CHAPTER XVI--Tom Goes Up a Two Thousand Foot Wall, With an Alpine Rope,and Learns the Proper Way To Climb
The scouts were up again before five, and hurried to the camp, where thedoctor was still sound asleep.
"Sound is right!" Spider laughed.
But he woke when he heard them getting breakfast, and by the time he wasdressed and breakfast was ready, Mills came up, followed by Popgun andthe packhorse, both saddled.
As soon as breakfast was over, the two men and Tom stowed away in theirpockets the sandwiches Joe made for them, made sure that all the spikeswere in their boots, and swung into the saddle.
"Good-bye, old Joey," Tom called. "Have some good hot dinner ready whenwe get back."
"Yes, and you come back with your neck whole, to eat it," said Joe,waving his hand and watching the three riders trot up the trail in thecool, level, early morning sunlight.
It was a fine, clear day, a real Rocky Mountain day, when you couldalmost see the buttons on a man's coat a quarter of a mile away. And itwas Tom's first trip away from Many Glacier, into the high places,though he had walked around the camp as far as he dared, and evenclimbed a little way up a steep shale pile at the base of the cliffbehind the chalets. However, hikers were apt to show up at any time ofthe day, and he had never been able to venture more than a mile or two.But now he was bound for Iceberg Lake, and then up the very mainprecipice of the Great Divide, the backbone of the continent, with thePark Ranger and a man who had climbed the Matterhorn!
It was only a short ride to Iceberg Lake--about six miles. The trail wasa fine one, of easy grade, and for some distance wound through thewoods, over tumbling brooks, and through beds of wild flowers. Thedoctor seemed as much interested in these flowers as he was in thecoming climb.
"I never saw such a profusion," he kept saying. "So many kinds alltogether, and such beautiful masses of color. Well, well, how little weAmericans know about our own country. Tom, I want you to go back Eastand tell your schoolmates this is a pretty fine land we live in."
"You bet I will--if I go back," said Tom. "I like it so much here I maystay forever, and be a ranger, like Mr. Mills."
"After one winter, you won't like it so much," Mills said.
Gradually the trail climbed above the tall timber, and the view openedout. Tom could see they were headed for a big semicircular amphitheatre,cut into the towering rock walls of the Divide, and before long theyentered the open end of this titanic stadium. It was a wild, beautifulspot. At their feet was a meadow, covered with yellow dog-tooth violetslike gold patterns in a green carpet, and with little pines in it likepeople walking about. On three sides of them, sweeping around in asemicircle at the end, was a vast precipice, seemingly perpendicular,except for the big shale piles at the base. The top of this cliff was a"castellated ridge," the term mountaineers give to a summit which islong and level, but broken into little depressions and towers, like thebattlements of an ancient castle. At the upper end of the amphitheatrelay a round lake, about half a mile across, and at the upper end ofthat, right under the shadow of the head wall, was the glacier.
This glacier, snow covered on top, showed a thirty foot wall of greenice on the upright edge, and chunks of this ice were constantly breakingoff and floating away in the green water. Hence the name Iceberg Lake.
They rode right up to the shore, and Mills took the horses into a littleclump of trees, where there was some grass also, and tethered them.
"Now," said he, coming back, "to the job. There's the cliff."
He led the way, with long easy strides, around the right hand side ofthe lake, through steep rough going, without any path and amid stubborntimber-line evergreens, till he reached the base of a huge shale andsnowslide that stretched right up at an angle of about fifty degrees,Tom estimated, to the base of the jagged precipice. Looking up thisshale slide to the towering cliff above, Tom saw the staggering taskahead of them--and his heart went down into his spiked boots for aminute. He could see how they could get up part way, all right, for atfirst it wasn't quite perpendicular, and it was full of ledges. But thenthere seemed to be a sheer rise, with not even a toe hold--"and if youfell--good-night!" he whispered to himself.
But Mills and Dr. Kent were studying the cliff quite calmly.
"I've seen the goats come down to that snow-field at the top of thisshale, half a dozen times," the Ranger was saying, "and go back the sameway. If we can find their trail, I guess we can make it, though they'lluse an awful narrow ledge sometimes. They get into one or the other ofthose two big gullies, too, on the way back."
"There seems to be ample footing," the doctor remarked.
There did not seem to be any footing to poor Tom, but he did not say so.If they were going up, he was! But those two thousand feet of rockdidn't look much like the three hundred foot slope the scouts used toclimb back in Southmead. It was the Great Divide in a single jump, andTom felt about as small as a fly must feel on the side of the WashingtonMonument--and a good deal more helpless, because the fly has suckers onhis feet, and wings beside.
