Cascade Mountains

Since Cave Junction, Oregon, I had seen the Cascades in file like the lights of watchtowers. First I remember the ragged cap of Shasta, rising, present as full moon. The ice of it shone like cut paper above the horizon, far enough away that the stone had faded to blue and it seemed a cap alone, an ice island in the sky. Then it was Mcloughlan hovering in the distance, high enough to cast glare over the Willamette. Then Hood - which I would not climb - but could see admirably well from St. Helens - which I did. From that summit I could see thrust up thru the clouds the last peaks of Oregon with the first of Washington: Rainier, Adams, and St. Helens beneath me.

Adams I would skirt around until Rainier and the Wonderland Trail. During one week I walked the circumference of mountain, dropping down to cedar forests that lost their tops in the mists rising from glacial rivers, to the glaciers themselves, the greatest single aggregate of ice in the 48 states. On clear days from Seattle I would look out from the 50th street overpass of the I-5 to see the peak, 14,411 feet high, glowing where the last rays of the sun lit the face with fire. Higher than the Eiger. Higher even than Fuji.

Last of all came Baker, whose glare was ever present even as I walked into Canada, and then as I returned.

I had come back from Canada to go thru the North Cascades on my way to Eastern Washington, and then to Idaho.

Rather, I should write it this way, I climbed up Nooksack Ridge, and back into winter. It had taken me 4 days just to get from Bellingham to Hannegan Pass.

There were many things I ignored. For one thing, I do not carry any serious winter gear. My sleeping bag is probably the only piece of good winter equipment I carry, being rated to -20 degrees. But no snowshoes, no crampons, no parka. For another, it had snowed in Deming, at elevation 670 feet, the day before I had gotten there, still some 39 miles from Hannegan Pass (elevation 5,930 feet).

And yet, stubbornly, I got all the way up to the pass itself, over meters of snow, thru the white silence of the mountains, crossing over earlier avalanches, breaking spruce tangles to the very point where the ground sloped down to either side. I had come atop the wall. It was blindingly bright and quiet. A few grosbeaks and a ptarmigan shared the space with me while I sat, panting, in tee-shirt and sunglasses.

A ptarmigan.

Once, in Oregon, when Shasta was still in sight, I had flushed a spruce grouse from hiding. A northern bird, I had thought. There are neither spruce nor spruce grouse in California. Too far south. I had come far.

Now, here was a ptarmigan, a bird I knew only from Jack London and other writers of the Arctic. Snow white. An ice grouse. With feathered feet it stood atop the snow, close enough I could have jabbed it with a pool cue. But it had the advantage. Besides being snow-colored and winged, its feet allowed it to float atop the snow. I had stomped and stumbled the entire way up, a process known as 'post-holing,' punching holes up the pass one and two at a time. I couldn't have captured the bird even if I wanted to. Even if it just walked away from me.

I could get beyond this pass, I thought, even though there were no tracks, nor ghosts of tracks, to lead me down the other side. My body was up to it. But it was not my body that had gotten me up here. My pride had ordered that I cross the Cascades here, and my body had followed. Beyond here were 2 other passes, one of about 5,000 feet and then another of 4,000. Did I even know where they would be? My feet were wrinkled claws from the amount of ice that had come over my boot tops and melted. I had no more dry gear. I could still get beyond. Likely at the cost of a few toes. Maybe just some frostbite.

Or the other way to reach the far side of the mountains would be to backtrack down the mountain, around both Nooksack and Baker, and follow highway 20 to Ross Lake, some 170 miles away. A week's worth of walking.

So, I thought, I have left Seattle April 1st, and I am still on the west side of the mountains. And now I will have to walk again the same 80 miles I took the past four days walking, having to go nearly all the way back to Bellingham. (It is not hard to walk a hundred miles, only to walk the same hundred twice)


But, says my pride - with no one but myself and the ptarmigan to talk to - what about Rainier? There we went up to points well above 7,000 feet, up to glaciers. And St. Helens we climbed to the top. 8,365 feet!

Yes, I answer. But that was in September, after a year of little snow. This year there has been much snow. And it is only April. This pass will not be clear for many months. Had you not realized that it would be this way when it had snowed even at the base of the mountain?

The weather was clear as a bell. A better day than most to admit of a mistake. I do not have to break trail here. Highway 20 has already done that. And still, often passes are made where none ought to be. Trains still get stuck in Donner Pass. My teeth gritted, I turned around and went back the way I came.

There have been many mountains I have climbed thru and gone over, but not such as this. Maybe, not having lived in them as a fact but wandered thru them as recreation, I do no know how to deal with snow as the animals do, as an obstacle to movement and as the clear signal the kitchen is closed for the season. Maybe, not having spent serious time camping at elevations above 4,000 feet, I don't know how to set up a camp above treeline.

Maybe, I don't know much about mountains at all.