Your National Parks Part 8

Of all the fire-mountains which, like beacons, once blazed along the Pacific Coast, Mount Rainier is the n.o.blest in form.... Its ma.s.sive white dome rises out of its forests, like a world by itself.... Above the forests there is a zone of the loveliest flowers, fifty miles in circuit and nearly two miles wide, so closely planted and luxuriant that it seems as if Nature, glad to make an open s.p.a.ce between woods so dense and ice so deep, were economizing the precious ground, and trying to see how many of her darlings she can get together in one mountain wreath.... We wade knee-deep and waist-deep, the bright corollas in myriads touching petal to petal.... Altogether this is the richest subalpine garden I ever found, a perfect floral elysium. (John Muir, in "Our National Parks.")

The forests of this park are a splendid attraction. The trees are tall and of n.o.ble proportions. The forest floor has a tangled undergrowth of vines and shrubbery, a luxuriant carpet of ferns, mosses, and flowers. Many areas are crowded with trees from two to eight feet in diameter, from one hundred to two hundred and fifty feet high.

Cedars, spruces, and hemlocks number their years by centuries. A few are perhaps a thousand years of age. Theodore Winthrop wrote of these forests:--

Long years of labor by artists the most unconscious of their skill had been given to modelling these columnar firs. Unlike the pillars of human architecture, chipped and chiselled in bustling, dusty quarries, and hoisted to their site by sweat of brow and creak of pulley, these rose to fairest proportions by the life that was in them and blossomed into foliated capitals three hundred feet overhead.

The forest is gloomy with luxuriant greenness. Many trees are shrouded with a pendent lichen, _Usnea_. This hangs in long, threadlike tufts, while beneath it, mingling with the flowers among the towering trees, are forests of far-spreading ferns.

Around the foot of the mountain are the Indian-pipe and the pyrola, of the wintergreen family; and there is still another delightful member of this family, whose generic name means "delight." The dogwood (_Cornus canadensis_), the forest anemone, the dainty calypso are also here. All these and numbers of other brilliantly colored species brighten and in places illuminate the somber forest floor like touches and dashes of sunlight.

On the lower slopes Douglas spruce and Western hemlock predominate, with red cedar along the streams. Above the alt.i.tude of three thousand feet, n.o.ble and silver firs are found singly and in solid groves.

Ascending, we find a scattered growth of lodge-pole, growths of Engelmann spruce, and a few white-bark pines.

The timber-line may be given as about sixty-five hundred feet, or at the same alt.i.tude as in the Alps. The extreme height of the tree growth is about one thousand feet greater. Most of the timber-line growth is crushed, flattened, and oppressed. The timber-line grouping is most poetical and picturesque. In places the trees are both dwarfed and distorted with wind and snow. The trees are mountain hemlock, alpine fir, Engelmann spruce, and white-bark pine. These stand singly, in groups, and in ragged groves. Commonly they stand in green meadows or brilliant wild-flower gardens. Here and there they are separated with the green tracks of permanent snowslides.

The Mount Rainier National Park has its full share of bird and animal life. Here are numerous warblers and woodp.e.c.k.e.rs; chickadees, black-hooded jays, dainty hummingbirds, ptarmigans, thrushes, and trustful water-ouzels.

Among the animals is that audacious climber, the mountain goat. There also are deer, elk, bears, and other alert wild folk.

2. GLACIERS OF MOUNT RAINIER

Mount Rainier has the largest and the longest glacier in the United States. This is the Emmons. It is about six miles long and has an area of about eight square miles. It is on the eastern slope of the peak. The ice-area on Rainier covers one seventh of the Park, or about fifty square miles.

Rainier has a magnificent glacial system. There are a dozen large and twice as many small glaciers. The peak is an enormous cone with a blunt, broken top. A majority of the large glaciers begin two thousand or more feet below the summit and extend in a comparatively straight line toward the bottom. Though a number unite in continuous ice-fields well up the slope, down the slope each generally is separated from its neighbors. The glaciers are separated by narrow ledges called cleavers, or by each occupying its own deep canon. Near the terminus many are separated by moraines or flowering meadows.

The Nisqually Glacier, which ends just below the alt.i.tude of four thousand feet in Paradise Park, is five miles long. In the summer-time it moves forward at the rate of about sixteen inches per day. This, and in fact all glaciers, have periods of advance and retreat. During the last twenty-five years this glacier has retreated about one thousand feet. That is to say, the present point where it melts entirely away is one thousand feet farther up the slope than it was twenty-five years ago. In comparatively recent times, as the cirques, lakes, and moraines far down the slopes show, the glaciers on this peak were deeper and larger, and reached much farther down the slope than at present.

