Clearing the forest, and reaching the open ledges on the crest of the great southeastern ridge of Chocorua, along which the Hammond path runs towards the peak, I saw that a storm was gathering in the west. Piles of thunderheads were rolling up beyond Whiteface and the Sandwich Dome, and tending northward. Chocorua might be too far east to be included in the drenching which was in store. It was not too far away to lose the cool wind which suddenly changed my gasping heat into a shiver. With a quicker pace I pushed towards the foot of the peak.
All but one of the well-marked paths up Chocorua spend too much time in the ravines and woods. It is discouraging to toil mile after mile through uninteresting small growth, without a breath of cool air or a glimpse of distance. The Hammond path cancels nearly half the height of the mountain in the first mile of woodland, and then rewards the climber by successive views which grow more charming as ledge after ledge is passed. While following the top of the slowly rising and scantily wooded ridge, the peak is seen coming nearer and nearer, and growing more and more impressive. Range after range of northern mountains rise above the foreground, and the far horizon widens slowly. When the foot of the peak is finally reached, shutting out for a time all that is grandest in the view, the climber feels that he must scale those forbidding cliffs, whatever becomes of him when the final struggle is over. So I felt as, at about half past six, I gained the top of the mountain’s shoulder and looked up at the huge rock which forms its awful head. The eastern side of the peak is so precipitous that few have the temerity even to try to scale it. The southern side is broken into smaller cliffs, between which tufts of spruces grow. In winter this face is quite readily climbed upon the packed snow, but in summer wide sloping ledges polished by ice make the way difficult and dangerous to the novice. A few score rods to the west, yet still on the southern face of the peak, there is a rift in the cliffs filled with small trees and fragments of rock. This cleft leads straight upwards to a small sandy plateau on the west side of the peak, two thirds of the way to its summit. As I struggled up this almost perpendicular ravine, I heard the steady roar of thunder, and saw above me black clouds surging across the sky. It would have been dark had not the south been filled with silvery light and hazy sunset glory. A black-mouthed cave upon my right offered a refuge. Hedgehogs lived in it, but its outer chamber would be storm-proof. Should I wait? No, storm or no storm, I would gain the peak, and do my part to keep my tryst with the stars.
THE PEAK OF CHOCORUA FROM THE HAMMOND TRAIL
Stumbling out of the ravine upon the plateau, I faced the north. A picture was there which made the memory of Doré’s strongest delineations of Dante’s visions seem weak. On my right was an upright wall of black rock, on my left an abyss. Northward, before me, lay that wilderness of forests and peaks which forms the White Mountains, thirty miles square of spruce forests, and all of it on edge,—a sierra forbidding at its best, but now made terrible by a tempest. The higher heavens were filled with loose, rounded black clouds with white spaces between them. Below them, impending over a belt of country about ten miles north of me, was a very long but narrow cloud, black as ink, with a clean-cut lower edge as straight as a level. From it forked lightning was playing downward. The outlines of the mountains were singularly clear. I could see, beginning at the right, the Presidential Range, the Crawford Notch, Anderson, Nancy, Lowell, the Carrigain Notch, Carrigain; and then, partly obscured by rain, the Franconia Mountains and the nearer heights of Tripyramid and its neighbors. Just over Tripyramid, reaching nearly to the zenith, was an opening in the clouds, a narrow space between two storms. It was clear gold within, but hideous black profiles were outlined against it, as though the fiends of one storm were looking across it at their allied hosts in the second bank of clouds now hurrying upward from the southwest.
Turning sharply to the right, I found and climbed the rough path leading up the rocks to the highest point on the peak. Three thousand feet below me, in that peaceful valley by the lake, was my home. I could just see its red roof among the trees. Wind ripples were chasing each other across the lake, marring its white surface. The lake is heart-shaped, and my cottage rests at the tip. No storm impended over those whom I had left behind, but the voice of the thunder reminded me of what was passing to the northward.
Under the long level black cloud, from which zigzag lightning darted downward like a snake’s tongue, were three zones of color. The first, nearest the east, and at the head of the storm as it moved forward, was gray. It was formed of scud. The second was black, and from it shot most of the lightning. The third was snowy white shaded by perpendicular lines. This was the rain. Each belt seemed to be two miles or more in width, and the whole was moving about twenty miles an hour. When I reached the peak, Carrigain Notch was just passing under the scud, and as I watched, Lowell, Anderson, and Nancy were in turn obscured. By the time Mount Nancy was covered, Carrigain and its notch were reappearing. Meanwhile, the golden gap in the clouds had closed, and the second storm was approaching. Its course was such as to take in Chocorua, Paugus, and the Swift River intervale which lay just below me on the north. Wild as the first storm made the northern sky, the second one seemed bent upon making the picture even more gloomy. It was the moment of sunset, but the sun was lost in a wilderness of thunder-clouds. Suddenly a sound clear and sweet came to me. It was the first sound, save thunder and wind, that I had heard since reaching the peak. A long, pure note, followed by one much higher, repeated several times, formed the song of my companion on the heights. It was the farewell to the day of a white-throated sparrow, that sweetest singer of the mountain peaks. A feeling of forlornness which had been creeping over me was dispelled. Let the storm come; I was ready for it.
Not many rods below the peak, on the very verge of the eastern crag, stands an enormous detached rock, roughly cubical in shape, and at least twenty feet in each dimension. This rock, which is known as “the Cow,” rests upon a narrow shelf having a saucer-shaped depression about fifteen feet in diameter in its upper surface. The Cow projects slightly beyond the outer edge of the ledge, but at the point where it projects the concavity of the under granite leaves a space exactly eighteen inches in height and several feet long, which admits light into the hollow beneath the Cow.
“THE COW”