The Spell of the Rockies Part 9

Slowly, painfully, the slippery, snowy steeps were scaled beneath a low, gloomy sky. My plan was to cross the north shoulder of Mt.

c.o.xcomb and then down slope and gulch descend to the deeply filled alluvium Uncompahgre valley and the railroad village of Ridgway. With the summit only a few feet above, the wall became so steep and the hold so insecure that it appeared best to turn back lest I be precipitated from the cliff. The small, hard points in the sedimentary wall had been loosened in their settings by the rain. Climbing this wall with two good feet in a dry time would be adventurous pastime.

While I was flattened against the wall, descending with greatest caution, there came a roaring crash together with a trembling of earth and air. An enormous section of the opposite side of the ma.s.s that I was on had fallen away, and the oscillations of the cliff nearly hurled me to the rock wreckage at the bottom of the wall.

On safe footing at last, I followed along the bottom of the summit cliff and encountered the place from which the rocks had been hurled at me in the darkness and where a cliff had fallen to start the slide.

It was evident that the storm waters had wrecked the foundation of the cliff. Ridges and gullies of the Bad Land's type fluted the slope and prevented my traveling along close to the summit at right angles to the slope. There appeared no course for me but to descend to the Little Cimarron River. Hours were required for less than two miles of painful though intensely interesting travel.

It was a day of landslides,--just as there are, in the heights, days of snow slides. This excessive saturation after months of drought left cohesion and adhesion but slight hold on these strange sedimentary mixtures. The surface tore loose and crawled; cliffs tumbled. After counting the crash and echoing roar of forty-three fallen cliffs, I ceased counting and gave more attention to other demonstrations.

On the steeps, numerous fleshy areas crawled, slipped, and crept. The front of a long one had brought up against a rock ledge while the blind rear of the ma.s.s pressed powerfully forward, crumpling, folding, and piling the front part against the ledge. At one place an enormous rocky b.u.t.tress had tumbled over. Below, the largest piece of this, a wreck in a ma.s.s of mud, floated slowly down the slope in a shallow, moderately tilted gulch. This b.u.t.tress had been something of an impounding, retaining wall against which loosened, down-drifting materials had acc.u.mulated into a terrace. The terrace had long been adorned with a cl.u.s.ter of tall spruces whose presence produced vegetable mould and improved soil conditions.

On the falling-away of this b.u.t.tress the tree-plumed terrace commenced to sag and settle. The soil-covered debris was well roped together and reinforced with tree-roots. When I came along, these tall trees, so long bravely erect, were leaning, drooping forward. Their entire foundation had slipped several feet and was steadily crowding out over the pit from which gravity had dragged the b.u.t.tress. The trees, with their roots wedged in crevices, were anch.o.r.ed to bed-rock and clinging on for dear life. Now and then a low, thudding, earth-m.u.f.fled sound told of strained or ruptured roots. The foundation steadily gave way while the trees drooped dangerously forward. United on the heights, the brave trees had struggled through the seasons, and united they would go down together. They had fixed and fertilized the spoil from the slopes above. This spoil had been held and made to produce, and prevented from going down to clog the channel of the Little Cimarron or making with the waters the long, sifting, s.h.i.+fting journey, joining at last the lifeless soil deposits in the delta tongues of the Colorado. But the steadfast trees, with all their power to check erosion and create soil, were to fall before the overwhelming elements.

Farther and farther the unsupported and water-lubricated foundation slipped; more and more the trees leaned and drooped forward; until gravity tore all loose and plunged the trees head foremost into the pit, crus.h.i.+ng down upon tumbled tons of rocks, soil, matted mud, and roots,--all the wreckage of the time-formed, tree-crowned terrace.

The slide that narrowly missed me in the night was a monster one and grew in magnitude as it brutally rooted and gouged its way downward.

After descending more than half a mile it struck an enormous dome rock, which stayed a small part of it, while the remainder, deflected, made an awesome plunge and engulfed a small, circular grove in an easily sloping gra.s.sy plot. Most of the towering spruces were thrown down and deeply buried beneath mud, smashed cliffs, and the mangled forms of trees from up the slope. A few trees on the margin of the grove were left standing, but they suffered from cruel bruises and badly torn bark.

