II.

photographCOPYRIGHT, G. M. WEISTERThe grim sentinels of "the Wallula Gateway," huge basaltic pillars that rise on the south bank of the river, where it crosses the Washington-Oregon line. View looking south.

photographCOPYRIGHT, KISER PHOTO CO.Tumwater, the falls of the Columbia at Celilo; total drop, twenty feet at low water. In Summer, when the snow on the Bitter Root and Rocky Mountains is melting, the river rises often more than sixty feet. Steamboats have then passed safely down. Wishram, an ancient Indian fishing village, was on the north bank below the falls, and Indians may often still be seen spearing salmon from the shores and islands here.

Macaulay tells us that a people who are not proud of their forebears will never deserve the pride of their descendants. The makers of Old Oregon included as fair a proportion of patriots and heroes as the immigrants of the Mayflower. We who journey up or down the Columbia in a luxurious steamer, or ride in a trainde luxealong its banks, are the heirs of their achievement. Honor to the dirt-tanned ox-drivers who seized for themselves and us this empire of the river and its guardian snow-peaks!

A lordly river, broad and deep,With mountains for its neighbors, and in viewOf distant mountains and their snowy tops.

photographCOPYRIGHT. G. M. WEISTERSummit of Mount Hood, viewed from western end of the ridge, showing north side of the peak in July.

color picture of river and mountainCOPYRIGHT, KISER PHOTO CO.Columbia River and Mt. Hood, seen from White Salmon, Washington."Beloved mountain, IThy worshiper, as thou the sun's, each mornMy dawn, before the dawn, receive from thee;And think, as thy rose-tinted peak I see,That thou wert great when Homer was not born,And ere thou change all human song shall die."—Helen Hunt Jackson.

COPYRIGHT, KISER PHOTO CO.Columbia River and Mt. Hood, seen from White Salmon, Washington."Beloved mountain, IThy worshiper, as thou the sun's, each mornMy dawn, before the dawn, receive from thee;And think, as thy rose-tinted peak I see,That thou wert great when Homer was not born,And ere thou change all human song shall die."—Helen Hunt Jackson.

"Beloved mountain, IThy worshiper, as thou the sun's, each mornMy dawn, before the dawn, receive from thee;And think, as thy rose-tinted peak I see,That thou wert great when Homer was not born,And ere thou change all human song shall die."—Helen Hunt Jackson.

photographNorth side of Mount Hood, from ridge several miles west of Cloud Cap Inn. View shows gorges cut by the glacier-fed streams. Cooper Spur is on left sky line. Barret Spur is the great ridge on right, with Ladd glacier canyon beyond. Coe glacier is in center.

THE MOUNTAINS.

Silent and calm, have you e'er scaled the heightOf some lone mountain peak, in heaven's sight?—Victor Hugo.

There stood Mount Hood in all the glory of the alpen glow, looming immensely high, beaming with intelligence. It seemed neither near nor far. . . . The whole mountain appeared as one glorious manifestation of divine power, enthusiastic and benevolent, glowing like a countenance with ineffable repose and beauty, before which we could only gaze with devout and lowly admiration.—John Muir.

FROM the heights which back the city of Portland on the west, one may have a view that is justly famous among the fairest prospects in America. Below him lies the restless city, busy with its commerce. Winding up from the south comes the Willamette, its fine valley narrowed here by the hills, where the river forms Portland's harbor, and is lined on either side with mills and shipping. Ten miles beyond, the Columbia flows down from its canyon on the east, and turns northward,an expanding waterway for great vessels, to its broad pass through the Coast Range. In every direction, city and country, farm and forest, valley and mountain, stretches a noble perspective. From the wide rivers and their shining borders, almost at sea level, the scene arises, terrace upon terrace, to the encircling hills, and spreads across range after range to the summits of the great Cascades.

photographWinter on Mount Hood. The roof of the club house of the Portland Snow-shoe Club is seen over the ridge.

photographCOPYRIGHT, G. M. WEISTERWatching the climbers from the plaza at Cloud Cap Inn, northeast side of Mount Hood. Immediately in front, Eliot glacier is seen, dropping into its canyon on the right. On the left is Cooper Spur, from which a sharp ascent leads to the summit of the peak.

