The Lake of the Sky Part 17

The wind began to blow a regular cyclone from the north, so the roaring of the trees told us, but we were largely sheltered, and as we looked up through the dancing and whirling tree-tops there was not a cloud in the sky.

Thus we returned to the Tavern, dramatically and gloriously bringing our delightful and easy trip to an end.

I have been rather prolix, and have entered much more fully into detail than some may deem necessary in the account of this trip, for two important reasons. It is a trip that none should fail to take, and I have made it a sort of general account, giving in broad outline what the visitor may expect of any of the peak trips in the vicinity of Tahoe Tavern. It goes without saying that, constantly, from a score or more outlook points, the eye finds its resting place upon Lake Tahoe, each view being different and more charming than the one that preceded it.

TO SQUAW VALLEY, GRANITE CHIEF PEAK, FIVE LAKES AND DEER PARK SPRINGS

Leaving Tahoe Tavern we cross the Truckee River and ride down on the north side. The flowing Truckee is placid and smooth, save where eager trout jump and splash. The meadows are richly green and the mountain slope on the further side is radiant with virgin tree-life in joyous exuberance. Jays are harshly calling, chipmunks are excitedly running, the pure blue of the sky over-arches all, the wine of the morning is in the air, and we are glad we are alive. A spring of pure cold water on the right, about a mile out, tempts us to a delicious morning draught.

A little further down is "Pap." Church's "Devil's Playground,"

"Devil's Post," and devil's this, that and the other, out of which he gained considerable satisfaction while driving stage-coach between Truckee and Tahoe in the days before the railroad.

It is well carefully to observe these singular lava puddingstone ma.s.ses, for, according to the theory of John Le Conte, the eminent physicist, recounted in another chapter, these were the restraining ma.s.ses that made the Lake at one time eighty or a hundred feet higher than it is to-day.

Four miles from the Tavern we pa.s.s Engineer Von Schmidt's old dam, for the history of which see the chapter on "The Truckee River."

Near Deer Park Station is another spring on the right. In the old stage days "Pap." Church always stopped here and gave his pa.s.sengers the opportunity to drink of the water, while he made discourse as to its remarkable coldness. Five years ago a land slide completely buried it, and the road had to be cut through again. Ever since the spring has been partially clogged and does not flow freely, but it is cold enough to make one's teeth ache.

In the winter of 1881-2 a land-and-snow-slide occurred a little beyond Deer Park Station. Watson was carrying the mail on snow-shoes at the time and saw it. There had been a five foot fall of snow in early March, and a week or two later came a second fall of seven feet.

Something started the ma.s.s, and down it came, rushing completely across the river and damming it up, high on the other side, and the course of the slide can clearly be seen to-day. It is now, however, almost covered with recent growth of chaparral, and thus contributed to one of the most beautiful effects of light and shade I ever saw.

The mountain slope on one side was completely covered with a growth of perfect trees. Through these came pencillings of light from the rising sun, casting alternate rulings of light and shadow in parallel lines on the glossy surface of the chaparral beyond. The effect was enhanced by the fleecy and sunshiny clouds floating in the cobalt blue above.

Near the mouth of Bear Creek the river makes a slight curve and also a drop at the same time, and the road, making a slight rise, presents the view of a beautiful stretch of roaring and foaming cascades.

Here the canyon walls are of bare, rocky ridges, of white and red barrenness, with occasional patches of timber, but very different from the tree-clad slopes that we have enjoyed hitherto all the way down from the Tavern.

Beyond is a little grove of quaking aspens. Their leaves, quivering in the morning breeze, attract the eye. Crossing the railway, the road makes a climb up a hill that at one time may have formed a natural dam across the river. Here is a scarred tree on the left where Handsome Jack ran his stage off the bank in 1875, breaking his leg and seriously injuring his pa.s.sengers.

Crossing the next bridge to the left at the mouth of Squaw Creek, six miles from the Tavern, on a small flat by the side of the river is the site of the town of Claraville, one of the reminders of the Squaw Valley mining excitement.

Just below this bridge is an old log chute, and a dam in the river.

This dam backed up the water and made a "cushion" into which the logs came dashing and splashing, down from the mountain heights above. They were then floated down the river to the sawmill at Truckee.

At Knoxville we forded the river at a point where a giant split bowlder made a tunnel and the water dashed through with roaring speed.

Retracing our steps for a mile or so we came to the Wigwam Inn, a wayside resort and store just at the entrance to Squaw Valley. To the right flows Squaw Creek, alongside of which is the bed of the logging railway belonging to the Truckee Lumber Co. It was abandoned two or three years ago, when all the available logs of the region had been cut. Most of the timber-land between Squaw Creek and Truckee, on both sides of the river, was purchased years ago, from its locators, by the Truckee Lumber Company. But Scott Bros., purchased a hundred and sixty acres from the locators and established a dairy in Squaw Valley, supplying the logging-camps with milk and b.u.t.ter for many years past.

For forty years or more this region has been the scene of active logging, the work having begun under the direction of Messrs.

