Sluiskin, an Indian celebrity whom they employed as a guide, led the young men the longest and hardest way, taking them over the Tatoosh mountains instead of directly up the Nisqually and Paradise canyons. From the summit of that range, they at last looked across the Paradise valley, and beheld the great peak "directly in front, filling up the whole view with an indescribable aspect of magnitude and grandeur." Below them lay "long green ridges projected from the snow belt, with deep valleys between, each at its upper end forming the bed of a glacier."
The Mountaineers building trail on the lateral moraine of Carbon Glacier. Without such trails, the "tenderfoot" would fare badly.
Descending from the Tatoosh, the explorers camped near a waterfall which they named Sluiskin Falls, in honor of their guide. Sluiskin now endeavored, in a long oration, to dissuade them from their folly. Avalanches and winds, he said, would sweep them from the peak, and even if they should reach the summit, the awful being dwelling there would surely punish their sacrilege. Finding his oratory vain, he chanted a dismal dirge till late in the night, and next morning took solemn leave of them.
The Mountaineers lunching in a crevasse on White Glacier, 13,000 feet above the sea, on their ascent in 1909. Even Little Tahoma, on the left, is far below.
Stevens describes their ascent by the now familiar path, over Cowlitz Cleaver and past Gibraltar. From the top of that "vast, square rock embedded in the side of the Mountain," they turned west over the upper snow-fields, and thus first reached the southern peak, which they named "Peak Success," to commemorate their victory.
This is a long, exceedingly sharp, narrow ridge, springing out from the main dome for a mile into mid-air. On the right, the snow descended in a steep, unbroken sheet into the tremendous basin which lies between the southern and the northern peaks, and which is enclosed by them as by two mighty arms.[6] Sheltered behind a pinnacle of ice, we fastened our flags upon the Alpine staffs, and then, standing erect in the furious blast, waved them in triumph with three cheers.