Dominating all are the snow-peaks, august sentinels upon the horizon. On a clear day, the long line of them begins far down in central Oregon, and numbers six snowy domes. But any average day includes in its glory the three nearest, Hood, Adams, and St. Helens. Spirit-like, they loom above the soft Oregon haze, their glaciers signaling from peak to peak, and their shining summits bidding the sordid world below to look upward.

mapEnlargeMount Hood, elevation 11,225 feet

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Nature has painted canvases more colorful, but none more perfect in its strength and rest. Here is no flare of the desert, none of the flamboyant, terrible beauty of the Grand Canyon. It is a landof warm ocean winds and cherishing sunshine, where the emeralds and jades of the valleys quickly give place to the bluer greens of evergreen forests that cover the hill country; and these, in turn, as distance grows, shade into the lavenders and grays of the successive ranges. The white peaks complete the picture with its most characteristic note. They give it distinction.

photographLower end of Eliot glacier, seen from Cooper Spur, and showing the lateral moraines which this receding glacier has built in recent years.

photographSnout of Eliot glacier, its V-shaped ice front heavily covered with morainal debris.

Such a panorama justifies Ruskin's bold assertion: "Mountains are the beginning and end of all natural scenery." Without its mountains, the view from Council Crest would be as uninteresting as that from any tower in any prairiecity. But all mountains are not alike. In beginning our journey to the three great snow-peaks which we have viewed from Portland heights, it is well to define, if we may, the special character of our Northwestern scene. We sometimes hear the Cascade district praised as "the American Switzerland." Such a comparison does injustice alike to our mountains and to the Alps. As a wild, magnificent sea of ice-covered mountain tops, the Alps have no parallel in America. As a far-reaching system of splendid lofty ranges clothed in the green of dense forests and surmounted by towering, isolated summits of snowy volcanoes, the Cascades are wholly without their equal in Europe. This is the testimony of famous travelers and alpinists, among them Ambassador Bryce, who has written of our Northwestern mountain scenery:

We have nothing more beautiful in Switzerland or Tyrol, in Norway or in the Pyrenees. The combination of ice scenery with woodland scenery of the grandest type is to be found nowhere in the Old World, unless it be in the Himalayas, and, so far as we know, nowhere else on the American continent.

photographCone of Mount Hood, seen from Cooper Spur on northwest side. A popular route to the summit leads along this ridge of volcanic scoriæ and up the steep snow slope above.

photographCloud Cap Inn, north side of Mount Hood. Elevation 5,900 feet.

In his celebrated chapter of the "Modern Painters" which describes the sculpture of the mountains, Ruskin draws a picture of the Alps that at once sets them apart from the Cascades:

The longer I stayed among the Alps, the more I was struck by their being a vast plateau, upon which nearly all the highest peaks stood like children set upon a table, removed far back from the edge, as if for fear of their falling. The most majestic scenes are produced by one of the great peaks having apparently walked to the edge of the table to look over, and thus showing itself suddenlyabove the valley in its full height. But the raised table is always intelligibly in existence, even in these exceptional cases; and for the most part, the great peaks are not allowed to come to the edge of it, but remain far withdrawn, surrounded by comparatively level fields of mountain, over which the lapping sheets of glacier writhe and flow. The result is the division of Switzerland into an upper and lower mountain world; the lower world consisting of rich valleys, the upper world, reached after the first steep banks of 3,000 to 4,000 feet have been surmounted, consisting of comparatively level but most desolate tracts, half covered by glacier, and stretching to the feet of the true pinnacles of the chain.

COPYRIGHT, G. M. WEISTEREnlargePortland's White Sentinel, Mount Hood. Telephoto view from City Park, showing a portion of the city, with modern buildings and smoke of factories.

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Nothing of this in the Cascades! Instead, we have fold upon fold of the earth-crust, separated by valleys of great depth. The ranges rise from levels but little above the sea. For example, between Portland and Umatilla, although they are separated by the mountains of greatest actual elevation in the United States, there is a difference of less than two hundred and fifty feet, Umatilla, east of the Cascades, being only two hundred and ninety-four feet above tide. Trout Lake, lying below Mount Adams, at the head of one of the great intermountain valleys, has an elevation of less than two thousand feet.

photographPortland Snow-shoe Club members on Eliot glacier in winter.

Thus, instead of the Northwestern snow-peaks being set far back upon a general upland and hiddenaway behind lesser mountains, to be seen only after one has reached the plateau, thousands of feet above sea level, they actually rise either from comparatively low peneplanes on one side of the Cascades, as in the case of St. Helens, or from the summit of one of the narrow, lofty ridges, as do Hood and Adams. But in either case, the full elevation is seen near at hand and from many directions—an elevation, therefore, greater and more impressive than that of most of the celebrated Alpine summits.

