MOUNT ST. HELENS.

The world was indebted for its first knowledge of Mount St. Helens to Vancouver. Its name is one of the batch which he fastened in 1792 upon our Northwestern landmarks. These honored a variety of persons, ranging from Lord St. Helens, the diplomat, and pudgy Peter Rainier, of the British Admiralty, down to members of the explorer's crew.

"The Mountain that Was 'God'," the great peak which the Indians reverenced and named "Tacoma," seen above the clouds of a rainy day, from the summit of Mount Adams, distant forty miles.

"This," said a well-known lecturer, as the
picture was thrown upon his screen, "is the
scene the angels look down upon!"

The youngest of the Cascade snow-peaks, St. Helens is also the most symmetrical in its form, and to many of its admirers the most beautiful. Unlike Hood and Adams, it does not stand upon the narrow summit of one of the Cascade ranges, but rises west of the main ridges of that system from valley levels about one thousand feet above the sea. Surrounded by comparatively low ridges, it thus presents its perfect and impressive cone for almost its entire height of ten thousand feet.

Northwest slope of Mount Adams, with Adams glacier, three miles long, the largest on the mountain. It has an ice-fall of two thousand feet. The low-lying reservoir of Pinnacle glacier is on extreme right, and the head of Lava glacier on left.

The mountain is set well back from the main traveled roads, in the great forest of southwestern Washington. It is the center of a fine lake and river district which attracts sportsmen as well as mountain climbers. A large company visiting it must carry in supplies and camp equipment, but small parties may find accommodation at Spirit Lake on the north, and Peterson's ranch on Lewis River, south of the peak. The first is four, the second is eight, miles from the snow line. Visitors from Portland, Tacoma or Seattle, bound for the north side, leave the railway at Castle Rock, whence a good automobile road (forty-eight miles) leads to the south side of Spirit Lake. Peterson's may be reached by road from Woodland (forty-five miles) or from Yacolt (thirty miles). Well-marked trails lead from either base to camping grounds at timber line. The mountain is climbed by a long, easy slope on the south, or by a much steeper path on the north.

Like Mount Adams, St. Helens is largely built of lava, but the outflows have been more recent here than upon or near the greater peak. The volcano was in eruption several times between 1830 and 1845. The sky at Vancouver was often darkened, and ashes were carried as far as The Dalles. To these disturbances, probably, are due the great outflows of new lava covering the south and west sides of the mountain, and much of the country between it and the North Fork of Lewis River. 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. The latter, however, derives most of its support from slopes farther to right. Note the huge terminal moraines built by these glaciers in their retreat. Pinnacle glacier is on extreme left.

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Many hours may be spent with interest upon this lava bed. It is an area of the wildest violence, cast in stone. Swift, ropy streams, cascades, whirling eddies, all have been caught in their course. "Devil's Punch Bowl," "Hell's Kitchen," "Satan's Stairway" are suggestive phrases of local description. The underground galleries here are well worth visiting. Tree tunnels and wells abound. Most important of all, the struggle seen everywhere of the forest to gain a foothold on this iron surface illustrates Nature's method of hiding so vast and terrible a callus upon her face. It is evident that the healing of the wound began as soon as the lava cooled, and that, while still incomplete, it is unceasingly prosecuted. (See p. [111].)

The first volcanic dust from the uneasy crater of St. Helens had no sooner lodged in some cleft opened by the contraction of cooling than a spore or seed carried by the wind or dropped by a bird made a start toward vegetation. Failing moisture, and checked by lack of soil, the lichen or grass or tiny shrub quickly yielded its feeble existence in preparation for its successor. The procession of rain and sun encouraged other futile efforts to find rootage. Each of these growths lengthened by its decay the life of the next. With winter came frost, scaling flakes from the hard surface, or penetrating the joints and opening fissures in the basalt. Further refuge was thus made ready for the dust and seeds and moisture of another season. The moss and plants were promoters as well as beneficiaries of this disintegration. Their smallest rootlets found the water in the heart of the rocks, and growing strong upon it, shattered their benefactors.

"And forests ranged like armies, round and round
At feet of mountains of eternal snow;
And valleys all alive with happy sound,—
The song of birds; swift streams' delicious flow;
The mystic hum of million things that grow."—Helen Hunt Jackson.