Iceberg Lake and Glacier]
Mills now led the way up the shale pile, just a smooth, insecure slideof sharp, broken stone, mostly in small, irregular, flat piecessomething like rotten slate. It wasn't as slippery as a pile of coalwould be, of course, but there was a good deal of tiresome back-slideunder one's feet, none the less.
Close to the top was a snow-field, and Mills examined it.
"They've been here--within a day," he announced, pointing to fresh hooftracks, and also pointing to spots where the goats had evidently takenbites out of the snow, probably as a dog does when thirsty. Above thesnow-field Tom could see just the faintest hint of a trail over theshale, which led up to the base of the solid cliff.
"There she is--this is the way!" the Ranger called.
The three of them now halted directly under the tremendous wall, andlooked up. Again Tom's heart sank. It wasn't so nearly perpendicular asit looked from the lake below, but he could see stretch after stretchwhere a climber's face would be ticklishly close to the spot where he'dgot to put his feet next time--and the great, ragged wall, in long, wavyhorizontal strata belts, stretched up and up and up and up!
Did you ever stand in Broadway below the Woolworth Tower, and look up?Imagine that tipped over a little from the perpendicular, and four timesas high, and you'll have an idea of what Tom looked at.
"Well, now, this is worth coming for!" the doctor cried, cheerfully, ashe took off his coil of rope, and made it ready. "Mills, will you takenumber one place for a way? I'll be number two and anchor, of course.Tom can dangle off below, like a tail to the kite. How'll you like that,Tom?"
Tom's face must have shown what he was feeling, for the doctor suddenlychanged tone.
"Come, come," he said. "It's not bad--only long. A Swiss guide wouldn'teven consider this dangerous. All you have to remember is to test allyour hand- and foot-holds before you put your weight on them, and watchfor falling stones. This shale pile means the rock may crumble easily inplaces. Come on--be a scout!"
"I'm game!" Tom answered, biting his lip. "I guess I won't be stumped byan old goat!"
Mills laughed. "Wait till you see a goat perform," he said, as he madefast one end of the rope around his waist. As he adjusted it, he added,"This is a better rope than I ever used. Where'd you get it?"
"Switzerland," the doctor answered. "I have several I've brought overfrom time to time. You can't get soft, flexible, braided rope here inthis country. We don't go in for mountain climbing enough to make it."
Tom was now fastened on the lower end of the rope, and the doctor in themiddle, and the ascent began.
"You watch me use the rope," the doctor said to Tom. "It will show youhow to do it, if you ever have to be second man on a climb--and it willkeep you from looking down, also!"
Spider was almost as anxious to learn how to use the rope properly as hewas to get up the cliff. He had hoped to climb, when he came to thePark, but he never dreamed he would be climbing
with a real Alpine rope,manipulated by a man who had been up the Matterhorn, and with the leaderof the party an old goat hunter.
For the benefit of the boys who are reading this book, I want to telljust how Dr. Kent used the rope. No boy, or man, either, should ever tryto climb a cliff without a rope, and without proper shoes, with plentyof strong, sharp spikes. The rope must be strong enough to hold theweight of three or four men, at the very least, and it must be soft andpliable. If you cannot get such a soft rope, boil an ordinary one in awash-boiler till it loses its stiffness. But, even when you have therope, you must not use it on a cliff until you have learned the propermethods, preferably under the guidance of some man who has climbed inEngland or the Alps or the Rockies.
Now in rope climbing up rocks, the leader has the hardest job because hehas to find the way up, and to climb without any rope to help him. Butthe second man has what is perhaps the most important job, for he is theanchor; it is on him that the life of the leader may depend, as well asthe life of the man below.
Suppose three men are fastened on the rope almost fifty feet apart, asTom, Mills and Dr. Kent were, for the average rope is about a hundredfeet long. The first man starts climbing, and when he gets up nearly tothe full play of his fifty feet of rope, he finds some ledge where hecan rest, or some firm projection where he can throw his end of the ropeover, take a half hitch, and thus make a firm line for the second man toclimb with. The second man comes up to him, and the leader starts upagain. But now he is starting well up from the ground, and if he got anyhigher and should fall, it would be bad, so the second man, before theleader starts up, takes a half turn around the firm projection with hisend of the stretch of rope between himself and number one, or, if it isvery steep and dangerous, perhaps giving the leader a play of onlyfifteen or twenty feet. Then if the leader should slip and fall, insteadof dragging off the second man with him, he would fall only the distancebetween himself and the point where the rope was secured to the rock. Ifthe rope was strong, it would bring him up short, dangling against thecliff, and would not yank the second man off with him. Of course, afterthree climbers are well up the face of a cliff, if the leader shouldfall without the rope being anchored between him and number two, hewould drag all three men off with him, probably to death. That is whynumber two position is so important in rope climbing.