PhotographCOPYRIGHT, G. M. WEISTERCoasting down east side of Mount Hood, above Cooper Spur. Mount Adams in distance.

photographCOPYRIGHT, G. M. WEISTERMount Hood from the hills south of The Dalles, showing the comparatively timberless country east of the Cascades. Compare this treeless region, as well as the profile of Mount Hood here shown, with the view from Larch Mountain.

Famous as is the valley of Chamonix, and noteworthy as are the glaciers to which it gives close access, its views of Mont Blanc are disappointing. Not until the visitor has scaled one of the neighboringaiguilles, can he command a satisfactory outlook toward the Monarch of the Alps. And nowhere in Switzerland do I recall a picture of such memorable splendor as greets the traveler from the Columbia, journeying either southward, up the Hood River Valleytoward Mount Hood, or northward, up the White Salmon Valley toward Trout Lake and Mount Adams. Here is unrolled a wealth of fertile lowlands, surrounded by lofty ranges made beautiful by their deep forests and rising to grandeur in their snow-peaks.

photographCOPYRIGHT, L. J. HICKSMount Hood, seen from Larch Mountain, on the Columbia River. View looking southeast across the heavily forested ranges of the Cascades to the deep canyons below Ladd and Sandy glaciers.

photographButterfly on the summit of Mount Hood.

Leaving the canyon of the Columbia, in either direction the road follows swift torrents of white glacial water that tell of a source far above. It crosses a famous valley, among its orchards and hayfields, but always in view of the dark blue mountains and of the snow-covered volcanoes that rise before and behind, their glaciers shining like polished steel in the sunlight. So the visitor reaches the foot of his mountain. Losing sight of it for a time, he follows long avenues of stately trees as he climbs the benches. In a few hours he stands upon a barren shoulder of the peak, at timber line. A new world confronts him. The glaciers reach their icy arms to him from the summit, and he breathes the winds that sweep down from their fields of perennial snow.

Members of Portland Snow-shoe Club on way to Mount Hood in winter, and at their club house, near Cloud Cap Inn.Enlarge

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photographFumarole, or gas vent, near Crater Rock.

It is all very different from Switzerland, this quick ascent from bending orchards and forested hills to a mighty peak standing white and beautiful in its loneliness. But it is so wonderful that Americans who love the heights can no longer neglect it, and each year increasing numbers are discovering that here in the Northwest is mountain scenery worth traveling far to see, with very noble mountainsto climb, true glaciers to explore, and the widest views of grandeur and interest to enjoy. Such sport combines recreation and inspiration.

photographLooking across the head of Eliot glacier from near the summit of Mount Hood.

The traveler from Portland to either Mount Hood or Mount Adams may go by rail or steamer to Hood River, Oregon, or White Salmon, Washington. These towns are on opposite banks of the Columbia at its point of greatest beauty. Thence he will journey by automobile or stage up the corresponding valley to the snow-peak at its head. If he is bound for Mount Hood his thirty-mile ride will bring him to a charming mountain hotel, Cloud Cap Inn, placed six thousand feet above the sea, on a ridge overlooking Eliot glacier, Hood's finest ice stream.

photographMount Hood at night, seen from Cloud Cap Inn. This view is from a negative exposed from nine o'clock until midnight.

If Mount Adams be his destination, a ride of similar length from White Salmon will bring him merelyto the foot of the mountain. The stages run only to Guler, on Trout Lake, and to Glenwood. Each of these villages has a comfortable country hotel which may be made the base for fishing and hunting in the neighborhood. Each is about twelve miles from the snow-line. At either place, guides, horses and supplies may be had for the trip to the mountain. Glenwood is nearer to the famous Hellroaring Canyon and the glaciers of the southeast side. Guler is a favorite point of departure for the south slope and for the usual route to the summit.

