From Philo Falls we ascended still higher, by following partially snow-filled lanes between the long lateral moraines that have been left by the shrinking of Carbon Glacier, and found three parallel, sharp-crested ridges about a mile long and from 100 to 150 feet high, made of bowlders and stones of all shapes, which record the former positions of the glacier. Along the western border of the oldest and most westerly of these ridges there is a valley, perhaps 100 yards wide, intervening between the abandoned lateral moraine and the western side of the valley, which rises in precipices to forest-covered heights at least 1,000 feet above. Between the morainal ridges there are similar narrow valleys, each of which at the time of our visit, July 15, was deeply snow-covered. The ridges are clothed with spruce and cedar trees, together with a variety of shrubs and flowering annuals. The knolls rising through the snow are gorgeous with flowers. A wealth of purple Bryanthus, resembling purple heather, and of its constant companion, if not near relative, the Cassiope, with white, waxy bells, closely simulating the white heather, make glorious the mossy banks from which the lingering snow has but just departed. Acres of meadow land, still soft with snow water and musical with rills and brooks flowing in uncertain courses over the deep, rich turf, are beautiful with lilies, which seemed woven in a cloth of gold about the borders of the lingering snow banks. We are near the upper limit of timber growth, where park-like openings, with thickets of evergreens, give a special charm to the mountain side. The morainal ridge nearest the glacier is forest-covered on its outer slope, while the descent to the glacier is a rough, desolate bank of stones and dirt. The glacier has evidently but recently shrunk away from this ridge, which was formed along its border by stones brought from a bold cliff that rises sheer from the ice a mile upstream. Standing on the morainal ridge overlooking the glacier, one has to the eastward an unobstructed view of the desolate and mostly stone and dirt covered ice. Across the glacier another embankment can be seen, similar to the one on the west, and, like it, recording a recent lowering of the surface of the glacier of about 150 feet. Beyond the glacier are extremely bold and rugged mountains, scantily clothed with forests nearly to their summits. The position of the timber line shows that the bare peaks above are between 8,000 and 9,000 feet high. Looking southward, up the glacier, we have a glimpse into the wild amphitheater in which it has its source. The walls of the great hollow in the mountain side rise in seemingly vertical precipices about 4,000 feet high. Far above is a shining, snow-covered peak, which Willis named the Liberty Cap. It is one of the culminating points of Mount Rainier, but not the actual summit. Its elevation is about 14,300 feet above the sea. Toward the west the view is limited by the forest-covered morainal ridges near at hand and by the precipitous slopes beyond, which lead to a northward-projecting spur of Mount Rainier, known as the Mother Mountains. This, our first view of Mount Rainier near at hand, has shown that the valley down which Carbon Glacier flows, as well as the vast amphitheater in which it has its source, is sunk in the flanks of the mountain. To restore the northern slope of the ancient volcano as it existed when the mountain was young we should have to fill the depression in which the glacier lies at least to the height of its bordering ridges. On looking down the glacier we see it descending into a vast gulf bordered by steep mountains, which rise at least 3,000 feet above its bottom. This is the canyon through which the water formed by the melting of the glacier escapes. To restore the mountain this great gulf would also have to be filled. Clearly the traveler in this region is surrounded by the records of mighty changes. Not only does he inquire how the volcanic mountain was formed, but how it is being destroyed. The study of the glaciers will do much toward making clear the manner in which the once smooth slopes have been trenched by radiating valleys, leaving mountain-like ridges between.
Another line of inquiry which we shall find of interest as we advance is suggested by the recent shrinkage of Carbon Glacier. Are all of the glaciers that flow from the mountain wasting away? If we find this to be the case, what climatic changes does it indicate?
From our camp among the morainal ridges by the side of Carbon Glacier we made several side trips, each of which was crowded with observations of interest. One of these excursions, made by Mr. Smith and myself, was up the snow fields near camp; past the prominent outstanding pinnacles known as the Guardian Rocks, one red and the other black; and through Spray Park, with its thousands of groves of spire-like evergreens, with flower-enameled glades between. On the bare, rocky shoulder of the mountain, where the trees now grow, we found the unmistakable grooves and striations left by former glaciers. The lines engraved in the rock lead away from the mountain, showing that even the boldest ridges were formerly ice-covered. Our route took us around the head of the deep canyon through which flows Cataract Creek. In making this circuit we followed a rugged saw-tooth crest, and had some interesting rock-climbing. Finally, the sharp divide between Cataract Creek and a small stream flowing westward to Crater Lake was reached, and a slide on a steep snow slope took us quickly down to where the flowers made a border of purple and gold about the margins of the snow. Soon we were in the forest, and gaining a rocky ledge among the trees, could look down on Crater Lake, deeply sunk in shaggy mountains which still preserve all of their primitive freshness and beauty. Snow lay in deep drifts beneath the shelter of the forest, and the lake was ice-covered except for a few feet near the margin. This was on July 20. I have been informed that the lake is usually free of ice before this date, but the winter preceding our visit was of more than usual severity, the snowfall being heavy, and the coming of summer was therefore much delayed.
The name Crater Lake implies that its waters occupy a volcanic crater. Willis states that Nature has here placed an emerald seal on one of Pluto's sally ports; but that the great depression now water-filled is a volcanic crater is not so apparent as we might expect. The basin is in volcanic rock, but none of the characteristics of a crater due to volcanic explosions can be recognized. The rocks, so far as I saw them, are massive lavas, and not fragmental scoriæ or other products of explosive eruptions. On the bold, rounded rock ledges down which we climbed in order to reach the shore, there were deep glacial scorings, showing that the basin was once deeply filled with moving ice. My observations were not sufficiently extended to enable me to form an opinion as to the origin of the remarkable depression, but whatever may have been its earlier history, it has certainly been profoundly modified by ice erosion.