On the farther side of the grove a number of the trees were bent forward but only partly buried; with heads and shoulders out, they were struggling to extricate themselves, and now and then one shook an arm free from the debris. Over the place where a few hours before tall tree plumes had stood in the sky, a fierce confusion of slide wreckage settled and tumbled to pieces while the buried and half-buried trees whispered, murmured, and sighed as they struggled to rise.

Out with nature trees are supposed to stand in one place all their lives, but one of the most interesting movements of this elemental day was the transplanting, by gravity, of an entire clump of tall old firs. Water released these trees, and they appeared to enjoy being dragged by gravity to a new home and setting. I was resting my foot and watching a gigantic monolithic stone settle and come down gracefully, when a tree-clump on the skyline just beyond appeared to move forward several yards, then make a stop. While I was trying to decide whether they really had moved or not, they moved forward again with all their earthly claims, a few square rods of surface together with their foundations beneath. With all tops merrily erect they slid forward, swerving right and left along the line of least resistance, and finally came to rest in a small unclaimed flat in which no doubt they grew up with the country.

The many-sized slides of that weird day showed a change of position varying from a few feet to a mile. Several ploughed out into the Little Cimarron and piled its channel more than full of spoils from the slopes. Through this the river fought its way, and from it the waters flowed richly laden with earthy matter.

The great changes which took place on Mt. c.o.xcomb in a few hours were more marked and extensive than the alterations in most mountains since the Sphinx began to watch the s.h.i.+fting, changing sands by the Nile.

By mid-afternoon the air grew colder and the snow commenced to deepen upon the earth. Bedraggled and limping, I made slow progress down the slope. Just at twilight a mother bear and her two cubs met me. They probably were climbing up to winter-quarters. I stood still to let them pa.s.s. When a few yards distant the bear rose up and looked at me with a combination of curiosity, astonishment, and perhaps contempt.

With _Woof! Woof!_ more in a tone of disgust than of fear or anger, she rushed off, followed by the cubs, and the three disappeared in the darkening, snow-filling forest aisles.

The trees were snow-laden and dripping, but on and on I went. Years of training had given me great physical endurance, and this, along with a peculiar mental att.i.tude that Nature had developed in me from being alone in her wild places at all seasons, gave me a rare trust in her and an enthusiastic though unconscious confidence in the ultimate success of whatever I attempted to accomplish out of doors.

About two o'clock in the morning I at last descended to the river. The fresh debris on my side of the stream so hampered traveling that it became necessary to cross. Not finding any fallen-tree bridge, I started to wade across in a wide place that I supposed to be shallow.

Midway and hip-deep in the swift water, I struck the injured foot against a boulder, momentarily flinching, and the current swirled me off my feet. After much struggling and battling with the turbulent waters, I succeeded in reaching the opposite sh.o.r.e. This immersion did not make me any wetter than I was or than I had been for hours, but the water chilled me; so I hurried forward as rapidly as possible to warm up.

After a few steps the injured leg suddenly became helpless, and I tumbled down in the snow. Unable to revive the leg promptly and being very cold from my icy-water experience, I endeavored to start a fire.

Everything was soaked and snow-covered; the snow was falling and the trees dripping water; I groped about on my hands and one knee, dragging the paralyzed leg; all these disadvantages, along with chattering teeth and numb fingers, made my fire-starting attempts a series of failures.

That night of raw, primitive life is worse in retrospect than was the real one. Still I was deadly in earnest at the time. Twenty-four hours of alertness and activity in the wilds, swimming and wading a torrent of ice-water at two o'clock in the morning, tumbling out into the wet, snowy wilds miles from food and shelter, a crushed foot and a helpless leg, the penetrating, clinging cold, and no fire, is going back to nature about ten thousand years farther than it is desirable to go. But I was not discouraged even for a moment, and it did not occur to me to complain, though, as I look back now, the theory of non-resistance appears to have been carried a trifle too far. At last the fire blazed. After two hours beside it I went down the river greatly improved. The snow was about fifteen inches deep.

[Ill.u.s.tration: COURT-HOUSE ROCK]

Shortly before daylight I felt that I was close to a trail I had traveled, one that came to Cimarron near by Court-House Rock.

Recrossing the river on a fallen log, I lay down to sleep beneath a shelving rock with a roaring fire before me, sleeping soundly and deeply until the crash of an overturned cliff awakened me. Jumping to my feet, I found the storm over with the clouds broken and drifting back and forth in two strata as though undecided whether to go or remain. Above a low, lazy cloud, I caught a glimpse of Turret-Top, and turning, beheld Court-House Rock.