Another popular starting point for Mount Adams is Goldendale, reached by a branch of the North Bank railway from Lyle on the Columbia. This route also leads to the fine park district on the southeastern slope, and it has a special attraction, as it skirts the remarkable canyon of the Klickitat River. Many parties also journey to the mountain from North Yakima and other towns on the Northern Pacific railway. Hitherto, all such travel from either north or south has meant a trip on foot or horseback over interesting mountain trails, and has involved the necessity of packing in camp equipment and supplies. During the present summer, a hotel is to be erected a short distance from the end of Mazama glacier, at an altitude of about sixty-five hundred feet, overlooking Hellroaring Canyon on one side, and on the other a delightful region of mountain tarns, waterfalls and alpine flower meadows. Its verandas will command the Mazama and Klickitat glaciers, and an easy route will lead to the summit. With practicable roads from Goldendale and Glenwood, it should draw hosts of lovers of scenery and climbing, and aid in making this great mountain as well known as it deserves to be.

Climbing Mount Hood, with ropes anchored on the summit and extending down on east and south faces of the peak.

Visitors going to Mount Hood from Portland have choice of a second very attractive hotel base in Government Camp, on the south slope at an altitude of thirty-nine hundred feet. This is reached by automobiles from the city,over a fair road that will soon be a good road, thanks to the Portland Automobile Club. The mountain portion of this highway is the historic Barlow road, opened in 1845, the first wagon road constructed across the Cascades. As the motor climbs out of the Sandy River valley, and grapples the steep moraines built by ancient icefields, the traveler gets a very feeling reminder of the pluck of Captain Barlow and his company of Oregon "immigrants" in forcing a way across these rugged heights. But the beauty of the trip makes it well worth while, and Government Camp gives access to a side of the peak that should be visited by all who would know how the sun can shatter a big mountain with his mighty tools of ice.

photographNorth side of Mount Hood, seen from moraine of Coe glacier. This glacier flows down from the summit, where its snow-field adjoins that of Eliot glacier (left). West of the Coe, the Ladd glacier is seen, separated from the former by Pulpit Rock, the big crag in the middle distance, and Barrett Spur, the high ridge on the right.

photographCOPYRIGHT, G. M. WEISTERLooking west on summit of Mount Hood, with Mazama Rock below.

photographSummit of Mount Hood, from Mazama Rock, showing the sun-cupped ice of midsummer.

The hotel here was erected in 1900 by O. C. Yocum, under whose competent guidance many hundreds of climbers reached the summit of Mount Hood. The Hotel is now owned by Elisha Coalman, who has also succeeded tohis predecessor's office as guide. During the last year he has enlarged his inn, and he is now also building comfortable quarters for climbers at a camp four miles nearer the snow line, on the ridge separating White River glacier from Zigzag glacier.

photographMount Hood, seen from Sandy River canyon, six miles west of snow line. This important picture begins with Barrett Spur and Ladd glacier on the north sky line (left). On the northwest face of the peak is the main Sandy glacier, its end divided by a ridge into two parts. The forested "plowshare" projecting into the canyon is Yocum Ridge. South of it the south branch of the Sandy river flows down from a smaller glacier called the Little Sandy, or Reid. The broad bottom of this canyon and the scored cliffs on its sides show that it was formerly occupied by the glacier.

Mount Hood is the highest mountain in Oregon, and because of a general symmetry in its pyramidal shape and its clear-cut, far-seen features of rock and glacier, it has long been recognized as one of the most beautiful of all American snow peaks. Rising from the crest of the Cascades, it presents its different profiles and variously sculptured faces to the entire valley of the Columbia, east and west, above which it towers in stately magnificence, a very king of the mountains, ruling over a domain of ranges, valleys and cities proud of their allegiance.

Crevasses on Coe glacier.

On October 20, 1792, Lieutenant Broughton, of Vancouver's exploring expedition in quest of new territories for His Majesty George III., discovered from the Columbia near the mouth of the Willamette, "a very distant high snowy mountain, rising beautifully conspicuous," which he strangely mistook to be the source of the great river. Forthwith he named it in honor of Rear Admiral Samuel Hood, of the British Admiralty who had distinguished himself in divers naval battles during the American and French Revolutions.

The mountain has been climbed more often than any other American snow-peak. The first ascent was made on August 4, 1854, from the south side, by a party under Captain Barlow, builder of the "immigrant road." One of the climbers, Editor Dryer ofThe Oregonian, published an accountof the trip in which, with more exactness than accuracy, he placed the height of the mountain at 18,361 feet! The most notable ascent by a large party took place forty years later, when nearly two hundred men and women met on the summit, and there, with parliamentary dispatch bred of a bitter wind, organized a mountain club which has since become famous. For its title they took the name "mazama," Mexican for the mountain goat, close kin to the Alpine chamois. Membership was opened to those who have scaled a snow-peak on foot. By their publications and their annual climbs, the Mazamas have done more than any other agency to promote interest in our Northwestern mountains.

