CHAPTER XIII
Up the Huntington Head Wall
Luncheon over, the two men packed their knapsacks again, while Art put some dehydrated spinach in a pot to soak for supper. He covered the pot carefully, and stood it in the ashes of the fire, where it would get the heat from the rock, even though the fire was put out. Then falling into line behind the two men, the boys and Mr. Rogers started off, apparently going backward away from the mountain down the path toward Crystal Cascades and the Glen road.
“We just came up here,” the tall man said. “Came out of our way a bit to see the shelter camp, as I want to build one like it near my home.”
“So do we,” said the Scouts.
The two men walked very fast, so that the boys had hard work to keep up with them. They were evidently trained mountain climbers. After half a mile of descent, they swung to the left, by the Raymond Path, and after a quarter of a mile of travel toward the northeast, they swung still again to the left, up the Huntington Ravine Trail, and headed back almost directly at right angles, toward the northwest, where the cone of Washington was, though it could not be seen. The path now ascended again, rather rapidly, and the Scouts puffed along behind the tall man and his stout companion, who walked just about as fast up-hill as they did down.
“Say!” called Peanut, “is there a fire in the ravine?”
The tall man laughed. “Sure,” he said. “Four alarms!”
A mile or more of climbing brought them into the ravine. It was not so large as Tuckerman’s, and it had no lake embosomed in its rocky depths, but in some ways it was an even wilder and more impressive spot. On the right, to the east, the cliff wall rose up much steeper than in Tuckerman’s, to Nelson’s Crag. On the west, also, the wall was almost perpendicular, while the jagged and uneven head wall, which did not form the beautiful amphitheatre curve of Tuckerman’s head wall, and had no snow arch at its base, looked far harder to climb.
“Wow!” said Peanut. “You win. I don’t want to climb here.”
“Why, it’s easy. You can climb where other folks have,” said the stout man, with a wink. “Folks have climbed all three of these cliffs.”
“That one to the left?” asked Peanut.
“Sure,” said the man.
“What with, an aeroplane?”
“With hobnail boots,” said the other.
“I guess they had pretty good teeth and finger nails, also,” Frank put in.
A half mile more, and the trail ended at a great mass of debris and broken rocks piled up in the shape of a fan at the base of the head wall.
“This is called the Fan,” said the stout man. “Here’s where the job begins. Goodbye, boys.”
“Oh, let’s go up a way!” cried Art. “If they can do it, we can.”
“Sure,” said Peanut, as he saw the two men begin to climb carefully over the broken fragments of the Fan.
“Oh, please!” the rest cried.
“Well, just a short way,” Mr. Rogers reluctantly consented, “if you’ll agree to come down when I give the order. We have no ropes, and we are none of us used to rock climbing. I won’t take the risk. If we had ropes and proper spiked staffs, it would be different.”
The Scouts, with a shout, started up behind the two men, who had now ceased their rapid walking, and were going very slowly and carefully. The boys soon found out why. The footing on the rocky debris of the Fan was extremely treacherous, and you had to keep your eyes on every step, and test your footing.
About fifty yards before the top of the Fan was reached, the two climbers ahead turned to the right, and made their way along a shelf on the ledge which they called a “lead,” toward a patch of scrub. One by one, the boys followed them, using extreme caution on the narrow shelf. At the patch of scrub, they could look on up the head wall, and see that the mass of rocks which made the Fan had been brought down by frost and water in a landslide from the top, and made a gully all the way to the summit. To climb the wall, you had to use this gully. It looked quite hopeless, but the stout man started right up, the tall man following him, zigzagging from one lead, or shelf, to another. The boys followed.
“Gee,” said Peanut, “wish it hadn’t rained so lately. These rocks are slippery. And I don’t like walking with the ground in my face all the time.”
“I think it’s fun,” said Art.
“Me, too,” said Frank. “But I don’t like to look back, though.”
They followed two or three leads up the gully, till they were perhaps a hundred or a hundred and fifty feet above the floor of the ravine below. Then Mr. Rogers, looking up, saw Peanut, in the lead, looking about for the next lead, and, after finding it, trying with his short legs to straddle the gap between it and the spot where he stood. His foot slipped, and if Art hadn’t been firmly braced right behind him, so that he threw his shoulder under, Peanut would have fallen off.
“Here’s where we stop!” said the Scout Master.
Peanut was rather white with the sudden shock of slipping. Still, he looked longingly up the gully, toward the two climbers above, and said, “Aw, no, let’s go on a little further!”
“Not a step—remember your promise,” Mr. Rogers declared.
The boys turned reluctantly, and started down. They found it far harder than going up. Going up, you didn’t see that almost sheer drop below you. But going the other way, you had to see it at every step, and it made you constantly realize how easy it would be to fall.
Lou grew very pale, and paused on a wide bit of shelf. “I’m dizzy,” he said. “Let me stand here a minute. I can’t help it. Makes me dizzy to look down.”
