimages, for they thought this king of the primeval wild a divinity to be reckoned with. They dreaded its anger, seen in the storms about its head, the thunder of its avalanches, and the volcanic flashes of which their traditions told. They courted its favor, symbolized in the wild flowers that bloomed on its slope, and the tall grass that fed the mowich, or deer.
Mount Wow, or Goat Mountain, above Mesler's.
Copyright, 1897, By E. S. Curtis.
As they ascended the vast ridges, the grandeur about them spoke of the mountain god. There were groves of trees he must have planted, so orderly were they set out. The lakes of the lofty valleys seemed calmer than those on the prairies below, the foliage brighter, the ferns taller and more graceful. The song of the waterfalls here was sweeter than the music of the tamahnawas men, their Indian sorcerers. The many small meadows close to the snow-line, carpeted in deepest green and spread with flowers, were the gardens of the divinity, tended by his superhuman agents. Strange as it may seem, the nature-worship of the silent Red Man had many points in common with that of the imaginative, volatile Greek, who peopled his mountains with immortals; and no wood in ancient Greece was ever thronged with hamadryads more real than the little gods whom the Indian saw in the forests watered by streams from Tacoma's glaciers.
Rounded Cone of Mt. St. Helens, seen from Indian Henry's, forty-five miles away.
View northward in early summer from Eagle Peak, at
western end of the Tatoosh. Gibraltar Rock and Little Tahoma break the
eastern sky-line. On the extreme right lies Paradise Valley, still deep
in snow, with the canyon of Paradise River below it. Next is seen the
Nisqually Glacier, with Nisqually River issuing from its snout. Then
come Van Trump Glacier (an "interglacier"), and the big Kautz Glacier,
dropping into its own deep canyon. Beyond the Kautz, Pyramid Peak and
Iron and Copper Mountains rise on the Indian Henry plateau. The Tahoma
Glaciers close the view westward.
Copyright, 1907, By Pillsbury Picture Co.
Eagle Peak (Indian name, Simlayshe) at west end of the Tatoosh.
Altitude about 6,000 feet. A pony trail three miles long leads up from the Inn.
Copyright, 1909, By Linkletter Photo. Co.
Countless snows had fallen since the mountain god created and beautified this home of his, when one day he grew angry, and in his wrath showed terrible tongues of fire. Thus he ignited an immense fir forest on the south side of the peak. When his anger subsided, the flames passed, and the land they left bare became covered with blue grass and wild flowers—a great sunny country where, before, the dark forest had been. Borrowing a word from the French coureurs des bois who came with the Hudson's Bay Company, the later Indians sometimes called this region "the Big Brulé"; and to this day some Americans call it the same. But for the Big Brulé the Indians had, from ancient times, another name, connected with their ideas of religion. It was their Saghalie Illahe, the "Land of Peace," Heaven. Our name, "Paradise Valley," given to the beautiful open vale on the south slope of the Mountain, is an English equivalent.
Here was the same bar to violence which religion has erected in many lands. The Hebrews had their "Cities of Refuge." The pagan ancients made every altar an asylum. Mediæval Christianity constituted all its churches sanctuaries. Thus, in lawless ages, the hand of vengeance was stayed, and the weak were protected.
Exploring an Ice Cave, Paradise Glacier.
So, too, the Indian tradition ordained this home of rest and refuge. Indian custom was an eye for an eye, but on gaining this mountain haven the pursued was safe from his pursuer, the slayer might not be touched by his victim's kindred. When he crossed its border, the warrior laid down his arms. Criminals and cowards, too, were often sent here by the chiefs to do penance.
Junction of North and South Tahoma Glaciers, viewed from Indian Henry's. The main ice stream thus formed, seen in the foreground, feeds Tahoma Fork of the Nisqually River. The Northern part of North Tahoma Glacier, seen in the distance beyond the wedge of rocks, feeds a tributary of the Puyallup.
The mountain divinity, with his under-gods, figures in much of the Siwash folklore, and the "Land of Peace" is often heard of. It is through such typical Indian legends as that of Miser, the greedy hiaqua hunter, that we learn how large a place the great Mountain filled in the thought of the aborigines.
Anemones, a familiar mountain flower.