Three men, one on hands and knees looking into crevasseCOPYRIGHT, G. M. WEISTEREnlargeMount Hood, with Crevasses of Eliot Glacier in foreground."Evermore the windIs thy august companion; yea, thy peersAre cloud and thunder, and the face sublimeOf the blue mid-heaven."—Henry Clarence Kendall.

COPYRIGHT, G. M. WEISTEREnlargeMount Hood, with Crevasses of Eliot Glacier in foreground."Evermore the windIs thy august companion; yea, thy peersAre cloud and thunder, and the face sublimeOf the blue mid-heaven."—Henry Clarence Kendall.

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"Evermore the windIs thy august companion; yea, thy peersAre cloud and thunder, and the face sublimeOf the blue mid-heaven."—Henry Clarence Kendall.

photographMount Hood, seen from the top of Barrett Spur. On the left, cascading down from the summit, is Coe glacier; on the right, Ladd glacier. The high cliff separating them is "Pulpit Rock."

photographIce Cascade, south side of Mount Hood, near head of White River glacier.

Mount Hood stands, as I have said, upon the summit of the Cascades. The broad and comparatively level back of the range is here about four thousand feet above the sea. Upon this plane the volcano erected its cone, chiefly by the expulsion of scoriæ rather than by extensive lava flows, to a farther height of nearly a mile and a half. There is no reason to suppose that it ever greatly exceeded its present altitude, which governmentobservations have fixed at 11,225 feet. Its diameter at its base is approximately seven miles from east to west.

photographLittle Sandy or Reid glacier, west side of Mount Hood.

Compared with Mount Adams, its broken and decapitated northern neighbor, Mount Hood, although probably dating from Miocene time, is still young enough to have retained in a remarkable degree the general shape of its original cone. But as we approach it from any direction, we find abundant proof that powerful destructive agents have been busy during the later geological ages. Already the summit plateau upon which the peak was built up has been largely dissected by the glaciers and their streams. The whole neighborhood of the mountain is a vastly rugged district of glacial canyons and eroded water channels, trenched deep in the soft volcanic ashes and the underlying ancient rock of the range. The mountain itself, although still a pyramid, also has its story of age and loss. Its eight glaciers have cut away much of its mass. On three sides they have burrowed so deeply into the cone that its original angle, which surviving ridges show to have been about thirty degrees, has on the upper glacial slopes been doubled. This is well illustrated by the views shown on pages58,61,69and71.

photographEnlargePortland Y. M. C. A. party starting for the summit at daybreak. South side of Mount Hood.

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This cutting back into the mountain has greatly lessened the area of the upper snow-fields. The reservoirs feeding the glaciers, are therefore much smaller than of old, but, byway of compensation, present a series of most interesting ice formations on the steeper slopes. In this respect, Mount Hood is especially noteworthy among our Northwestern snow-peaks. While larger glaciers are found on other mountains, none are more typical. The glaciers of Hood especially repay study because of their wonderful variety of ice-falls, terraces, seracs, towers, castles, pinnacles and crevasses. Winter has fashioned a colossal architecture of wild forms.

photographCrater of Mount Hood, seen from south side. Its north rim is the distant summit ridge. Steel's Cliff (right) and Illumination Rock (left) are parts of east and west rims. The south wall has been torn away, but the hard lava core remains in Crater Rock, the cone rising in center. Note the climbers ascending the "Hog-back" or ridge leading from Crater Rock up to the "bergschrund," a great crevasse which stretches across the crater at head of the glaciers. The ridge in foreground is Triangle Moraine. On its right is White River glacier; on left, the fan-shaped Zigzag glacier.

Ye ice-falls! ye that from the mountain's browAdown enormous ravines slope amain,—Torrents, methinks, that heard a mighty voice,And stopped at once amid their maddest plunge!Motionless torrents! silent cataracts!

photographEnlargeSouth side of Mount Hood, seen from crag on Tom-Dick-and-Harry Ridge, five miles from the snow-line. A thousand feet below is the hotel called "Government Camp," with the Barlow road, the first across the Cascades. On left are Zigzag and Sand canyons, cut by streams from Zigzag glacier above.