And Tom was not long in realizing this. He saw Mills go up easily to ashelf forty feet above, and both the doctor and he scrambled up afterhim, without needing the rope at all. The next stage was not difficult,either, though the Ranger, as soon as he was well above the shale pile,began to test his hand-holds and foot-holds with the utmost care,keeping in the faintly discernible goat track whenever he could. Butwhen they were up a hundred and seventy-five feet or more, all three ofthem on a ledge about three feet wide, they found themselves directlyagainst a perpendicular wall at least twenty-five feet high.
Mills was studying the situation. "Coming down, the goats jump it fromthat shelf above," he said. "You can see their tracks here where theyland. But they can't climb it going up. They swing off to the left, bythis ledge--and look at it!"
Tom and the doctor looked. To the left the ledge shrank to a corniceactually not over six inches wide.
"Do you mean to tell me the goats walk around on that?" the doctordemanded.
"Sure," said Mills. "It probably leads to an easy way around to theshelf over our heads, but we can't make it--at least, I don't want totry, unless I have to."
Tom looked at the six inch ledge, and the hundred and seventy-five footdrop below it, and said, "Amen!"
"All right--straight up," said the doctor. He looked for a firmprojection of rock, and took a turn with the rope, while Mills picked upthe slack and tested it.
The Ranger studied the wall in front of him, and made a try. Anchored bythe doctor from below, he got up ten feet, but at that point he couldnot find a single handhold higher up which would bear his weight. Aftera long try, he descended to the ledge again.
"No use, we've got to go around to the right, and climb that big gully,"Mills said. "If this wall stumps us, we'd find a dozen worse ones beforewe got to the top."
To get to the gully to the east of them, they had to go along the ledgeon which they stood. It was wider to the east than six inches, which wasits width in the other direction, the direction the goats took at thispoint, but it wasn't any too wide for comfort, and in places theprecipice above actually overhung it, and seemed to be crushing youdown. In one place they had to crawl on their hands and knees under thisoverhang. In another place they came to what the doctor called "a realtransverse"--that is, a very narrow shelf leading them around aprojection from the ledge they were on to another one, with a sheer dropbelow it.
This transverse ledge was about fifteen feet long before it widened. Itmay have been eighteen inches wide, but to Tom it looked about six. Itwas level enough, and firm, but it was cut out of the side of anabsolute precipice, and the sheer drop, before you hit any ledge orslope below, to break your fall, was at least a hundred feet.
"Dizzy?" the doctor asked Tom, noting the expression that had come overthe scout's face.
"No," said Tom. "But I feel as if I would be if I looked down."
The doctor eyed him sharply. "I guess you're all right," he said."Remember, you'll be anchored fast, and look hard at your footing, focuson that, and don't see off at all. All ready, Mills."
The Ranger walked out on the ledge quite calmly, a little sideways, sohe could lean back toward the cliff, and tested each step to see thatthe ledge was firm and his spikes were gripping. Then the doctor went,even more coolly than Mills. Tom swallowed a lump in his throat, calledhimself a "poor mut," and when he had the signal, followed the others.He kept his eyes on the ledge, as the doctor told him, though there wasa horribly fascinating and indescribable temptation to peep from thecorners of them down over the edge. He could feel the doctor taking upthe slack of the rope as he came, so that with each step his fall wouldbe shorter if he fell. Then, suddenly, he was over! He had been coldbefore he started, with a chill in his back as the wind evaporated theperspiration. Now he was suddenly hot again, and the sweat came out onhis forehead.
The doctor was smiling at him.
"That's your real initiation in rock climbing," he said. "You're goinggood. Keep it up!"
The new ledge brought them to the big gully (the one you see, filledwith snow, in the picture). It still had some snow in places when theparty reached it, but for the most part it was clear, though there was atiny trickle of water at the bottom. It was a great, rough, jaggedtrough scooped out of the cliff by ages of running snow water, andinclined at an angle not very far off the perpendicular.
"Not quite a real chimney," the doctor said briefly. "It's too big andopen, and you can't stretch from side to side. Looks as if we'd have towatch out for stones, too."
"You will," said Mills.
