Never was a discovery more welcome! Hastening forward, we both exclaimed, as we warmed our benumbed extremities over one of Pluto's fires, that here we would pass the night, secure against freezing to death, at least.... A deep cavern extended under the ice. Forty feet within its mouth we built a wall of stones around a jet of steam. Inclosed within this shelter, we ate our lunch and warmed ourselves at our natural register. The heat at the orifice was too great to bear for more than an instant. The steam wet us, the smell of sulphur was nauseating, and the cold was so severe that our clothes froze stiff when turned away from the heated jet. We passed a miserable night, freezing on one side and in a hot steam-sulphur bath on the other.
In October of the same year, S. F. Emmons and A. D. Wilson, of the Geological Survey, reached the snow-line by way of the Cowlitz valley and glacier, and ascended the peak over the same route which Stevens and Van Trump had discovered and which has since been the popular path to Crater Peak. The Kautz route, by the cleaver between Kautz and Nisqually glaciers, has recently been found practicable, though extremely difficult. In 1891 and again the next summer, Mr. Van Trump made an ascent along the ridge dividing the Tahoma glaciers. In 1905, Raglan Glascock and Ernest Dudley, members of the Sierra Club party visiting the Mountain, climbed the Kautz glacier, and finding their way barred by ice cascades, reached the summit by a thrilling rock climb over the cliff above the South Tahoma glacier. This precipice (see p. [37]) they found to be a series of rock terraces, often testing the strength and nerve of the climbers. In Sunset Magazine for November, 1895, Mr. Glascock has told the story of their struggle and reward.
Spray Falls, a splendid scenic feature of the north side, where it drops more than five hundred feet from the Spray Park table-land into the canyon of North Mowich Glacier.
Copyright, 1909, By Asahel Curtis.
Here the basalt terminated, and a red porous formation began, which crumbled in the hand. This part of the cliff lay a little out from the perpendicular, and there was apparently no way of surmounting it. I looked at my watch. It was 4:15. In a flash the whole situation came to me. It would be impossible to return and cross the crevasses before dark. We could not stay where we were. Already the icy wind cut to the bone.
"We must make it. There is no going back," I said to Dudley. I gave him the ice ax, and started to the ascent of the remaining cliff. I climbed six feet, and was helpless. I could not get back, nor go forward. One of my feet swung loose, and I felt my hands slipping. Then I noticed above me, about six or eight inches to my right a sharp, projecting rock. It was here or never. I gave a swing, and letting go my feet entirely, I reached the rock. It held, and I was swinging by my hands over a two-hundred-foot void. I literally glued myself to the face of the rock, searching frantically for knob or crevasse with my feet. By sheer luck, my toe found a small projection, and from here I gradually worked myself up until I came to a broken cleft in the cliff where it was possible to brace myself and lower the rope to Dudley. This last ascent had only been fifteen feet, and, in reality, had taken but three or four minutes, but to me it seemed hours.
At 7:45, we reached the summit of the south peak. Here we stopped to look down on Camp Sierra. Long shadows spread their mantle across the glaciers, and in the east lay the phantom mountain—the shadow of Rainier. A flash of light attracted our attention. We saw that our companions had been watching our progress.