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photograph: man on very high crag with rifle for some reasonEnlargeCrag on which above view was taken.

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The visitor who begins his acquaintance with Mount Hood on the north side has, from Cloud Cap Inn, four interesting glaciers within a radius of a few miles. Immediately before the Inn, Eliot glacier displays its entire length of two miles, its snout being only a few rods away. West of this, Coe and Ladd glaciers divide the north face with the Eliot. All three have their source in neighboring reservoirs near the summit, which have been greatly reducedin area. This, with the resulting shrinkage in the glaciers, is shown by the high lateral moraines left as the width of the ice streams has lessened. On the east slope is a fine cliff glacier, the Newton Clark, separated from the Eliot by Cooper Spur, a long ridge that furnishes the only feasible north-side route for climbers to the summit.

photographPart of the "bergschrund" above Crater Rock. A bergschrund is a crevasse of which the lower side lies much below its upper side. It is caused by a sharp fall in the slope, or by the ice at the head of a glacier pulling away from the packed snow above.

Climbing Cooper Spur is a tedious struggle up a long cinder slope, but it has its reward in fine views of the near-by glaciers and a wide outlook over the surrounding country. A tramp of three miles from the Inn covers the easier grade, and brings the climber to a height of eight thousand feet. A narrow, snow-covered chine now offers a windy path to the foot of the steeper slope (See p.60). The climb ends with the conquest of a half-mile of vertical elevation over a grade that tests muscle, wind and nerve. This is real mountaineering, and as the novice clutches the rocks, or carefully follows in the steps cut by the guide, he recalls a command well adapted to such trying situations: "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." But the danger is more apparent than real, and the goal is soon reached.

photographProf. Harry Fielding Reid and party exploring Zigzag glacier, south side of Mount Hood. Illumination Rock is seen beyond.

The south-side route, followed by the Barlow party of 1854, was long deemed the only practicable trail tothe summit. Many years later, William A. Langille discovered the route up from Cooper Spur. The only accident charged against this path befell a stranger who was killed in trying to climb it without a guide. Its steepness is, indeed, an advantage, as it requires less time than the other route. Climbers frequently ascend by one trail and descend by the other, thus making the trip between Cloud Cap Inn and Government Camp in a day.

Mazamas climbing the "Hog-back," above Crater Rock, and passing this rock on the descent.Enlarge

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The actual summit of Mount Hood is a narrow but fairly level platform, a quarter of a mile long, which is quickly seen to be part of the rim of the ancient crater. Below it, on the north, are the heads of three glaciers already mentioned, the Eliot, Coe and Ladd; and looking down upon them, the climber perceives that here the mountain has been so much cut away as to be less a slope than a series of precipices, with very limited benches which serve as gathering grounds of snow. (See pp.55,67and70.) These shelves feed the lower ice-streams with a diet of avalanches that is year by year becoming less bountiful as this front becomes more steep. Soon, indeed, geologically speaking, the present summit, undermined by the ice, must fall, and the mountain take on a new aspect, with a lower, broader top. Thus while the beautiful verse which I have quoted under the view of Mount Hood from White Salmon (p.56) is admirable poetry, its last line is very poor geology. This, however, need not deter any present-day climbers!

On the south side of the summit ridge a vastly different scene is presented. Looking down over its easy slope, one recognizes even more clearly than from the north-side view that Mount Hood is merely a wreck of its former graceful cone, a torn and disintegrating remnant, with very modest pretensions to symmetry, after all, but still a fascinating exhibit of the work of such Gargantuan forces as hew and whittle such peaks.

photographEnlargePortland Ski Club on south side of Mount Hood, above Government Camp.

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The crater had a diameter of about half a mile. Its north rim remains in the ridge on which our climber stands. All the rest of its circumference has been torn away, but huge fragments of its wall are seen far below, on the right and left, in "cleavers" named respectively Illumination Rock and Steel's Cliff. One of these recalls several displays of red fire on the mountain by the Mazamas. The other great abutment was christened in honor of the first president of that organization.

