We kept to the granite as much as possible, Pinson taking one train of blocks and I another. Above us but thirty feet rose a crest, beyond which we saw nothing. I dared not think it the summit till we stood there and Mount Whitney was under our feet.
Close beside us a small mound of rock was piled upon the peak, and solidly built into it an Indian arrow-shaft, pointing due west.
I climbed out to the southwest brink, and, looking down, could see that fatal precipice which had prevented me seven years before. I strained my eyes beyond, but already dense, impenetrable clouds had closed us in.
On the whole, this climb was far less dangerous than I had reason to hope. Only at the very crest, where ice and rock are thrown together insecurely, did we encounter any very trying work. The utter unreliableness of that honeycomb and cavernous cliff was rather uncomfortable, and might, at any moment, give the deathfall to one who had not coolness and muscular power at instant command.
I hung my barometer from the mound of our Indian predecessor, nor did I grudge his hunter pride the honor of first finding that one pathway to the summit of the United States, fifteen thousand feet above two oceans.
While we lunched I engraved Pinson’s and my name upon a half dollar, and placed it in a hollow of the crest. Clouds still hung motionless over us, but in half an hour a west wind drew across, drifting the heavy vapors along with it. Light poured in, reddening the clouds, which soon rolled away, opening a grand view of the western Sierra ridge, and of the whole system of the Kern.
Only here and there could blue sky be seen, but, fortunately, the sun streamed through one of these windows in the storm, lighting up splendidly the snowy rank from Kaweah to Mount Brewer.
There they rose as of old, firm and solid; even the great snow-fields, though somewhat shrunken, lay as they had seven years before. I saw the peaks and passes and amphitheatres dear old Cotter and I had climbed: even that Mount Brewer pass where we looked back over the pathway of our dangers, and up with regretful hearts to the very rock on which I sat.
Deep below flowed the Kern, its hundred, snow-fed branches gleaming out amid rock and ice, or traced far away in the great glacier trough by dark lines of pine. There, only twelve miles northwest, stretched that ragged divide where Cotter and I came down the precipice with our rope. Beyond, into the vague blue of King’s cañon, sloped the ice and rock of Mount Brewer wall.
Sombre storm-clouds and their even gloomier shadows darkened the northern sea of peaks. Only a few slant bars of sudden light flashed in upon purple granite and fields of ice. The rocky tower of Mount Tyndall, thrust up through rolling billows, caught for a moment the full light, and then sank into darkness and mist.