ing an insanely
irregular staircase, over block after block of rock. The stream dropped over
sheer falls, bounded along debris-choked channels, rolled under arls of rock.
In most cases we could climb around the unassailable falls at their broken
edges. Once we had to leave the canyon entirely, and laboriously bushwhack
along the ridge above a series of abrupt falls. We lost time and patience as we
jerked our packs through the malevolent brush.
The sun didn't appear till
after eight in the morning, and its meek November rays scarcely penetrated the
deeply gashed north-facing canyon. It was rather discouraging to see the sun
set at 10 a.m., rise again feebly and briefly, and disappear behind the craggy
far-off summit for the final time at noon. Yet all day we could see it shining
warmly in the desert valley, casting beautiful topographic shadows on all the
erosion patterns of the opposite range, which dropped and widened and spread in
brownish-purple and red hues beneath us.
The air was cold. I knew it was
cold by the stiffness of my face, and my lower jaw, and by how dulled we became
the instant we paused to rest. But climbing hour after hour, up a 45-degree
slope, stepping perpetually up and up unevenly heaped and ill-assorted boulders
or inching up steep broken faces, carrying a pack which however light chafes
the shoulders and pulls one off balance and makes the neck ache-such climbing
warms one up. We weren't cold.
An Adventure in
Solitude As a matter of fact, the whole thing
didn't seem at the time like much of an undertaking. In the mountains it is
natural to accept things as they come, lightheartedly and with a trace of
amusement at alleged hardships. One forgets almost as if they had never existed
the trivia of ordinary existence. Lightly I climbed, breathing deeply, often
pausing to look all about me, enjoying the exhilarating air, the physical
exertion, the adventure of it, the quiet that was so deep I could listen to it,
the mountains and rocks and ice.
The creek was frozen tight all the way up.
There were the most wonderful ice formations, Many of them were Death
Valley-like, grotesque. At first there were ragged glass-like crusts of clear
ice along living water. Later, the whole canyon was silent and dead and gray,
with no motion or sound in the stream. The creek poured over rock faces in
icefalls 30 and 40 feet high. It bubbled up in knobby sheets of clear ice, or
odious white bulbs of frost. There were icicles like leaves, with stems,
icicles like electric light globes, icicles stalagmitic and stalactitic, and
plain icicles suspended from eaves of rock. George thought ice handholds
were |
warmer than the
rocks, but I cast my vote in favor of rock.
Among the dead rock and ice,
there were a few fuzzy purple flowers and scarlet-buglers, their leaves and
blossoms black and limp with cold. An occasional golden willow foamed up
against the dull mountainside. A rich bed of ferns spread brightly green under
a gigantic, black-stained chock stone. We were utterly remote, in time and
being, in thought and desire, from everything but Snow creek.
Sardines for
Lunch We rested once and ate sardines and
rye-crisp for lunch. We were hungrier than we had expected. On long strenuous
climbs, especially in high altitudes, one rarely wants much to eat, and in fact
cannot climb on a full stomach. I gnawed tough dried apricots most of the way
up. enjoying their tang.
In mid-afternoon, we came to a place where the
creek gushed out of a mountainous pile of rocks and dirt like a spring,
apparently our last water. We filled our canteens and climbed on, up the more
and more abrupt, boulder-choked canyon, now quite dry. No longer could we see
our course before us to the sky. We hadn't any idea how far it was to the top.
We knew, as we had known all day, that we couldn't possibly reach the summit by
night-fall. As it grew late, we worked our way up on the ridge, a wilderness of
rocks, and wind-warped golden-trunked tamarack pines. We cherished and planned
and discussed the numbered minutes left before dark. We decided to bivouac
until the moon rose.
Half an hour before dark I grew terribly weary. The
ridge was as rocky as the creek bed. My legs were so tired with lifting me up
and up rock steps. My shoulders ached. By this time, we were fighting the
breathlessness of high altitudes, as well as weariness and cold and endless
stepping up rocks, and not knowing how far we had to go. Most places one goes,
one climbs, and climbs, and night comes on, and one reaches his destination.
Not so Snow creek! I was suddenly quite appalled at where I had come entirely
under my own power - and nothing on earth would get me out but my own power,
either.
But even as a person is so constituted that when he is physically
comfortable, he can't remember with any vividness what it is like to be cold or
hungry or in pain, so, as soon as I sat down on a rock to catch my breath, and
the tiredness flowed out of my muscles, my good spirits rushed back. If people
weren't made like that, I suppose mountains would remain unclimbed.
A broad
band of deep pink crossed the northern sky. At 5:15, just as darkness dropped
swiftly and completely over us, |
we walked into the
only camp spot on the whole north face of San Jacinto, so far as I could see,
There were actually flat places - the first we had seen all day - commodious
flat places covered deeply with dry, elastic pine-needles; huge angular blocks
of granite piled about and above us to cut off any wind; tall trees silhouetted
against the deep. blue, starry night sky: funds of firewood.
George built
one of his admirable one-match fires, and we drooped over it in a stupor,
limbering up our hands swollen with the cold. We were in that extreme of
exhaustion where one is quite content to sit in an uncomfortable position
rather than make the supreme effort necessary to move a hand or straighten out
a cramped leg or neck, where one would almost rather see the fire go Out than
exert himself to lay on a convenient stick of wood.
I don't know how cold it
was. It was cold in such a quiet. insidious way that we hardly noticed it.
There wasn't a hint of wind, it was frostlessly dry. Yet the violent tumultuous
creek had been frozen solid, thousands of feet below, at midday. The previous
night, air-pilots in the pass had estimated two above zero on the peak. The
canteen beside the fire was ice-filled. The tea-bag not two feet from the
flames was frozen to the rock that supposedly was reflecting what heat we
had.
Finally we worked up enough energy to heat some of our meager supply of
water, and frugally, appreciatively, we sipped boiling hot bullion, and hot
cups of delicious, heavily- sweetened tea, and savored my can of corned-beef
hash, salty and moist and good.
George Huddles by
Fire Then I crawled into the sleeping-bag I had
carried so far, and under a great sloping wedge of granite went to sleep. It
was so warm and comfortable there, so beautiful and silent arid remote! The
firelight flickered rosily on the rocks about me, and I could look up between
huge angles of granite to the sky. Turned on my other side, I could see the
deep glow of the campfire, and the trees against the stars beyond. I felt only
mildly guilty about George. who huddled by the fire wrapped in his auto-robe,
and occasionally remarked morosely. "Ruth! Ruth! We've got to be moving!" Next
morning he confessed he wasn't really cold, but merely worried about being
cold. I slept soundly, and when I wasn't asleep, pretended to be, so George
wouldn't try to make me get up.
At 2:20 a. m. I emerged reluctantly from my
bag. What an hour to rise! I put on my shoes and hurriedly ate the scorched
remains of the hash. We struggled into all the sweaters, scarfs, jackets,
headgear and mittens we had left off be- |