Bricknell and Kinger, of Forest Hill. The present president of the Truckee Lumber Co. is Mr. Hazlett, who married the daughter of Kinger. This company, after the railway removed from Glenbrook and was established between Tahoe and Truckee, lumbered along the west side of Tahoe as far as Ward Creek.

Entering the valley we find it free from willows, open and clear. The upper end is surrounded, amphitheater fashion, by majestic mountains, rising to a height of upwards of 9000 feet. Clothed with sage-brush at the lower end and rich gra.s.s further up, even to the very base of the mountains, it is, in some respects, the prettiest valley in the whole of this part of the Sierra Nevadas.

The upper meadows are full of milk cows, quietly grazing or lying down and chewing their cuds, while just beyond the great dairy buildings is the unpretentious cottage of the Forest Ranger. Remnants of old log chutes remind one of the logging activities that used to be carried on here.

One of the most observable features of Squaw Valley is its level character. This is discussed in the chapter on glacial action.

On the right the vein of quartz which out-crops at Knoxville is visible in several places and the various dump-piles show how many claimants worked on their locations in the hope of finding profitable ore.

Half way up the valley is an Iron Spring, the oxydization from which has gathered together a large amount of red which the Indians still prize highly and use for face paint.

How these suggestions excite the imagination--old logging chutes, mining-claims and Indians. Once this valley rang with the clang of chains on driven oxen, the sharp stroke of the ax as it bit into the heart of the tree, the crash of the giant trees as they fell, the rude snarl of the saw as it cut them up into logs, the shout of the driver as he drove his horses alongside the chute and hurried the logs down to the river, the quick blast of the imprisoned powder, the falling of shattered rocks, the emptying of the ore or waste-bucket upon the dump--all these sounds once echoed to and from these hillsides and mountain slopes.

Now everything is as quiet and placid as a New England pastoral scene, and only the towering mountains, snow-clad even as late as this in the fall, suggest that we are in the far-away wilds of the great West.

But Squaw Valley had another epoch, which it was hoped would materially and forever destroy its quiet and pastoral character. In the earlier days of the California gold excitement the main road from Truckee and Dormer Lake went into Nevada County and thus on to Sacramento. In 1862 the supervisors of Placer County, urged on by the merchants, sent up a gang of men from Placerville to build a road from Squaw Valley, into the Little American Valley, down the Forest Hill Divide, thus hoping to bring the emigrant travel to Forest Hill, Michigan Bluff, and other parts of Placer County.

It was also argued that emigrants would be glad to take this new road as all the pasture along the other road was "eaten off." Over this historic road we are now about to ride.

As we look up it is a forbidding prospect. Only brave men and sanguine would ever have dared to contemplate such a plan. The mountain cliffs, separated and split, arise before us as impa.s.sable barriers. Yet one branch of the old trail used to pa.s.s through the divide to the right, over to Hopkins Springs, while the one that was converted into the wagon road took the left-hand canyon to the main divide.

We now begin to ascend this road at the head of Squaw Valley, and in five minutes, or less, are able to decide _why_ it was never a success. The grade is frightful, and for an hour or more we go slowly up it, stopping every few yards to give our horses breath. All the way along we can trace the blazes on the trees made over sixty years ago. It is hard enough for horses to go up this grade, but to pull heavily-ladened wagons--it seems impossible that even those giant-hearted men, used to seeing so many impossible things accomplished, could ever have believed that such a road could be feasible. What wonderful, marvelous, undaunted characters they must have been, men with wills of inflexible steel, to overcome such obstacles and dare such hardships. Yet there were compensations. Squaw Creek's clear, pellucid, snow-fed stream runs purling, babbling or roaring and foaming by to the right. These pioneers with their women and children had crossed the sandy, alkali and waterless deserts.

For days and weeks they had not had water enough to keep their faces clean, to wash the sand from their eyes. Now, though they had come to a land of apparently unscalable mountains and impa.s.sable rock-barriers, they had gra.s.s for the stock, and water,--delicious, fresh, pure, refreshing water for themselves. I can imagine that when they reached here they felt it was a new paradise, and that G.o.d was especially smiling upon them, and to such men, with such feelings, what could daunt, what prevent, what long stay their onward march.

As we ascend, the mountains on our right a.s.sume the form of artificial parapets of almost white rock, outlined against the bluest of blue skies. There is one gray peak ahead, tinged with green. The trail is all washed away and our horses stumble and slide, slip and almost fall over the barren and rough rocks, and the scattered bowlders, a devastating cloud-burst could not wash away.

Here is a spring on the left, hidden in a grove of alders and willows, and now new and more fantastic spires arise on the right. Higher up we see where those st.u.r.dy road-builders rolled giant rocks out of their way to make an impa.s.sable road look as if it could be traversed.

Reaching the point at the foot of Squaw Peak at last we look back over Squaw Valley. In the late summer tints it is beautiful, but what must it be in the full flush of its summer glory and perfection? Then it must be a delight to the eye and a refreshment to the soul. How interesting, too, it is to rehabilitate it as a great glacial lake.