Following the lake shore southward, groping our way beneath the thick, drooping branches which dip in the lake, we reached the notch in the rim of the basin through which the waters escape and start on their journey to Mowich River and thence to the sea. We there found the branch of the Willis trail leading to Spray Park, and turned toward camp. Again we enjoyed the luxury of following a winding pathway through silent colonnades formed by the moss-grown trunks of noble trees. On either side of the trail worn in the brown soil the ferns and flowering shrubs were bent over in graceful curves, and at times filled the little-used lane, first traversed fifteen years before.
The trail led us to Eagle Cliff, a bold, rocky promontory rising as does El Capitan from the Yosemite, 1,800 feet from the forest-lined canyon of Mowich River. From Eagle Cliff one beholds the most magnificent view that is to be had in all the wonderful region about Mount Rainier. The scene beheld on looking eastward toward the mighty mountain is remarkable alike for its magnificence and for the artistic grouping of the various features of the sublime picture. In the vast depths at one's feet the tree-tops, through which the mists from neighboring cataracts are drifting, impart a somber tone and make the valley's bottom seem far more remote than it is. The sides of the canyon are formed by prominent serrate ridges, leading upward to the shining snow fields of the mighty dome that heads the valley. Nine thousand feet above our station rose the pure white Liberty Cap, the crowning glory of the mountain as seen from the northward. The snow descending the northwest side of the great central dome is gathered between the ridges forming the sides of the valley, and forms a white névé from which flows Willis Glacier. In looking up the valley from Eagle Cliff the entire extent of the snow fields and of the river-like stream of ice flowing from them is in full view. The ice ends in a dirt-covered and rock-strewn terminus, just above a huge rounded dome that rises in its path. In 1881 the ice reached nearly to the top of the dome and broke off in an ice cliff, the detached blocks falling into the gulf below. The glacier has now withdrawn its terminus well above the precipice where it formerly fell as an ice cascade, and its surface has shrunk away from well-defined moraines in much the same manner as has already been noted in the case of Carbon Glacier. A more detailed account of the retreat of the extremity of Willis Glacier [25] will be given later.
From Eagle Cliff we continued our tramp eastward along the trail leading to Spray Park, climbed the zigzag pathway up the face of a cliff in front of Spray Falls, and gained the picturesque and beautiful parklike region above. An hour's tramp brought us again near the Guardian Rocks. A swift descent down the even snow fields enabled us to reach camp just as the shadows of evening were gathering in the deeper canyons, leaving the silent snow fields above all aglow with reflected sunset tints.
Taking heavy packs on our backs on the morning of July 21, we descended the steep broken surface of the most recent moraine bordering Carbon Glacier in its middle course, and reached the solid blue ice below. Our course led us directly across the glacier, along the lower border of the rapidly melting covering of winter snow. The glacier is there about a mile across. Its central part is higher than its border, and for the most part the ice is concealed by dirt and stones. Just below the névé, however, we found a space about half a mile long in which melting had not led to the concentration of sufficient débris to make traveling difficult. Farther down the glacier, where surface melting was more advanced, the entire glacier, with the exception of a few lanes of clear ice between the ill-defined medial moraines, was completely concealed beneath a desolate sheet of angular stones. On reaching the east side of the glacier we were confronted with a wall of clay and stones, the inner slope of a moraine similar in all respects to the one we had descended to reach the west border of the glacier. A little search revealed a locality where a tongue of ice in a slight embayment projected some distance up the wall of morainal material, and a steep climb of 50 or 60 feet brought us to the summit. The glacier has recently shrunk—that is, its surface has been lowered from 80 to 100 feet by melting.
On the east side of the glacier we found several steep, sharp-crested ridges, clothed with forest trees, with narrow, grassy, and flower-strewn dells between, in which banks of snow still lingered. The ridges are composed of bowlders and angular stones of a great variety of sizes and shapes, and are plainly lateral moraines abandoned by the shrinking of the glacier. Choosing a way up one of the narrow lanes, bordered on each side by steep slopes densely covered with trees and shrubs, we found secure footing in the hard granular snow, and soon reached a more open, parklike area, covered with mossy bosses of turf, on which grew a great profusion of brilliant flowers. Before us rose the great cliffs which partially inclose the amphitheater in which Carbon Glacier has its source. These precipices, as already stated, have a height of about 4,000 feet, and are so steep that the snow does not cling to them, but descends in avalanches. Above the cliffs, where the inclination is less precipitous, the snow lies in thick layers, the edges of which are exposed in a vertical precipice rising above the avalanche-swept rock-slope below. Far above, and always the central object in the wild scenery surrounding us, rose the brilliant white Liberty Cap, one of the pinnacles on the rim of the great summit crater. Our way then turned eastward, following the side of the mountain, and led us through a region just above the timber line, which commands far reaching views to the wild and rugged mountains to the northeast. This open tract, leading down to groves of spruce trees and diversified by charming lakelets, bears abundant evidence of having formerly been ice-covered, and is known as Moraine Park.
In order to retain our elevation we crossed diagonally the steep snow slopes in the upper portion of the Moraine Park. Midway over the snow we rested at a sharp crest of rock, and found that it is composed of light-colored granite. Later we found that much of the area between the Carbon and Winthrop glaciers is composed of this same kind of rock. Granite forms a portion of the border of the valley through which flow the glaciers just named, and furnished them with much granitic débris, which is carried away as moraines and later worked over into well-rounded bowlders by the streams flowing from the ice. The presence of granite pebbles in the course of Carbon and White rivers, far below the glaciers, is thus accounted for.