Even as he spoke, they heard a noise above them, and the Ranger yelled,"Jump for shelter!"
All three sprang to one side of the gully, below a projecting shelf ofrock, and past them, thundering down the chute, went a stone as big as abucket, just loosened by melting snow above.
Tom watched it go past, and began to think the last place on the ropewas not the softest berth he could imagine.
The doctor now turned to him. "You see what you've got to look out for,Tom," he said. "For each fresh climb, we'll pick a place where there isshelter for the man waiting below. But you've still got to be on thewatch, and dodge quick. This is going to be a regular climb!"
It was! For the next three hours Tom did the liveliest and the hardestwork he had ever put in. He had no chance to get dizzy looking down, forhe never even dared to look down. He looked up, never knowing when thenext stone or even shower of stones would descend upon him, and preparedevery second to spring to right or left to dodge them. They climbed bysending Mills out from under a protecting ledge and letting him shin uphis fifty feet. Then the doctor would follow, and when he was up withMil
ls, Tom would emerge from under the shelter, and join them. Then theywould repeat the process. But even with Mills and the doctor standingstill above him, Tom had to look out for rocks. They were always comingdown, loosened by the melting snow above, as well as by the feet of theclimbers.
And it was hard work, too. Not only was the gully tremendously steep,but it was rough, in places wet and slippery, and finally half full ofsnow. When they reached the snow, their worst troubles came, for theyhad no ice axes to make steps, and without steps they could not climb onthe snow, it was so steep. They had to work up the side of the gully, bywhatever toe holds they could find. The gully was steeper than a flightof very steep stairs--in places, indeed, it was almostperpendicular,--and Tom's breath began to come hard and his legs tremblewith weariness. But Mills kept plugging upward, and the towering,upright pinnacles of the summit began to loom nearer and nearer.
Finally Mills, without warning, turned out of the gully, close to itstop, and swung out on a wide ledge right under the final two or threehundred feet of the climb. On this ledge, which didn't show from below,was a regular little garden of moss campion and Alpine wild flowers.
"Goat food," said Mills, shortly. He had hardly spoken a word since thefirst bad place, and the doctor had been equally silent They sat down torest on this wide ledge, and looked off at last upon the great prospectbelow them, with the lake, like a little green mirror now, far beneath.
"Wonderful!" the doctor exclaimed. "A magnificent balcony seat we havein this amphitheatre, and no ushers to bother us. Mills, you're a goodclimber--you don't talk."
Mills smiled. "Never knew a safe mountain man who did talk on a cliff ora glacier," said he.
"No, you can't watch your footing and gabble at the same time. Bah! howI hate a talker on a climb!"
"A man came out here once in a big party," said the Ranger. "I took 'emup Cleveland. When we hit the real climb, he fetched out a sign from hispack, and hung it on his back. It read, 'I'm not very sociable when I'mclimbing.'"
The doctor and Tom laughed, and the former added, "There's a wise man!"
The ledge on which they sat, which was like a little secret garden hungup here two thousand feet above the lake, was covered with goat tracks,and Mills pointed out several little caves, too, under overhangingrocks, where, he said, the kids were probably born. Above them, the lastthree hundred feet of the cliff went up perfectly straight, and Tomdidn't see how they were going to get any farther.
But Mills presently rose and led the way to a "chimney," which is thename given to an open cleft in a rock wall. This chimney was so narrowthat a man could brace his back on one side, and his feet on the other,and climb it just as you climb a well. Of course, it was rough, withplenty of projections to cling to. Mills had the hardest job here, forhe had no rope to help him.
The doctor spoke in here, breaking his rule.
"Do the goats use this chimney?" he shouted up.
"Sure," Mills replied. "Can't you see the marks of their hoofs? Theyjump from side to side right up it."
"All I can say is, I'd like to see 'em," was the somewhat scepticalanswer.
The chimney work was great sport, but it was also hard work. Tom's backwas sore, his hands bruised, his arms weary, before they reached thetop. But finally he saw Mills disappear over the rim, and then thedoctor; and finally he himself crawled out of the cleft, and stood onthe very summit of the precipice. And then Tom gasped, and forgot he washot, forgot he was tired, forgot his hands were bruised by the roughrocks, forgot the moments when his heart had been either in his boots orhis throat, forgot everything but the bigness of that prospect! Healmost forgot to look at his watch; but the doctor didn't.
"Four hours and a half to go two thousand feet!" the doctor said."That's the hardest rock climb I ever made. You don't need to go toSwitzerland for real mountain climbing, Mills. You've got it here, rightin your back yard."