Soon more ambitious enterprises were undertaken. Huckleberry bushes, fearless even of so unfriendly a surface, started from every depression among the rocks. The first small trees appeared. Weakling pines, dwarf firs and alders, shot up for a few feet of hurried growth in the spring moisture, taking the unlikely chance of surviving the later drought. Here and there a seedling outlasted the long, dry summer, and began to be a real tree. Quickly exhausting its little handful of new earth, the daring upstart must have perished had not the melting snows brought help. They filled the hollows with wash from the higher slopes. The treelets found that their day had come, and seizing upon these rich but shallow soil beds, soon covered them with thickets of spindling lodgepole pines and deciduous brush. Such pygmy forests are at length common upon this great field of torn and decaying rock, and all are making their contributions of humus year by year to the support of future tree giants. These will rise by survival of the fittest as the forest floor deepens and spreads.

Lava Flume south of Mount St. Helens, a tunnel several miles in length, about twenty feet high and fifteen feet wide.

Entrance to Lava Cave shown above. Note strata in roof, showing successive lava flows; also ferns growing from roof.

Telephotograph of Mount St. Helens, from the lower part of Portland, with the summit peaks of Mount Rainier-Tacoma in distance on left, and the Willamette River in foreground.

St. Helens, although much visited, has not yet been officially surveyed or mapped. Its glaciers are not named, nor has the number of true ice-streams been determined. Those on the south and southwest are insignificant. Elsewhere, the glaciers are short and broad, and with one exception, occupy shallow beds. On the southeast, there is a remarkable cleft, shown on page [115], which is doubtless due to volcanic causes rather than erosion, and from which the largest glacier issues. Another typical glacier, distinguished by the finest crevasses and ice-falls on the peak, tumbles down a steep, shallow depression on the north slope, west of the battered parasitic cone of "Black Butte." West of this glacier, in turn, ridges known as the "Lizard" and the "Boot" mark the customary north-side path to the summit. (See p. [118].) Beyond these landmarks, on the west side of the peak, a third considerable glacier feeds South Toutle River. The ravines cut by this stream will repay a visit. (See p. [116].)

Mount St. Helens, seen from Twin Buttes, twenty miles away, across the Cascades. View shows the remarkable cleft or canyon on the southeast face of the peak.

The slopes not covered with new lava sheets and dikes exhibit, below the snow-line, countless bombs hurled up from the crater, with great fields of pumice embedding huge angular rocks that tell a story not written on our other peaks. These hard boulders, curiously different from the soft materials in which they lie, were fragments of the tertiary platform on which the cone was erected. Torn off by the volcano, as it enlarged its bore, they were shot out without melting or change in substance. On every hand is proof that this now peaceful snow-mountain, which resembles nothing else so much as a well-filled saucer of ice cream, had a hot temper in its youth, and has passed some bad days even since the coming of the white man.

The mountain was first climbed in August, 1853, by a party which included the same T. J. Dryer who, a year later, took part in the first ascent of Mount Hood. In a letter to The Oregonian he said the party consisted of "Messrs. Wilson, Smith, Drew and myself." They ascended the south side. The other slopes were long thought too steep to climb, but in 1893 Fred G. Plummer, of Tacoma, now Geographer of the United States Forest Service, ascended the north side. His party included Leschi, a Klickitat Indian, probably the first of his superstitious race to scale a snow-peak. The climbers found evidence of recent activity in two craters on the north slope, and photographed a curious "diagonal moraine," as regular in shape as a railway embankment, which connected the border moraines of a small glacier. The north side has since seen frequent ascents.

Canyons of South Toutle River, west side of St. Helens. These vast trenches in the soft pumice show by their V shape that they have been cut by streams from the glaciers above, rather than by the glaciers themselves, which, on this young peak, have probably never had a much greater extension.

The Mazamas, who had climbed St. Helens from the south in 1898, again ascended it in 1908, climbing by the Lizard and Boot. This outing furnished the most stirring chapter in the annals of American mountaineering.

Lower Toutle Canyon, seen on left above. Note shattered volcanic bomb.

Northeast side of Mount St. Helens, from elevation of 6,000 feet, with Black Butte on the right.

The Mazamas on summit of St. Helens shortly before sunset. The rocks showing above the snow are parts of the rim of the extinct crater. Mount Adams is seen, thirty-five miles away, on the right, while Rainier-Tacoma is forty-five miles north. Photograph taken at 7:15 p. m. The party did not get back to their camp till long after midnight.

