[Illustration: Copyright, 1909, By Asahel Curtis. Spray Falls, a splendid scenic feature of the north side, where it drops more than five hundred feet from the Spray Park table-land into the canyon of North Mowich Glacier.]
Here the basalt terminated, and a red porous formation began, which crumbled in the hand. This part of the cliff lay a little out from the perpendicular, and there was apparently no way of surmounting it. I looked at my watch. It was 4:15. In a flash the whole situation came to me. It would be impossible to return and cross the crevasses before dark. We could not stay where we were. Already the icy wind cut to the bone.
"We must make it. There is no going back," I said to Dudley. I gave him the ice ax, and started to the ascent of the remaining cliff. I climbed six feet, and was helpless. I could not get back, nor go forward. One of my feet swung loose, and I felt my hands slipping. Then I noticed above me, about six or eight inches to my right a sharp, projecting rock. It was here or never. I gave a swing, and letting go my feet entirely, I reached the rock. It held, and I was swinging by my hands over a two-hundred-foot void. I literally glued myself to the face of the rock, searching frantically for knob or crevasse with my feet. By sheer luck, my toe found a small projection, and from here I gradually worked myself up until I came to a broken cleft in the cliff where it was possible to brace myself and lower the rope to Dudley. This last ascent had only been fifteen feet, and, in reality, had taken but three or four minutes, but to me it seemed hours.
At 7:45, we reached the summit of the south peak. Here we stopped to look down on Camp Sierra. Long shadows spread their mantle across the glaciers, and in the east lay the phantom { p.126} mountain--the shadow of Rainier. A flash of light attracted our attention. We saw that our companions had been watching our progress.
[Illustration: A rescue from a crevasse.]
The White glacier route on the east side was first used in 1885 by a party from Snohomish. The same glacier was traversed by the Willis-Russell party in 1896. The first woman to make the ascent was Miss Fay Fuller, of Tacoma, in 1890, over the Gibraltar route.