This myth also explains why no Red Man could ever be persuaded to an ascent beyond the snow line. As to the Greek, so to the Indian the great peaks were sacred. The flames of an eruption, the fall of an avalanche, told of the wrath of the mountain god. The clouds that wrapped the summit of Tacoma spelled mystery and peril. Even so shrewd and intelligent a Siwash as Sluiskin, with all his keenness for "Boston chikamin," the white man's money, refused to accompany Stevens and Van Trump in the first ascent, in 1870; indeed, he gave them up as doomed, and bewailed their certain fate when they defied the Mountain's wrath and started for the summit in spite of his warnings.
North Tahoma Glacier, flowing out of the huge cleft in the west side, between North
and South Peaks. A great rock wedge splits the glacier, turning part
of the ice stream northward into the Puyallup, while the other part,
on the right pours down to join South Tahoma Glacier. Note how the
promontory of rock in the foreground has been rounded and polished by
the ice. Compare this view with pages 32 and 37.
Copyright 1910, A. H. WAITE.
Snow Lake in Indian Henry's, surrounded by Alpine firs, which grow close to the snow line. Elevation about 6,000 feet.
The hero of the Hiaqua Myth is the Indian Rip Van Winkle.[2] He dwelt at the foot of Tacoma, and, like Irving's worthy, he was a mighty hunter and fisherman. He knew the secret pools where fish could always be found, and the dark places in the forest, where the elk hid when snows were deepest. But for these things Miser cared not. His lust was all for hiaqua, the Indian shell money.
A fair Mountaineer at the timber line. Note her equipment, including shoe calks.
Now, Miser's totem was Moosmoos, the elk divinity. So Miser tried, even while hunting the elk, to talk with them, in order to learn where hiaqua might be found. One night Moosmoos persuaded him that on top of the Mountain he would find great store of it. Making him two elk-horn picks, and filling his ikta with dried salmon and kinnikinnick, he climbed in two nights and a day to the summit. Here he found three big rocks, one like a camas root, one like a salmon's head, the third like his friendly Moosmoos. Miser saw that Moosmoos had told him truly.
View of Indian Henry's Hunting Ground from a point on South Tahoma Glacier, looking across to Copper and Iron Mountains, with Mt. St. Helens above the clouds far beyond. This famous upland plateau or "park" gets its name from the fact that it was, years ago, the favorite haunt of a celebrated Indian hunter.
Southwest side of the Mountain as seen from Indian Henry's, showing North and South Tahoma Glaciers meeting in foreground, and Kautz Glacier on extreme right.
After long digging, Miser overturned the rock that was like the elk's head. Beneath lay a vast quantity of hiaqua. This he strung on elk's sinews—enough of it to make him the richest of men. Then he hurried to depart. But he left no thank-offering to the tanahnawas powers. Thereupon the whole earth shook with a mighty convulsion, and the mountain shot forth terrible fires, which melted the snows and poured floods down the slopes, where they were turned to ice again by the breath of the storm-god. And above the roar of torrents and the crash of thunder, Miser heard the voices of all the tamahnawas, hissing: "Hiaqua! Hiaqua! Ha, ha, Hiaqua!"
Climbing Pinnacle Peak, in the Tatoosh. Elevation 6,500 feet. The route leads up from Paradise Valley, over the steep snow field shown in the lower view, and thence by a difficult trail to the summit.
Panic-stricken at the results of his greed, Miser threw down his load of treasure to propitiate the angry tamahnawas. But the storm-god hurled him down the mountain side. Miser fell into a deep sleep. Many, many snows after, he awoke to find himself far from the summit, in a pleasant country of beautiful meadows carpeted with flowers, abounding in camas roots, and musical with the song of birds. He had grown very old, with white hair falling to his shoulders. His ikta was empty, save for a few dried leaves. Recognizing the scene about him as Saghalie Illahe, he sought his old tent. It was where he had left it. There, too, was his klootchman, or wife, grown old, like himself. Thirty snows, she said, she had awaited his return. Back they went to their home on the bank of the Cowlitz, where he became a famous tamahnawas man, and spent the rest of his days in honor, for his tribesmen recognized that the aged Indian's heart had been marvelously softened and his mind enriched by his experience upon the peak. He had lost his love for hiaqua.
A silhouette on Pinnacle Peak, with Paradise Valley and the Nisqually Glacier below.
Among the familiar myths of the Mountain was one of a great flood, not unlike that of Noah. I quote Miss Judson's version:
WHY THERE ARE NO SNAKES ON TAKHOMA.
