Day After Day The Storm Continued, Piling Snow On Snow In Weariless
Abundance.
There were short periods of quiet, when the sun would seem
to look eagerly down through rents in the clouds, as if to know how
the work was advancing.
During these calm intervals I replenished my
fire - sometimes without leaving the nest, for fire and woodpile were
so near this could easily be done - or busied myself with my notebook,
watching the gestures of the trees in taking the snow, examining
separate crystals under a lens, and learning the methods of their
deposition as an enduring fountain for the streams. Several times,
when the storm ceased for a few minutes, a Douglas squirrel came
frisking from the foot of a clump of dwarf pines, moving in sudden
interrupted spurts over the bossy snow; then, without any apparent
guidance, he would dig rapidly into the drift where were buried some
grains of barley that the horses had left. The Douglas squirrel does
not strictly belong to these upper woods, and I was surprised to see
him out in such weather. The mountain sheep also, quite a large flock
of them, came to my camp and took shelter beside a clump of matted
dwarf pines a little above my nest.
The storm lasted about a week, but before it was ended Sisson became
alarmed and sent up the guide with animals to see what had become of
me and recover the camp outfit. The news spread that "there was a man
on the mountain," and he must surely have perished, and Sisson was
blamed for allowing any one to attempt climbing in such weather; while
I was as safe as anybody in the lowlands, lying like a squirrel in a
warm, fluffy nest, busied about my own affairs and wishing only to be
let alone. Later, however, a trail could not have been broken for a
horse, and some of the camp furniture would have had to be abandoned.
On the fifth day I returned to Sisson's, and from that comfortable
base made excursions, as the weather permitted, to the Black Butte, to
the foot of the Whitney Glacier, around the base of the mountain, to
Rhett and Klamath Lakes, to the Modoc region and elsewhere, developing
many interesting scenes and experiences.
But the next spring, on the other side of this eventful winter, I saw
and felt still more of the Shasta snow. For then it was my fortune to
get into the very heart of a storm, and to be held in it for a long
time.
On the 28th of April [1875] I led a party up the mountain for the
purpose of making a survey of the summit with reference to the
location of the Geodetic monument. On the 30th, accompanied by Jerome
Fay, I made another ascent to make some barometrical observations, the
day intervening between the two ascents being devoted to establishing
a camp on the extreme edge of the timberline. Here, on our red
trachyte bed, we obtained two hours of shallow sleep broken for
occasional glimpses of the keen, starry night.
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