The Nisqually Glacier has continuous connection with the snow deposits upon the summit of the peak. At one point this snow comes down a precipitous cascade and tumbles perhaps two thousand feet. This and all other glaciers are clean and snowy at the upper end, but the lower end is greatly darkened with rock-debris and earthy material that have mixed with it. The last half-mile of the Nisqually Glacier has the appearance more of a rock glacier than an ice glacier. Its front is a dark chocolate color.

The Paradise Glacier is one of several on the southerly slope. It is formed by the union of a number of ice-streams which originate at about nine thousand feet. They do not receive snow from the slopes above, but quant.i.ties of snow are brought to them by the wind. Near the lower end, this glacier divides into a number of lobes or streams.

The Carbon Glacier descends the northerly slope. It originates in the large cirque or ice-made canon on the peak. This is a mile and a half across, and its terminal wall rises precipitously thirty-six hundred feet. Its snow supplies fall upon it from the clouds, are swept to it by the winds, and rushed to it by avalanches.

The Winthrop Glacier is on the northern slope. Among its interesting features are ice-cascades, glacier tablets, and the ice flowing over high mounds in its main channel.

The Tahoma glaciers on the southwest slope exhibit a glacier island.

The Kautz Glacier on the southern slope is long, narrow, and winding.

It has an enormous medial moraine. Pyramid Rock commands an excellent view of this and other scenes.

Many admirable names have been selected for the objects of interest on Rainier. In this connection, some one is to be thanked for subst.i.tuting "cleaver" and "wedge" for "arrete."

The snowfall on the peak is heaviest on the lower slopes. This diminishes with alt.i.tude and is lightest on the upper slopes and the summit. This is typical of mountain snowfalls. From long experience in the Rocky Mountains, I am able to say that the snowfall there is much less on the high peaks than on their middle slopes. The same fact applies to the Sierra Nevada of California, to the Andes of South America, and to the Himalayas and the Alps. It is common for a storm-cloud to be comparatively close to the earth. The height of it is determined more by the height of near-by plateaus and pa.s.ses than by that of the peaks. It is certain that during many of the lowland storms the mountain peaks thrust up into the suns.h.i.+ne through the silver lining of the clouds.

Wind is an interesting factor in the distribution of the snowfall. It sweeps snow off exposed ridges and acc.u.mulates it in vast quant.i.ties at places where a glacier starts or where the snow avalanches to a glacier. Columbia's Crest--the summit--appears to be in a large measure formed by snow that the wind carries up to it from the slopes far below. Thus, to snows that fell on these slopes the height of the peak and its white top are in a measure due.

A score of turbulent streams radiate from this mountain. Apparently its volcanic material is easily eroded. The streams are heavily laden with gravel and sediment. Though the peak is comparatively young, the canons made by ice and water are large. Vast portions of the mountain have already been carried away by the erosive forces of ice and running water.

V

CRATER LAKE NATIONAL PARK

The supreme attraction in Crater Lake National Park is the vivid blue lake that sleeps in the rugged and magnificent crater of a dead volcano--Mount Mazama.

One golden September afternoon I climbed alone upon the rim of the crater near Eagle Point. There was no wind, and everything lay broodingly silent in the suns.h.i.+ne. In an instant the scene became unreal. The lake, mysteriously blue--indigo blue--lay below. Barren, desolate mountain walls of a desert strangely surrounded it. Was I exploring the topography of the moon?

A second look at most new scenes, and there comes to me a feeling of acquaintance--of having been there before. But this scene made no advance; if it had known me, it desired to forget. I had not seen it; it was as indifferent to my presence as though I existed not. But it was enchanting and it was eloquent. In common with all other visitors to Crater Lake, I received profound and lasting impressions.

The splendid ruin of the ashen-gray walls, the intense and refined blue of the lake, arouse the imagination. What graphic, dramatic, world-building story is locked in these bold scenes?