The foot gave no pain as I limped along the trail I had so often followed. Now and then I turned to take a photograph. The stars and the lights in the village were just appearing when I limped into the surgeon's office in Ridgway.

The Maker of Scenery and Soil

The Maker of Scenery and Soil

During my first boyish exploring trip in the Rocky Mountains I was impressed with the stupendous changes which the upper slope of these mountains had undergone. In places were immense embankments and wild deltas of debris that plainly had come from elsewhere. In other places the rough edges of the canons and ridges had been trimmed and polished; their cliffs and projections were gone and their surfaces had been swept clean of all loose material. Later, I tried vainly to account for some canon walls being trimmed and polished at the bottom while their upper parts were jagged. In most canons the height of the polis.h.i.+ngs above the bottom was equal on both walls, with the upper edge of the polish even or level for the entire length of the canon.

In one canon, in both floor and walls, were deep lateral scratches in the rocks.

One day I found some polished boulders perched like driftwood on the top of a polished rock dome; they were porphyry, while the dome was flawless granite. They plainly had come from somewhere else. How they managed to be where they were was too much for me. Mountain floods were terrible but not wild enough in their fiercest rushes to do this.

Upon a mountainside across a gorge about two miles distant, and a thousand feet above the perched boulders on the dome, I found a porphyry outcrop; but this situation only added to my confusion. I did not then know of the glacial period, or the actions of glaciers. It was a delightful revelation when John Muir told me of these wonders.

Much of the earth's surface, together with most mountain-ranges, have gone through a glacial period or periods. There is extensive and varied evidence that the greater portion of the earth has been carved and extensively changed by the Ice King. Substantial works, blurred and broken records, and impressive ruins in wide array over the earth show long and active possession by the Ice King, as eloquently as the monumental ruins in the Seven Hills tell of their intense a.s.sociation with man.

Both the northern and the southern hemispheres have had their heavy, slow-going floods of ice that appear to have swept from the polar world far toward the equator. During the great glacial period, which may have lasted for ages, a mountainous flood of ice overspread America from the north and extended far down the Mississippi Valley.

This ice may have been a mile or more in depth. It utterly changed the topography and made a new earth. Lakes were filled and new ones made.

New landscapes were formed: mountains were rubbed down to plains, morainal hills were built upon plains, and streams were moved bodily.

It is probable that during the last ice age the location and course of both the Ohio and the Missouri Rivers were changed. Originally the Missouri flowed east and north, probably emptying into a lake that had possession of the Lake Superior territory. The Ice King deliberately shoved this river hundreds of miles toward the south. The Ohio probably had a similar experience. These rivers appear to mark the "Farthest South" of the ice; their position probably was determined by the ice. Had a line been traced on the map along the ragged edge and front of the glacier at its maximum extension, this line would almost answer for the present position of the Missouri and Ohio Rivers.

The most suggestive and revealing words concerning glaciers that I have ever read are these of John Muir in "The Mountains of California": "When we bear in mind that all the Sierra forests are young, growing upon moraine soil recently deposited, and that the flank of the range itself, with all its landscapes, is new-born, recently sculptured, and brought to light of day from beneath the ice mantle of the glacial winter, then a thousand lawless mysteries disappear and broad harmonies take their places."

"A glacier," says Judge Junius Henderson, in the best definition that I have heard, "is a body of ice originating in an area where the annual acc.u.mulation of snow exceeds the dissipation, and moving downward and outward to an area where dissipation exceeds acc.u.mulation."

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE HALLETT GLACIER]

A glacier may move forward only a few feet in a year or it may move several feet in a day. It may be only a few hundred feet in length, or, as during the Ice Age, have an area of thousands of square miles.

The Arapahoe Glacier moves slowly, as do all small glaciers and some large ones. One year's measured movement was 27.7 feet near the centre and 11.15 near the edge. This, too, is about the average for one year, and also an approximate movement for most small mountain glaciers. The centre of the glacier, meeting less resistance than the edges, commonly flows much more rapidly. The enormous Alaskan glaciers have a much more rapid flow, many moving forward five or more feet a day.

A glacier is the greatest of eroding agents. It wears away the surface over which it flows. It grinds mountains to dust, transports soil and boulders, scoops out lake-basins, gives flowing lines to landscapes.