The north-side route proved unexpectedly hard. After an all-day climb, the party reached the summit only at seven o'clock. The descent after nightfall required seven hours. The risk was great. Over the collar of ice near the summit, at a grade of more than sixty degrees, the twenty-five men and women slowly crept in steps cut by the leaders, and clutching a single fifty-foot rope. Later came the bombardment of loose rocks, as the party scattered down the slope. I quote from an account by Frank B. Riley, secretary of the club, who was one of the leaders:

The safety of the entire party was in the keeping of each member. One touch of hysteria, one slip of the foot, one instant's loss of self-control, would have precipitated the line, like a row of bricks, on the long plunge down the ice cliff. Eight times the party stood poised on its scanty foothold while the rope was lowered. When, after an hour and a half, its last member stepped in safety upon the rocks, there yet lay before it five hours of work ere the little red eyes below should widen into welcoming campfires.

Over great ridges, down into vast snowfields, for hours they plunged and slid, while scouts ahead shouted back warning of the crevasses. On, out of the icy clutch of the silent mountain, they plodded. And then, at last, the timber, and the fires and the hot drinks and the warm blankets and the springy hemlock boughs!

North side of St. Helens in winter, seen from Coldwater Ridge, overlooking Spirit Lake. Shows the long ridge called "the Lizard," because of its shape, with "the Boot" above it. On the northeast slope is "Black Butte," probably a secondary crater.

St. Helens, north side, seen from one mile below snow line. Note the slight progress made by the forest upon the scant soil of the pumice ridges; also, how greatly the angle of the sides, as viewed here at the foot of the peak, differs from that shown in Dr. Lauman's fine picture taken on Coldwater Ridge, five miles north. Both show the mountain from the same direction, but the near view gives no true idea of its steepness. Black Butte is on the left.

Even this was not the most noteworthy adventure of the outing. One evening, while the Mazamas gathered about their campfire at Spirit Lake, a haggard man dragged himself out of the forest, and told of an injured comrade lying helpless on the other side of the peak. The messenger and two companions—Swedish loggers, all three—had crossed the mountain the morning before. After they gained the summit and began the descent, a plunging rock had struck one of the men, breaking his leg. His friends had dragged him down to the first timber, and while one kept watch, the other had encircled the mountain, in search of aid from the Mazamas.

Immediately a relief party of seven strong men, led by C. E. Forsyth of Castle Rock, Washington, started back over the trailless route by which the messenger had come. All night they scaled ridges, climbed into and out of canyons, waded icy streams. Before dawn they reached the wounded laborer. Mr. Riley says:

It was impossible to carry the man back through the wild country around the peak. Below, the first cabin on the Lewis River lay beyond a moat of forbidding canyons. Above slanted the smooth slopes of St. Helens. Placing the injured man upon a litter of canvas and alpine stocks, they began the ascent of the mountain with their burden. The day dawned and grew old, and still these men crawled upward in frightful, body-breaking struggle. Twelve hours passed, and they had no food and no sleep, save as they fell unconscious downward in the snow, as they did many times, from fatigue and lack of nourishment. At four o'clock, Anderson was again on the summit. Then, without rest, came the descent to the north. Down precipitous cliffs of ice they lowered him, as tenderly as might be; down snow-slopes seared with crevasses, shielding him from the falling rocks; over ridges of ragged lava, until in the deepening darkness of the second night they found themselves again at timber. But in the net-work of canyons they had selected the wrong one, and were lost. Here, at three o'clock, they were found by a second relief party, and guided over a painful five-mile journey home.

Finest of the St. Helens glaciers, north side, with Black Butte on left. It is proposed to call this "Forsyth glacier," in honor of C. E. Forsyth, leader in a memorable rescue.

It was day when camp was reached. In an improvised hospital, a young surgeon, aided by a trained nurse, both Mazamas, quickly set the broken bones. Then they sent their patient comfortably away to the railroad and a Portland hospital. Before the wagon started, Anderson, who had uttered no groan in his two days of agony, struggled to a sitting posture, and searched the faces of all in the crowd about him.

"Ay don't want ever to forget how you look," he said simply; "you who have done all this yust for me."

It is fitting that such an event should be commemorated. With the approval of Mr. Riley and other Mazamas who were present at the time, I would propose that the north-side glacier already described, the most beautiful of the St. Helens ice-streams, be named "Forsyth glacier," in honor of the leader of this heroic rescue.

Ships loading lumber at one of Portland's large mills.