It is probable that this vast blue-bottomed caldron was once covered with a volcanic peak. This vanished volcano is named Mount Mazama. The geological story is that the upper half of the peak collapsed. There was volcanic violence. But it did not, like Mount Rainier and Mount Baker, explosively blow its summit to pieces. A mile or more of the upper half simply collapsed and dropped into the crater. Had an explosion hurled the enormous fragments of the top afar, they must have been found scattered about. But only small fragments of pumice have been discovered.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CRATER LAKE AND WIZARD ISLAND]

This collapse appears to have been preceded by a rupture of the base, allowing the lava to escape. This lava had filled the crater and supported its walls, and the collapse followed its removal. The upper part of this peak that apparently dropped into the crater must have been six thousand or more feet high, with a basal diameter of about six miles. Its bulk was equal to, or greater than, the whole of Mount Was.h.i.+ngton, the highest peak in New England.

An early impression that this lake crater gave me was that it had been formed by breaking off an enormous conical and hollow volcanic peak which was inverted and jammed, small end downward, into the earth.

This caldron remains. It is now a jagged, gigantic central opening in the deep surrounding lava-beds. These exhibit the former fiery flooding activity of Mazama.

The volcano was active at intervals in the glacial period. This is shown in the glaciated rock-surfaces of the rim that are covered with layers of pumice and rhyolite. The lake is encircled by about twenty miles of precipitous walls that rise from five hundred to two thousand feet above the surface of the water. The lake-level is 6177 feet. The surface fluctuates a few feet each year.

The water is deep, much of it from twelve hundred to nineteen hundred feet. In a few places it is less than three hundred feet deep, with near-by surroundings several hundred feet deeper. Are these shallow spots above the tops of other volcanic cones or lava-ma.s.ses?

The lava-beds in the surrounding outer slopes of the crater overlie one another at an angle that indicates that the lava was poured to them from a central point above. Extend the slopes upward from the rim on the angle of the slopes below, and the outline of the former peak is restored. This would make a peak about the size of Mount Shasta.

At the alt.i.tude of the crater rim, about eight thousand feet, the diameter is about six miles, the same as that of Mount Shasta at the same alt.i.tude. As both peaks are composed of like kinds of lava, we may safely a.s.sume that Mount Mazama before it collapsed was about the size and height of Mount Shasta (14,380 feet).

Glacier records furnish additional evidence of the former height and magnitude of Mazama. On the rim and on the outer slopes just below it are a number of glacier grooved and planed rock-surfaces. The lines of these extend downward, so the ice must have come from above. Then, too, there are a number of moraines that show they were deposited by glaciers from upper slopes. Apparently glaciers flowed down all sides of this mountain from a central high point. Two ice-eroded canons begin in the southern rim and extend down the slope. Plainly these were formed by ice-streams that came down from above. Thus the angle of the lava-built slopes, and the lines of glaciation, testify to the former existence of a high central summit.

On its slopes the Fire King and the Ice King appear to have wrought and to have clashed. Both have vanished from the scene; but here remains a volcanic landscape slightly sculptured by ice. The Mazama story appears a spectacular one.

This scene is a favorite with geologists. They come to it from all over the world. Crater lakes are common. There are numbers of dead craters filled with water in South America, Asia, and elsewhere. But this is an extraordinary crater lake. The marvelous blueness is only one feature. The rare geological exhibit makes a strange appeal.

Joseph S. Diller, of the United States Geological Survey, closes his excellent monograph on the "Geological History of Crater Lake, Oregon"

with the following words:--

Aside from its attractive scenic features, Crater Lake affords one of the most interesting and instructive fields for the study of volcanic geology to be found anywhere in the world. Considered in all its aspects, it ranks with the Grand Canon of the Colorado, the Yosemite Valley, and the Falls of Niagara, but with an individuality that is superlative.

No streams flow into this lake, and there is no visible outlet. It is probable that subterranean waters empty into it and flow from it. The annual precipitation, together with the enormous quant.i.ties of snow that are blown into it, greatly exceeds the amount of water evaporated. The water is clear and cold. It is so clear that a plate may be seen upon the bottom through fifty or more feet of water. Fish may be distinctly seen swimming about at great depths.

Many alpine lakes are blue under some lights. The deep blueness of this lake may possibly be due to mineral which the water holds in solution; or also in part to its high surrounding walls and to its enormous depth. Seen from the rim, a narrow margin of the water along the walls is sea-green. Yet a gla.s.sful is as clear as the clearest.

A few days spent upon the rim and in a launch upon the lake will give glimpses of world-building features and nature-history. Morning is a good time for a journey around the lake. At no point is there a beach.

The steep walls descend and plunge into the water.