A long, long time ago, Tyhce Sahale became angry with his people. Sahale ordered a medicine man to take his bow and arrow and shoot into the cloud which hung low over Takhoma. The medicine man shot the arrow, and it stuck fast in the cloud. Then he shot another into the lower end of the first. Then he shot another into the lower end of the second. He shot arrows until he had made a chain which reached from the cloud to the earth. The medicine man told his klootchman and his children to climb up the arrow trail. Then he told the good animals to climb up the arrow trail. Then the medicine man climbed up himself. Just as he was climbing into the cloud, he looked back. A long line of bad animals and snakes were also climbing up the arrow trail. Therefore the medicine man broke the chain of arrows. Thus the snakes and bad animals fell down on the mountain side. Then at once it began to rain. It rained until all the land was flooded. Water reached even to the snow line of Takhoma. When all the bad animals and snakes were drowned, it stopped raining. After a while the waters sank again. Then the medicine man and his klootchman and the children climbed out of the cloud and came down the mountain side. The good animals also climbed out of the cloud. Thus there are now no snakes or bad animals on Takhoma.
Rough Climbing, an
illustration of perils encountered in crossing the glaciers.
Copyright, 1897, by E. S. Curtis.
Ptarmigan, the Grouse of the ice-fields. Unlike its neighbor, the Mountain Goat, this bird is tame, and may sometimes be caught by hand. In winter its plumage turns from brown to white.
Childish and fantastic as they seem to our wise age, such legends show the Northwestern Indian struggling to interpret the world about him. Like savages everywhere, he peopled the unknown with spirits good and bad, and mingled his conception of a beneficent deity with his ideas of the evil one. Symbolism pervaded his crude but very positive mind. Ever by his side the old Siwash felt the Power that dwelt on Tacoma, protecting and aiding him, or leading him to destruction. Knowing nothing of true worship, his primitive intelligence could imagine God only in things either the most beautiful or the most terrifying; and the more we know the Mountain, the more easily we shall understand why he deemed the majestic peak a factor of his destiny—an infinite force that could, at will, bless or destroy. For to us, too, though we have no illusions as to its supernatural powers, the majestic peak may bring a message. Before me is a letter from an inspiring New England writer, who has well earned the right to appraise life's values. "I saw the great Mountain three years ago," she says; "would that it might ever be my lot to see it again! I love to dream of its glory, and its vast whiteness is a moral force in my life."
Perpetual
And snowy tabernacle of the land,
While purples at thy base this peaceful sea,
And all thy hither slopes in evening bathe,
I hear soft twilight voices calling down
From all thy summits unto prayer and love.
—Francis Brooks: "Mt. Rainier."
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The Mountain, seen from Puyallup River, near Tacoma.
Falls of the Little Mashell River, near Eatonville and the road to the Mountain.
Old Stage Road to Longmire Springs and the National Park Inn, showing the tall, clear trunks of the giant firs.
On Pierce County's splendid scenic road to the Mountain. Passing Ohop Valley.
There are plenty of higher mountains, but it is the decided isolation—the absolute standing alone in full majesty of its own mightiness—that forms the attraction of Rainier. * * * It is no squatting giant, perched on the shoulders of other mountains. From Puget Sound, it is a sight for the gods, and one feels in the presence of the gods.—Paul Fountain: "The Seven Eaglets of the West" (London, 1905).
Cowlitz Chimneys, seen from basin below Frying-Pan Glacier.
The first explorers to climb the Mountain, forty years ago, were compelled to make their way from Puget Sound through the dense growths of one of the world's greatest forests, over lofty ridges and deep canyons, and across perilous glacial torrents. The hardships of a journey to the timber line were more formidable than the difficulties encountered above it.
Even from the East the first railroad to the Coast had just reached San Francisco. Thence the traveler came north to the Sound by boat. The now busy cities of Seattle and Tacoma were, one, an ambitious village of 1,107 inhabitants; the other, a sawmill, with seventy persons living around it. They were frontier settlements, outposts of civilization; but civilization paid little attention to them and their great Mountain, until the railways, some years later, began to connect them with the big world of people and markets beyond the Rockies.
On the way out from Tacoma, over the partly wooded prairie, the automobilist sees many scenes like this old road near Spanaway Lake.
