Here was a soft carpet of dainty cedar moss, wonderfully fronded and luxuriant, covering everything,—rocks, roots and the trunks of ancient trees that had fallen one across another for unnumbered centuries. It was like a miniature of the close-set tangle of downwood and growing timber that one sees in the Puget Sound country. There for miles one may make progress through the wood only by clambering along one fallen trunk to the next, perhaps twenty feet in air. Here the fallen trunks and growing trees were not one-tenth the size of the Pacific coast giants, but the proportion and condition was the same. And so up through this fairyland I scrambled and plunged, following a deer path as best I might and longing for their sure-footed ability to leap lightly over obstacles. I daresay my clattering plunges drove all the deer off the mountain. At least I saw none, though their paths intersected and their hoof-marks had dented them all recently. Stairs Mountain is certainly the house of a thousand staircases. All through my climb I found detached stairs scattered about, and the mountain seems to be largely built of them, from a few feet to a few hundred feet in height.
And after all I came out, not at the top of the highest front stair, but at the top of that side stair that looks directly down on the old lumber camp. A half mile or less southeast of me were the front stairs, and I had to go down an internal flight and climb again before reaching their top, passing again through forest primeval criss-crossed by deer paths. The yellow-headed woodpecker had given me a pretty scramble, but I think it was worth it.
"From the top tread of the Giant's Stairs one sees half of the mountain world, the half to southward"
From a distance I had thought Stairs Mountain to be fractured slate. Instead it is moulded granite. The edge of the tread on the topmost stair is of a stone that seems as hard and dense as any that comes out of the Quincy quarries. Yet still clinging to it in places are remnants of a crumbly granite that seems once to have been poured over it and cooled there in a friable mass. You may kick this overlying granite to pieces with your hob-nailed mountain shoe, and I fancy once it filled the gap between the topmost tread and the summit of Mount Resolution, just to the south, and has been frost riddled and water worn away leaving the solid granite of the stairs behind.
From the topmost of the Giant's Stairs one sees but half the mountain world,—the half to southward. All the north is cut off by the spruce-covered round of the summit behind him. Eastward was the great bulk of Iron Mountain, over which I had come, its round top so far below me that I could see the whole of the perfect cone of Kearsarge over it. Directly south was the half bald dome of Resolution, and just over it the equilateral pyramid of Chocorua dented the sky. Wonderfully blue and far away it looked, and to its right was stretched the varied sky-line of the whole Sandwich Range. To the right again was a mighty wilderness of mountains, cones and billows and ranges massed in together in almost inextricable confusion, though out of this rose certain peaks one could not fail to recognize,—Carrigain, stately and a bit apart in dignified reserve, and the great blue wall of the Franconia Range, diminished by distance but beautiful and impressive still. Almost at my feet, down the Crawford Notch, crept a train along the thin, straight line of the railroad. A puff of white steam shot upward from the engine whistling for the Frankenstein trestle, but it was long before the shrill sound rose to my ears. Nothing could so well emphasize the immensity of the prospect before me. I realized that the brakeman was walking through the observation car shouting, "Giant's Stairs! Giant's Stairs now on your left!" and that the mighty cliff on whose verge I was perched seemed no more than a letter on the printed page to the onlooking crowd.
The way home lies down the west side of the mountain, the steep but good Davis trail to and along the bottom of the lower stair, thence to the west side of the ridge between Stairs Mountain and Mount Resolution. Then a trail east, very slender but distinguishable, goes to the broad highway of a logging road, and thence the descent, though precipitous, is easy. The Stairs Mountain is so different from anything else that one can find in this region that it has an eerie individuality all its own. To look back as I went on down the logging road was to see the stairs standing out against the glow of the lowering sun, less like steps than gigantic rock faces. The lower one particularly looked as if a giant himself, wild-eyed and bristly haired, was lying behind the forest with his great head leaned against the mighty granite cliff that towered above. And so I left him, waiting doubtless to devour the next lone climber who, if he goes up the front stairs, must pass directly in front of his jaws. For all that I hesitate to advise the back stairs route to which the yellow-headed woodpecker led me. It is rough—and chancey.
XVII
ON MOUNT LAFAYETTE
Glimpses of Coming Autumn from Franconia's Highest Peak