Last summer I gained the summit from the south side, in a day and a half
from the timberline, without encountering any desperate obstacles that
could not in some way be passed in good weather. 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. The upper part of the
canyon is still occupied by one of the Nisqually glaciers, from which
this branch of the river draws its source, issuing from a cave in the
gray, rock-strewn snout. About a mile below the glacier we had to ford
the river, which caused some anxiety, for the current is very rapid and
carried forward large boulders as well as lighter material, while its
savage roar is bewildering.

At this point we left the canyon, climbing out of it by a steep zigzag
up the old lateral moraine of the glacier, which was deposited when the
present glacier flowed past at this height, and is about eight hundred
feet high. It is now covered with a superb growth of Picea amabilis
[30]; so also is the corresponding portion of the right later