One can see its pellucid waters of clear amethystine blue and imagine the scenes that transpired when the ancestors of the present Indians fished, in rude dugouts, or on logs, or extemporized rafts, upon its surface. Now it is covered with brown, yellowish gra.s.s, with tree-clad slopes rising from the marge.

Turning to the right we find ourselves in a country of ma.s.sive bowlders. They seem to have been broken off from the summits above and arrested here for future ages and movements to change or pa.s.s on.

The road grows severer than ever, and we cannot help again picturing those old heroes driving their wagons up, while the women and children toiled painfully on foot up the steep and rocky slopes. Could anything ever daunt them after this? any obstacle, however insurmountable, discourage them? any labor, however severe, compel them to turn back?

Though there is a deep pathos in all these memories, the heroism of it makes our blood tingle with pride that such men and women belonged to us, that we are privileged to live in the land their labors, loves and lives have sanctified.

We turn to the right; a tiny waterfall, which in the season must be quite a sight, trickles down near by; we are now advancing directly upon the serrated ridge of fantastic spires that have long accompanied us. We now find those white-seeming pinnacles are of delicate pinks, creams, blues, slates and grays. In one place, however, it seems for all the world as if there were a miniature Gothic chapel built of dark, brownish-black lava. Another small patch of the same color and material, lower down, presents a gable end, with windows, reminding us of the popular picture of Melrose Abbey in the moonlight.

Now we are lined on either side by removed bowlders, but the road! ah the road! who could ever have traveled over it? Trees twenty feet high have now grown up in the roadway. To the left Squaw Peak (8960 feet) towers above us, while we make the last great pull through the rocky portion ere we come to the easier rise to the shoulders of Granite Chief. Here the road was graded out from the side of a granite mountain, blasted out and built up, but it is now sadly washed out.

Further up, a broad porphyritic d.y.k.e crosses our path, then more trees, and we come to the gentle slope of a kind of granitic sand which composes the open s.p.a.ce leading to the pa.s.s between Granite Chief on the right, and a peculiar battlemented rock, locally known as Fort Sumpter, on the left. This was named by the Squaw Valley stampeders who came over the trail in the early days of the Civil War, when all patriots and others were excited to the core at the news that Fort Sumpter had been fired upon. On one of the highest points stands a juniper on which a big blaze was cut by the early road-makers, so that there need be no doubt as to which way the road turned. Other nearby trees, in their wild ruggedness and st.u.r.dy growth, remind us of a woman whose skirts are blown about by a fierce wind. Their appearance speaks of storms braved, battles of wind and snow and ice and cold fought and won, for they have neither branch nor leaf on the exposed side, and on the other are pitiably scant.

As we cross the sandy divide, over which a wagon could drive anywhere, we find white sage in abundance. Expansive vistas loom before us, ahead and to the right, while Squaw Peak now presents the appearance of a vast sky-line crater. We seem to be standing on the inside of it, but on the side where the wall has disappeared. Across, the peak has a circular, palisaded appearance, and the lower peaks to the right seem as if they were the continuation of the wall, making a vast crater several miles in diameter. The plateau upon which we stand seems as if it might have been a level spot almost near the center of the bowl.

Fort Sumpter is a part of this great crater-like wall and Granite Chief is the end of the ridge.

As a rule there is a giant bank of snow on the saddle over which the trail goes between Ft. Sumpter and Granite Chief, but this year (1913) it has totally disappeared. It has been the driest season known for many years.

Looking back towards the Lake a glorious and expansive view is presented. Watson Peak, Mt. Rose, Marlette Peak, Glenbrook and the pa.s.s behind it, are all in sight and the Lake glistening in pearly brilliancy below.

At the end of the Squaw Peak ridge, on the right, is a ma.s.s of andesite, looking like rude cordwood, and just above is a ma.s.s of breccia very similar to that found in the Truckee Valley a few miles below Tahoe Tavern.

Below us, at the head of Squaw Creek is a small blue pond, scarcely large and important enough to be called a lake, yet a distinctive feature and one that would be highly prized in a less-favored landscape.

On the very summit of the ridge we get fine views of Mounts Ralston, Richardson, Pyramid Peak and the whole Rock Bound Range, while close at hand to the north is Needle Peak (8920 feet), and to the south, Mt. Mildred (8400 feet). To our left is Fort Sumpter, to the right the Granite Chief, and between the two a stiff breeze is blowing.

Have you ever stood on a mountain ridge or divide when a fierce gale was blowing, so that you were unable to walk without staggering, and where it was hard to get your breath, much less speak, and where it seemed as if Nature herself had set herself the purpose of cleansing you through and through with her sweetening pneumatic processes? If not, you have missed one of the blessed influences of life.

Rough? harsh? severe? Of course, but what of that, compared with the blessings that result. It is things like that that teach one to love Nature. Read John Muir's account--in his _Mountains of California_--and see how he reveled in wind-storms, and even climbed into a tree and clung to its top "like a bobolink on a reed"

in order to enjoy a storm to the full.