Beyond comprehension we are indebted to them for scenery and soil.

Glaciers, or ice rivers, make vast changes. Those in the Rocky Mountains overthrew cliffs, pinnacles, and rocky headlands. These in part were crushed and in part they became embedded in the front, bottom, and sides of the ice. This rock-set front tore into the sides and bottom of its channel--after it had made a channel!--with a terrible, rasping, crus.h.i.+ng, and grinding effect, forced irresistibly forward by a pressure of untold millions of tons. Glaciers, large and small, the world over, have like characteristics and influences. To know one glacier will enable one to enjoy glaciers everywhere and to appreciate the stupendous influence they have had upon the surface of the earth.

They have planed down the surface and even reduced mountain-ridges to turtle outlines. In places the nose of the glacier was thrust with such enormous pressure against a mountainside that the ice was forced up the slope which it flowed across and then descended on the opposite side. Sustained by constant and measureless pressure, years of fearful and incessant application of this weighty, flowing, planing, ploughing sandpaper wore the mountain down. In time, too, the small ragged-edged, V-shaped ravines became widened, deepened, and extended into enormous U-shaped glaciated gorges.

Glaciers have gouged or scooped many basins in the solid rock. These commonly are made at the bottom of a deep slope where the descending ice bore heavily on the lever or against a reverse incline. The size of the basin thus made is determined by the size, width, and weight of the glacier and by other factors. In the Rocky Mountains these excavations vary in size from a few acres to a few thousand. They became lake-basins on the disappearance of the ice.

More than a thousand lakes of glacial origin dot the upper portions of the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. Most of these are above the alt.i.tude of nine thousand feet, and the largest, Grand Lake, is three miles in length. Landslides and silt have filled many of the old glacier lake basins, and these, overgrown with gra.s.s and sedge, are called glacier meadows.

Vast was the quant.i.ty of material picked up and transported by these glaciers. Mountains were moved piecemeal, and ground to boulders, pebbles, and rock-flour in the moving. In addition to the material which the glacier gathered up and excavated, it also carried the wreckage brought down by landslides and the eroded matter poured upon it by streams from the heights. Most of the material which falls upon the top of the upper end of the glacier ultimately works its way to the bottom, where, with the other gathered material, it is pressed against the bottom and sides and used as a cutting or grinding tool until worn to a powder or pebbles.

Train-loads of debris often acc.u.mulate upon the top of the glacier. On the lower course this often is a hundred feet or more above the surface, and as the glacier descends and shrivels, enormous quant.i.ties of this rocky debris fall off the sides and, in places, form enormous embankments; these often closely parallel long stretches of the glacier like river levees.

The large remainder of the material is carried to the end of the glacier, where the melting ice unloads and releases it. This acc.u.mulation, which corresponds to the delta of a river, is the terminal moraine. For years the bulk of the ice may melt away at about the same place; this acc.u.mulates an enormous amount of debris; an advance of the ice may plough through this and repile it, or the retreat of the ice or a changed direction of its flow may pile the debris elsewhere and over wide areas. Many of these terminal moraines are an array of broken embankments, small basin-like holes and smooth, level s.p.a.ces. The debris of these moraines embraces rock-flour, gravel, pebbles, a few angular rock-ma.s.ses, and enormous quant.i.ties of many-sized boulders,--rocks rounded by the grind of the glacial mill.

Strange freight, of unknown age, these creeping ice rivers bring down.

One season the frozen carca.s.s of a mountain sheep was taken from the ice at the end of the Arapahoe Glacier. If this sheep fell into a creva.s.se at the upper end of the glacier, its carca.s.s probably had been in the ice for more than a century. Human victims, too, have been strangely handled by glaciers. It appears that in 1820 Dr. Hamil and a party of climbers were struck by a snowslide on the slope of Mont Blanc. One escaped with his life, while the others were swept down into a creva.s.se and buried so deeply in the snow and ice that their bodies could not be recovered. Scientists said that at the rate the glacier was moving it would give up its dead after forty years. Far down the mountain forty-one years afterward, the ice gave up its victims. A writer has founded on this incident an interesting story, in which the bodies are recovered in an excellent state of preservation, and an old woman with sunken cheeks and gray hair clasps the youthful body of her lover of long ago, the guide.