I Was
Accompanied By Keith, The Artist, Professor Ingraham, And Five
Ambitious Young Climbers From Seattle.
We were led by the veteran
mountaineer and guide Van Trump, of Yelm, who many years before guided
General Stevens in his memorable ascent, and later Mr. Bailey, of
Oakland.
With a cumbersome abundance of campstools and blankets we
set out from Seattle, traveling by rail as far as Yelm Prairie, on the
Tacoma and Oregon road. Here we made our first camp and arranged with
Mr. Longmire, a farmer in the neighborhood, for pack and saddle
animals. The noble King Mountain was in full view from here,
glorifying the bright, sunny day with his presence, rising in godlike
majesty over the woods, with the magnificent prairie as a foreground.
The distance to the mountain from Yelm in a straight line is perhaps
fifty miles; but by the mule and yellowjacket trail we had to follow
it is a hundred miles. For, notwithstanding a portion of this trail
runs in the air, where the wasps work hardest, it is far from being an
air line as commonly understood.
By night of the third day we reached the Soda Springs on the right
bank of the Nisqually, which goes roaring by, gray with mud, gravel,
and boulders from the caves of the glaciers of Rainier, now close at
hand. The distance from the Soda Springs to the Camp of the Clouds is
about ten miles. The first part of the way lies up the Nisqually
Canyon, the bottom of which is flat in some places and the walls very
high and precipitous, like those of the Yosemite Valley.
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