The sun rose and shone on us while we breakfasted. Through all the visible sky not a cloud could be seen, and, thanks to yesterday’s rain, the air was of crystal purity. Into it the granite summits above us projected forms of sunlit gray.
Up the glacier valley above camp we slowly tramped through a forest of noble Pinus Flexilis, the trunks of bright sienna contrasting richly with deep bronze foliage.
Minor flutings of a medial moraine offered gentle grade and agreeable footing for a mile and more, after which, by degrees, the woods gave way to a wide, open amphitheatre surrounded with cliffs.
I can never enter one of these great, hollow mountain chambers without a pause. There is a grandeur and spaciousness which expand and fit the mind for yet larger sensations when you shall stand on the height above.
Velvet of alpine sward edging an icy brooklet, by whose margin we sat down, reached to the right and left far enough to spread a narrow foreground, over which we saw a chain of peaks swelling from either side toward our amphitheatre’s head, where, springing splendidly over them all, stood the sharp form of Whitney.
Precipices white with light and snow-fields of incandescent brilliance grouped themselves along walls and slopes. All around us, in wild, huge heaps, lay wrecks of glacier and avalanche.
We started again, passing the last tree, and began to climb painfully up loose débris and lodged blocks of the north wall. From here to the very foot of that granite pyramid which crowns the mountain, we found neither difficulty nor danger, only a long, tedious climb over footing which, from time to time, gave way provokingly.
By this time mist floated around the brow of Mount Whitney, forming a gray helmet, from which, now and then, the wind blew out long, waving plumes. After a brief rest we began to scale the southeast ridge, climbing from rock to rock, and making our way up steep fields of soft snow. Precipices, sharp and severe, fell away to east and west of us, but the rough pile above still afforded a way. We had to use extreme caution, for many blocks hung ready to fall at a touch, and the snow, where we were forced to work up it, often gave way, threatening to hurl us down into cavernous hollows.
When within a hundred feet of the top I suddenly fell through, but, supporting myself by my arms, looked down into a grotto of rock and ice, and out through a sort of window, over the western bluffs, and down thousands of feet to the far-away valley of the Kern.
I carefully and slowly worked my body out, and crept on hands and knees up over steep and treacherous ice-crests, where a slide would have swept me over a brink of the southern precipice.