How different the case to-day! Six transcontinental railroads now deliver their trains in the Puget Sound cities. These are: The Northern Pacific, which was the first trunk line to reach the Sound; the Great Northern; the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy; the Chicago, Milwaukee & Puget Sound; the Oregon-Washington (Union Pacific), and the Canadian Pacific. A seventh, the North Coast, is planned.
View Northward from top of Pinnacle Peak in the Tatoosh range to Paradise Valley, Nisqually Glacier and Gibraltar Rock, eight miles away.
Looking Northeast from slope of Pinnacle Peak, across Paradise, Stevens, Cowlitz and Frying Pan Glaciers. These two views form virtually a panorama.
Arriving in Seattle or Tacoma, the traveler has his choice of quick and enjoyable routes to the Mountain. He may go by automobile, leaving either city in the morning. After traveling one of the best and most interesting roads in the country—the only one, in fact, to reach a glacier—he may take luncheon at noon six thousand feet higher, in Paradise Park, overlooking great glaciers and close to the line of eternal snow. Or he may go by the comfortable trains of the Tacoma Eastern (Milwaukee system) to Ashford, fifty-five miles from Tacoma, and then by automobile stages, over a picturesque portion of the fine highway just mentioned, to the National Park Inn at Longmire Springs (altitude 2,762 feet). Lunching there, he may then go on, by coach over the new government road, or on horseback over one of the most inviting mountain trails in America, or afoot, as many prefer. Thus he gains Paradise Park and its far-reaching observation point, Camp of the Clouds (elevation, 5,800 feet). From the Inn, too, another romantic bridle path leads to Indian Henry's famous Hunting Ground, equally convenient as a base of adventure.
Automobile Party above Nisqually Canyon, Pierce County Road to the Mountain.
Prof. O. D. Allen's cottage, in the Forest Reserve, where the former Yale professor has for years studied the flora of the Mountain.
Whether the visitor goes to the Mountain by train or by automobile, his choice will be a happy one. For either route leads through a country of uncommon charm. Each of them, too, will carry the visitor up from the Sound to the great and beautiful region on the southern slopes which includes the Tahoma, Kautz, Nisqually, Paradise and Stevens canyons, with their glaciers and the wonderful upland plateaus or "parks" that lie between.
"Ghost Trees" in Indian Henry's. These white stalks tell of fires set by careless visitors.
Here let him stay a day or a month. Every moment of his time will be crowded with new experiences and packed with enjoyment. For here is sport to last for many months. He may content himself with a day spent in coasting down a steep snow-field in midsummer, snowballing his companions, and climbing Alta Vista to look down on the big Nisqually glacier in the deep bed which it has carved for itself, and up its steep slopes to its névé field on the summit. Or he may explore this whole region at his leisure. He may climb the hard mountain trails that radiate from Longmires and Paradise. He may work up over the lower glaciers, studying their crevasses, ice caves and flow. He will want to ascend some of the tempting crags of the ragged Tatoosh, for the panorama of ice-capped peaks and dark, forested ranges which is there unfolded. After a week or two of such "trying-out," to develop wind and harden muscle, he may even scale the great Mountain itself under the safe lead of experienced guides. He may wander at will over the vast platform left by a prehistoric explosion which truncated the cone, and perhaps spend a night of sensational novelty (and discomfort) in a big steam cave, under the snow, inside a dead crater.
The south side has the advantage of offering the wildest alpine sport in combination with a well-appointed hotel as a base of operations. Hence the majority of visitors know only that side. Everybody should know it, too, for there is not a nobler playground anywhere; but should also know that it is by no means the only side to see.
Government Road in the Forest Reserve.
One may, of course, work around from the Nisqually canyon and Paradise, east or west, to the other glaciers and "parks." It is quite practicable, if not easy, to make the trip eastward from Camp of the Clouds, crossing Paradise, Stevens and Cowlitz glaciers, and thus to reach the huge White glacier on the east side and Winthrop and Carbon glaciers on the north. Every summer sees more and more visitors making this wonderful journey.
But the usual way to reach the great north side, especially for parties which carry camp equipment, is by a Northern Pacific train over the Carbonado branch to Fairfax. This is on Carbon river, five miles from the northwest corner of the National Park. Thence the traveler will go by horse or afoot, over a safe mountain trail, to Spray Park, the fascinating region between Carbon and North Mowich glaciers. Standing here, on such an eminence as Fay Peak or Eagle Cliff, he may have views of the Mountain in its finest aspects that will a thousand times repay the labor of attainment.