MOUNT RAINIER 



and South Forks of the Puyallup. These streams 

 meet in a level valley at the base of three singular 

 peaks, and plunge united into the dark gateway of the 

 canon. 



A trip to the grand snow peak from which these 

 rivers spring was within a year a very difficult under- 

 taking. There was no trail through the dense forest, 

 no supply depot on the route. No horse nor donkey 

 could accompany the explorer, who took his blankets 

 and provisions on his back, and worked his way slowly 

 among the towering tree trunks, through underbrush 

 luxuriant as a tropic jungle. But last summer a good 

 horse trail was built from Wilkeson to Carbon River, 

 crossing it above the canon, sixteen miles below the 

 glacier, and during the autumn it was extended to the 

 head of the Puyallup. Wilkeson is reached by a branch 

 railroad from New Tacoma. It is on a small tributary 

 of Carbon River, called Fletts Creek, at a point where 

 the brook runs from a narrow gorge into a valley about 

 a quarter of a mile wide. Coal mines are opened at this 

 point. The horse trail climbs at once from Wilkeson 

 to the first terrace, four hundred feet above the valley ; 

 then winds a quarter of a mile back through the forest 

 to the second ascent of a hundred feet, and then a mile 

 over the level to the third. Hidden here beneath the 

 thick covering of moss and undergrowth of the prime- 

 val forest, fourteen hundred feet above the present 

 ocean level, are ancient shore lines of the sea, which 

 has left its trace in similar terraces in all the valleys 

 about the Sound. 1 Thence the trail extends south- 

 ward over a level plateau. Carbon River Canon is 

 but half a mile away on the west, and five miles from 

 Wilkeson the valley above the canon is reached. The 

 descent to the river is over three miles along the hill- 

 side eastward. 



1 The terraces to which reference is here made are not the work of the sea, but 

 of lakes whose waters gathered between the mountain slopes and retreating 

 glaciers of the ice period. See the article by H. I. Bretz. Geol. Survey of Wash., 

 Bull. 8, 1912. 



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