Frank was directly in front of him below.
“You keep braced after every step, Frank,” said the Scout Master, “and let Lou take his next step to you each time before you take another. Better now, Lou? You’ll be all right. Just keep your eye on your feet, and don’t look off.”
They started down once more, and after at least fifteen minutes reached the Fan in safety and then the floor of the ravine. Lou sat down immediately looking, as Peanut said, “some seasick.”
“I guess I was never cut out for rock climbing,” poor Lou declared. “I wouldn’t have gone, and worried you, Mr. Rogers, if I’d known it would make me dizzy like that.”
“You’d probably get used to it,” the Scout Master answered, “but I guess we’ll not experiment any more just now, where there’s no path. Look, our friends are almost up.”
The boys, who had forgotten the two men, turned and saw them far above, working carefully toward the summit of the wall. They shouted, and waved their hats, and the men waved back, though the Scouts could hear no voices.
“Gee, and folks have climbed those side walls, too, eh?” said Peanut. “Believe me, real mountain climbing is some work!”
“It is, surely,” Mr. Rogers said. “But in the Alps, of course, people go roped together, and if one falls, the rest brace and the rope holds him. How would you like to climb that gully if it was all ice and snow instead of rock, and you had to cut steps all the way with an ice ax, for ten thousand feet?”
“Say, there’d have to be a pretty big pile of twenty dollar gold pieces waiting at the top,” answered Peanut.
“Oh, get out,” said Art. “That isn’t what makes folks climb such places. It’s the fun of getting where nobody ever got before—just saying, ‘You old cliff, you can’t stump me!’ isn’t it, Mr. Rogers?”
“About that, I guess,” the Scout Master replied. “There’s some fascination about mountain climbing which makes men risk their lives at it all over the globe, every year, on cliffs beside which this one would look like a canoe beside the Mauretania. I’m glad we’ve had a taste of real climbing this afternoon, anyhow, to see what it’s like. Look, the men have reached the top, and are waving good-bye.”
The boys waved back, and as the men disappeared from sight, they themselves moved slowly down the trail, toward the Raymond Path, looking up with a new respect at the walls on either side, and speculating how they could be climbed. Consulting the Appalachian Mountain Club guide book, they found no description of how to get up the west wall, but the ascent of the eastern wall, to Nelson’s Crag, which was called “the most interesting rock climb in the White Mountains,” was described briefly. The Scouts easily identified the gully up which the ascent must be made, but nobody seemed very eager to make it.
“No, sir,” said Peanut, “not for me, till I’ve had more practice on cliff work, and have bigger hobnails in my shoes, and can keep right on up.”
“Still,” said Frank, “people who go up places like that in the Alps have to come down again.”
“Sure they do,” Peanut replied, “but they’re used to it. The older I grow, the more I realize it doesn’t pay to tackle a job till you’re up to it.”
“Hear Grandpa talk!” laughed Frank. “You’d think he was fifty-three.”
“He’s talking horse sense, though,” the Scout Master put in. “When we get home, we’ll go over to the cliffs on Monument Mountain some day, with a rope, and get some practice. As a matter of fact, those cliffs, though they are only two hundred feet high, are steeper than these here, and you haven’t any gully to go up, either. We’ll get some Alpine work right at home.”
“I’ll stay at the bottom, and catch you when you fall off,” said Lou, with a rather crooked smile. “Gee, to think I’d go dizzy like a girl!”
“Forget it, Lou,” Peanut cheered him. “’Twasn’t your fault, any more’n getting seasick.”
The afternoon shadows were all across Tuckerman’s Ravine when the boys once more reached the camp. It was not yet five o’clock, and out behind them the green summits of Carter and Wildcat and Moriah across the Glen, and all the peaks to the south and east, were bathed in full sunlight; but down in the great hole of the ravine the shadow of Boott Spur had risen half-way up the east wall toward the Lion’s Head, and it seemed like twilight.
“Makes me want supper,” Frank laughed.
“I got an idea,” said Peanut. “Let’s take a loaf. Let’s just sit around the camp-fire till supper, and do nothing.”
“Let’s cut our mileage on our staffs,” said Art.
“Hooray!”
Somebody lit the fire, for already the twilight chill was creeping down from the snow-bank, and Art put the pot of dehydrated spinach on to simmer. Then everybody got out his knife and cut mileage.
“Only nine miles for yesterday!” said Art. “And think of the work we did.”
“One mile against that hurricane is about equal to fifteen on the level, I guess,” said Peanut. “Shall we call it eight plus fifteen?”
“You can, if you want to be a nature fakir,” Rob answered. “What’s the total to-day? Who’s got the guide book?”
