Could We At Once Have Begun To Descend The Snow Slopes Leading To The
Timber, We Might Have Made Good Our Escape, However Dark And Wild The
Storm.
As it was, we had first to make our way along a dangerous
ridge nearly a mile and a half long, flanked in many places by steep
ice-slopes at the head of the Whitney Glacier on one side and by
shattered precipices on the other.
Apprehensive of this coming
darkness, I had taken the precaution, when the storm began, to make
the most dangerous points clear to my mind, and to mark their
relations with reference to the direction of the wind. When,
therefore, the darkness came on, and the bewildering drift, I felt
confident that we could force our way through it with no other
guidance. After passing the "Hot Springs" I halted in the lee of a
lava-block to let Jerome, who had fallen a little behind, come up.
Here he opened a council in which, under circumstances sufficiently
exciting but without evincing any bewilderment, he maintained, in
opposition to my views, that it was impossible to proceed. He firmly
refused to make the venture to find the camp, while I, aware of the
dangers that would necessarily attend our efforts, and conscious of
being the cause of his present peril, decided not to leave him.
Our discussions ended, Jerome made a dash from the shelter of the
lava-block and began forcing his way back against the wind to the "Hot
Springs," wavering and struggling to resist being carried away, as if
he were fording a rapid stream. After waiting and watching in vain
for some flaw in the storm that might be urged as a new argument in
favor of attempting the descent, I was compelled to follow. "Here,"
said Jerome, as we shivered in the midst of the hissing, sputtering
fumaroles, "we shall be safe from frost." "Yes," said I, "we can lie
in this mud and steam and sludge, warm at least on one side; but how
can we protect our lungs from the acid gases, and how, after our
clothing is saturated, shall we be able to reach camp without
freezing, even after the storm is over? We shall have to wait for
sunshine, and when will it come?"
The tempered area to which we had committed ourselves extended over
about one fourth of an acre; but it was only about an eighth of an
inch in thickness, for the scalding gas jets were shorn off close to
the ground by the oversweeping flood of frosty wind. And how lavishly
the snow fell only mountaineers may know. The crisp crystal flowers
seemed to touch one another and fairly to thicken the tremendous blast
that carried them. This was the bloom-time, the summer of the cloud,
and never before have I seen even a mountain cloud flowering so
profusely.
When the bloom of the Shasta chaparral is falling, the ground is
sometimes covered for hundreds of square miles to a depth of half an
inch.
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