The white dawn of a clear day filtered through the blue darkness. Before the sun had climbed over the ridge we were started on our long anticipated adventure. It began with a stiff scramble up the first buttressing ridge, then a long pull to the crest of the barrier that walls the southern side of Wild Rose Canyon. The steep inclines of gravelly rock were varied with ledges. Soon we reached the snow, so hard that steps had to be dug in it with much scuffling of hobnailed shoes. The green trees growing out of the white snow were very lovely, and also useful to hold on to. When they were far apart we had some exciting moments when we zigzagged over the smooth, white crust, which was as steep as a shingled roof. In about two hours we reached the top of the ridge. Until then we had faced the white slope, working too hard to look back very often at the basin that was falling away below us. Suddenly we stood on top. The world opened beyond into an immense white amphitheater shut in by snowy peaks with the pyramid of Telescope, visible once more, at the far side. After the hot, dry sands, how miraculous seemed this glittering winter!
We pressed on toward Baldy along the ridge, which proved to be much steeper than it had looked. It was covered with trees, and great patches of snow grown soft now in the sun. However, by keeping a little below the crest on the southern side most of the snow could be avoided. There the ground fell so precipitously from the ridge to the canyon below that only an occasional tree grew on it, and we had an unimpeded view of the two white summits and the magnificent sweep of snow between them.
Noon brought us to a little saddle north of Baldy, which connects it with another rounded summit of the same name. Here were no trees and the snow was blown off clean. With what eagerness we panted up the last few yards! The mountain climber has his great reward when he "looks over." That is his own peculiar joy. He toils for hours with the ground rising before him to a ridge that seems to cut the sky, only to find a higher one beyond. He surmounts that, and another and another, until at last he gains the highest and the mountains yield their secret. Breathlessly we stood on the little saddle. We looked down into Death Valley from the still height to which we had looked up so long. The white floor shimmered through layers of heated air, 10,000 feet below. Again the valley was different. That day it was full of sky, as the Imperial Valley had been when we first saw it. Nothing was distinguishable down there, it was a well of clear blue. The Funeral Mountains looked like hills. Behind them the jagged ranges of desert mountains spread back with one tall, snowy peak in their midst, Mount Charleston, sixty miles away on the border of Nevada.
Southward on the saddle the mound of Baldy's summit presented its snowy side. For the most part the snow was hard enough for us to walk over the crust, but sometimes we floundered in nearly to the waist. That was hard work. By one o'clock we reached the top where the snow was blown off, leaving bare black rocks. It was a quiet day for the desert and especially for the mountains. A slight wind came from the south; the sky was cloudless, a deep, still blue. Mount Baldy overlooks all the country in a complete panorama, save where the beautiful pyramid of Telescope Peak cuts into the view. The horizon was bounded on three sides by snow mountains, Mount Charleston, the San Bernadinos and the wonderful Sierra Nevada. Between these white barriers spread the desert, deep white valleys, yellow dry lakes, ranges of rose and blue and dark-violet mountains, all shining in the incomparable brightness of the sun.
Now, at last, we saw the famous "H. and L." of which we had heard so much. "You see the highest and the lowest points in the United States at the same time," everybody had told us. From the top of the Panamints we could see Mount Whitney towering in the west, while in the east the mountain sides fall precipitously into Death Valley, 280 feet below sea level. There must be some more accessible viewpoint which commands this dramatic spectacle, for it is not likely that our informants expected us to climb Mount Baldy.
From the summit of Baldy the long curving arête that had looked so beautiful from Death Valley on one side and from Pinto Peak on the other led over to Telescope Peak. It was no disappointment. Sloping sharply down from Baldy, level for a ways, then rising again toward the white pyramid, it extended for about three miles, precipitous on both sides, often not more than ten feet wide on top. The exhilaration of walking thus in the clear air high above the spread-out world is always a boundless joy; on this shining wall in the middle of the desert the joy was almost unbearable. The great plain of the world was clear cut, no veiling haze softened its distances, it flashed and sparkled, full of strong, austere lines and strong, satisfying contrasts. Like a victorious lover, you walk the heights of your conquest; everything to the great circle of the horizon is yours; by right of patience and love you possess it.
If we could only be like the three old cedars that have withstood the hurricanes on the ridge and gaze with them until sunset, through the night and the wonder of morning! They are so gnarled and old, and so calm. Watchers, they stand on the summit of the world, and they might tell us, if we could stay, why the mountain-tops are joyful. Instead, we must drag around these aching bodies clamoring to be kept warm and to be fed, never letting us listen long enough. Already the sun was descending toward the west, and we had to hasten on if we wanted to reach Telescope Peak and get back to fire and food before the cold of night.
When the arête began to rise it became rapidly very steep. The snow became harder and harder until it turned to ice. The lovely pyramid, now directly overhead, shone blindingly in the slanting sun. The only possible way to its peak was up a sharp knife-edge, from which both sides fell sheer for thousands of feet. Was it all solid ice? The conviction that it was had been hinting defeat to each of us for the last half hour of the climb, but no one cared to speak of that possibility until we were within four hundred feet of the top, clinging to trees and slipping badly. The peak rose at a possible, but terrific angle; the trees for the remainder of the way were much too far apart to hold on to; the ice was perfectly smooth, and glistened like a skating rink set on edge. No amount of kicking with hobnailed shoes could make a foothold on it, and one slip on that knife-edge either way meant a slide down the ice-sheet to almost sure destruction. You cannot climb such an ice wall without either an ax or a rope; with either one we would have tried it. We could have cut steps with an ax, or we might have been able to lasso the trees above with a long rope, and pull ourselves up by it. So lately come from the furnace of Death Valley, how should we suppose that we would need the implements of an Alpine mountain-climber? Down, down, more than 11,000 feet, lay that white pit veiled with the smoke of iridescent haze.
The Worrier, who professed deep scorn of all mountains for their own sakes, looked longingly at the smooth peak. It fascinated us all like a hard, glittering jewel. He said he "hated to be beat." So did we all "hate to be beat," but we would have been ungrateful indeed for the joy of that day had we not been able to turn back and remain thankful. There was no sense of defeat in the going-down.
The descent was easy except for the heartbreaking pull up Mount Baldy again. His sides were far too straight up and down to admit of any going around him. On the summit we made a concession to aching bodies by taking a long rest and eating what was left of the bread and cheese and the everlasting prunes. The Worrier had long since dubbed our route "The Prune Stone Trail." We jested light-heartedly about building cairns along it with a prune stone carved on the top of each, and insisted that we owned a half interest in the Prune Stone Mine, as he would never have found it had we not dragged him up Pinto. Mountain-hater as he was and heat-loving "desert-rat," he genially admitted that, snow or no snow, the top of Baldy was "fine." As we sat there Death Valley turned a dark, deep, luminous blue. We could see the Avawatz Mountains by Silver Lake and the notch in the hills where the blue pool of Saratoga cherishes its little darting fish. The slanting sunlight was resplendent on the arête and the west slopes of Telescope Peak. The Worrier called him an old rascal; but we were glad to leave him so, with his white robes unsullied by scrambling feet. His image would remain always to the inward eye in dull days and difficult days, a reminder of how beauty watches around the world.