“Let’s see,” said Frank, turning the pages. “Two miles from the summit to the Lakes of the Clouds, half a mile back to Boott Spur Trail, from the junction with the Crawford Path over the spur to here, two and a half miles—that’s five. Then from here to the snow arch and back, one and a half—six and a half. Then a quarter of a mile to Raymond Path, half a mile to Huntington Trail, two miles to the Fan; double it and you get five miles and a half. That makes twelve miles, not counting our climb of the head wall, or what we’ll do later to-day.”
“Guess we’ll not do much more,” said Peanut.
“Sure, we’ll walk up the ravine and see the snow arch by moonlight. Add a mile and a half more,” said Art. “Grand total, thirteen and a half. Golly, you can get fairly tired doing thirteen miles on Mount Washington, can’t you?”
“And tolerably hungry,” said Frank. “That spinach smells good to me.”
“We’re going to have bacon, and an omelet, and spinach, and tea, and flapjacks,” said Art. “Doesn’t that sound good?”
“Well, go ahead and get ’em ready,” Peanut said, flopping backward upon the old hemlock boughs in the shelter, and immediately closing his eyes.
Nobody did nor said much for the next hour. There came one of those lazy lulls which hit you once in so often when you are tramping, and you just naturally lie back and take life easy, half asleep, half awake. It was half-past five, and getting dusky in the ravine, when suddenly a hermit thrush in the firs right behind the cabin emitted a peal of song, so startling in its nearness and beauty that every one of the six dozers roused with a start.
“Say, that’s some Caruso!” exclaimed Peanut. He rubbed his eyes, and added, “What’s the matter with you, Art? Where’s supper? You’re fired!”
Art laughed, and jumped out of the shelter, giving orders as he went.
“Water, Lou. Rob and Frank, more wood. Peanut, you lazy stiff, get out the bacon and light the lantern. Mr. Rogers, more boughs for the beds.”
“Yes, sir,” the others laughed, as they scattered quickly on their errands.
It was dark when supper was ready, and outside of the cozy shelter of the cabin and the great boulder facing it, with the fire burning briskly, it was cold. The boys had all put on their sweaters. But the boulder threw the warmth of the fire back under the lean-to, and they sat along the edge of it, their plates on their laps, the fragrance of new steeped tea in their nostrils, and of sizzling bacon, and made a meal which tasted like ambrosia. The spinach was an especial luxury, for this time it had soaked long enough to be soft and palatable. Their only regret was that Art hadn’t cooked more of it.
“Let’s soak some over night, and have it for breakfast,” Peanut suggested, amid hoots of derision from the rest.
“We’ll have fresh bread, though,” said Art. “I’m going to bake some in a tin box somebody has left here in a corner of the hut.”
“How’ll you make bread without yeast?” asked Rob.
Art produced a little sack of baking powder from his pack. “With this, and powdered milk, and powdered egg,” he answered. “You make me up a good fire of coals, and I’ll show you.”
He mixed the dough while the rest were clearing up the supper things, greased his tin box (after it had been thoroughly washed with boiling water) with bacon fat, and put the dough in to rise. “I’ll leave it half an hour to raise,” he said, “and go with you fellows up to see the snow arch. Then I’ve got to come back and bake it.”
It was moonlight when they set out for the head of the ravine, but the light was not strong enough to make the path easy, nor to take away the sense of gigantic black shadows towering up where the walls ought to be. Peanut tried shouting, to get an echo, but his voice sounded so small and foolish in this great, yawning hole of shadows in the mountainside, that he grinned rather sheepishly, and shut up.
The “baby glacier,” as Rob called the snow-drift, was like a white shadow at the foot of the head wall. They could hear the brook tinkling beneath it, but not so loud as by day. When the sun goes down, the melting stops to a very considerable extent. And it was very cold near the icy bank. The boys shivered, and turned back toward camp.
“We’ll go with you, Art, and see you bake that bread,” said Rob.
But they didn’t. While Art went on, the rest made a side trip in to Hermit Lake, to see the reflections of the moon and stars in the glassy water. Not one, but a dozen hermit thrushes were singing now in the thickets of fir. It was lonesome, and cold, but very beautiful here, and the bird songs rang out like fairy clarions.
“This is as lonely as the Lake of the Dismal Swamp,” Rob remarked, “and as beautiful.”
“It’s a heap sight colder, though,” said Peanut, shivering.
Back in camp, they found Art with his tin of bread dough propped on edge in front of a great bed of coals, with coals banked behind it and on the sides. The others kicked off their shoes and stockings, put on their heavy night socks, rolled up in their blankets under the lean-to, and, propped upon their elbows, watched Art tending his bread, while they talked in low tones.
One by one the voices died away to silence. Finally Rob and Mr. Rogers were the only ones awake. Then Mr. Rogers asked Rob a question, and got no answer. He smiled.
“Well, Art,” he said, “all the rest seem to think you can get that bread baked without their help. I guess I can trust you, too. Good-night.”
“Good-night,” said Art. “They’ll be glad to eat it in the morning, though!”
But Mr. Rogers didn’t reply.