Apart from these ridges, the entire rim is missing; but below the spectator, at what must have been the center of its circle, towers a great cone of lava, harder than the andesitic rocks and the scoriæ which compose the bulk of the mountain. This is known as Crater Rock. It is the core of the crater, formed when the molten lava filling its neck cooled and hardened. Around it the softer mass has worn down to the general grade of the south slope, which extends five miles from just below the remaining north rim at the head of the glaciers to the neighborhood of Government Camp, far down on the Cascade plateau. The grade is much less than thirty degrees. Over the slope flow down two glaciers, the Zigzag on the west, and the White River glacier on the east, of Crater Rock.

photographMount Hood Lily.(L. Washingtonianum)

It is sometimes said that the south side of the old summit was blown away by a terrific explosion. That is improbable, in view of Crater Rock, which indicates a dormant volcano whenthe south side was destroyed. The mountain was doubtless rent by ice rather than by fire. The mass of ice and snow in and upon the crater broke apart the comparatively loose wall, and pushed its shattered tuffs and cinders far down the slopes. Forests were buried, old canyons were filled, and the whole southwest side of the mountain was covered with the fan-shaped outwash from the breach. Through this debris of the ancient crater the streams at the feet of the glaciers below are cutting vast ravines which can be seen from the heights above. (See illustrations, pp.77-81.)

Mazama party exploring White River glacier, Mount Hood.Enlarge

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The central situation of Mount Hood makes the view from its summit especially worth seeking. From the Pacific to the Blue Mountains, south almost to the California line, and north as far, it embraces an area equal to a great state, with four hundred miles of the undulating Cascade summits and a dozen calm and radiant snow-peaks. The Columbia winds almost at its foot, and a multitude of lakes, dammed by glacial moraines and lava dikes, nestle in its shadow. This view "covers more history," as Lyman points out, than that from any other of our peaks. About its base the Indians hunted, fished and warred. Across its flank rolled the great tide of Oregon immigration, in the days of the ox-team and settler's wagon. It has seen the building of two states. It now looks benignly down upon the prosperous agriculture and growing cities of the modern Columbia basin, and no doubt contemplates with serenity the time when its empire shallbe one of the most populous as it is one of the most beautiful and fertile regions in America. No wonder the shapely mountain lifts its head with pride!

photographNewton Clark glacier, east side of Mt. Hood, seen from Cooper Spur, with Mt. Jefferson fifty miles south.

Returning to the glaciers of the north side, we note that all three end at an altitude close to six thousand feet. None of them has cut a deep, broad bed for itself like the great radiating canyons which dissect the Rainier National Park and protect its glaciers down to a level averaging four thousand feet. Instead, these glaciers lie up on the side of Mount Hood, in shallow beds which they no longer fill; and are banked between double and even triple border moraines, showing successive advances and retreats of the glaciers. (See illustration, top of p.59.) The larger moraines stand fifty to a hundred feet above the present ice-streams, thus indicating the former glacier levels. No vegetation appears on these desolate rock and gravel dikes. The retreat of the glaciers was therefore comparatively recent.

photographLooking from Mount Jefferson, along the summits of the Cascades, to Mount Hood.

photographCOPYRIGHT, G. M. WEISTERShadow of Mount Hood, seen from Newton Clark glacier shortly before sunset. View shows two branches of East Fork of Hood River, fed by the glacier, and the canyon of the East Fork, turning north. Beyond it (left) are Tygh Hills and wheat fields of the Dufur country. On the right is Juniper Flat, with the Deschutes canyon far beyond.

photographSnout of Newton Clark glacier.

photographCOPYRIGHT, B. A. GIFFORDMount Hood and Hood River, seen from a point twenty miles north of the mountain.

Eliot glacier has been found by measurement near its end, to have a movement of about fifty feet a year. On the steeper slope above, it is doubtless much greater. All the three glaciers are heavily covered, for their last half mile, with rocks and dirt which they have freighted down from the cliffs above, or dug up from their own beds in transit. None of the lateral moraines extends more than two or three hundred yards below the snout of its glacier. Each glacier, at its end, drops its remnant of ice into a deep V-shaped ravine, in which, not far below, trees of good size are growing.Hence it would not seem that these north-side glaciers have ever extended much farther than they do at present. The ravine below Eliot glacier, however, half a mile from the snout, is said to show glacial markings on its rocky sides. It is evident, in any case, that the deep V cuttings now found below the glaciers are work of the streams. If these glaciers extended farther, it was at higher levels than their present stream channels. As the glaciers receded, their streams have cut the deep gorges in the soft conglomerates. Between Eliot and Coe glaciers are large snow-fields, ending much farther up than do the glaciers; and below these, too, the streams have trenched the slope. (See illustration, p.57.)

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