Vol. LXXXVI1 
JULY, 1918 
No. 7 
GETTING A MOUNTAINEERING REPUTATION 
CLIMBING MT. WHITNEY, THE HIGHEST PEAK IN THE UNITED STATES, CALLS THE ONE 
BIG BLUFF IN AMERICAN MOUNTAINS AND IS SAFER THAN WALKING ON A SIDEWALK 
By EMERSON HOUGH 
O NE of the unaccountable vagaries of 
the human mind is the universal am¬ 
bition to climb some innocent and 
inoffensive mountain which never did any¬ 
body any harm. If mountains were in any 
way possessed of predatory habits, or were 
in the least disposed to wander from their 
own dooryard and look for trouble, it 
might be different, but when you 
come to think of it you cannot im¬ 
agine anything more meek and 
humble than the average mountain. 
And yet people equip themselves 
with goggles and alpine stocks, and 
shoes that hurt their feet, and go 
out and climb some unresisting 
eminence, and then come back and 
have their pictures taken. I sup¬ 
pose that is a part of the great 
human egotism, the wish to be re¬ 
membered by reason of having 
done something different. 
True, mountain climbing is dif¬ 
ferent from walking on a sidewalk. 
For one thing, it is safer. As for 
my own self, I always looked on 
the mountain climber with the same 
gentle leniency I would accord to 
a boy with a sore thumb, or a lady 
with a past. I have had to climb 
a few mountains sometimes, but, as 
the advertising page says, there was 
a reason—usually there was a sheep 
or goat up on top. As for climb¬ 
ing mountains simply for the sake 
of saying I had done it, it is only 
very recently that that could have 
been charged against me. 
Still, some of our best people do 
climb mountains. There are sev¬ 
eral clubs composed of men and 
women who do nothing else—the 
Mazama Club, the Sierra Club, or 
the Alpine Club of Canada. I be¬ 
long to the Sierra Club now. It is 
very simple to get in. After you 
get in all you have to do is to rest 
•on your laurels. I shall never have 
to climb any more mountains, 
Contents Copyright, 1918 by Forest and 
because I now belong to the Sierra Club, 
hence am plumb famous if I never do any¬ 
thing else. 
I forget how many feet high a mountain 
has to be before you can acquire merit 
through it sufficient to qualify you for the 
Sierra Club, or any of our other leading 
altitudinous social aggregations, but if you 
climb Mount Whitney, they can not very 
well keep you out of the Sierra Club, un¬ 
less you are cross-eyed or something. 
And yet Mount Whitney has been 
climbed by babies six years of age as well 
as babies over six. All it needs is a hand 
rail and a new stair carpet, and you would 
think it was only going up to the next flat. 
There are thousands of peaks in 
the Rockies and the Sierras much 
harder to climb than Mount Whit¬ 
ney, although much lower in meas¬ 
ured altitude. There is no use 
climbing any of these, because that 
means too much hard work, besides 
it is not necessary. It is easier to 
climb Mount Whitney, which is the 
highest peak in the entire United 
States. It is almost twice as high 
as the Flatiron Building in New 
York City. 
Mount Whitney is located some¬ 
where in eastern California, in the 
exact center of a great many other 
mountains, nearly all of which look 
higher than it does,.but which are 
not. It is bounded on the east by 
Bishop, California, on the w f est by 
Visalia, and on the north by Yo- 
semite Park. On the south it has 
no boundary, and that is where 
you climb it. 
It is not necessary for you to 
tell after your hazardous exploit 
that you rode almost all the wav- 
up on a broad gauged mule which 
is rigged with never slip tires. I 
am not sure whether Mount Whit¬ 
ney has ever been climbed all the 
way up by a mule, but it certainly 
is the case that the United States 
Geographical Survey had mules up 
on top of it—that is, almost on top 
of it. 
Going down in the night the 
party got among the rocks, having 
been delayed by the slowness of 
one of the members to get down. 
As not even a mule cared to walk 
The author (right), and Mr. Mather at the summit 
Stream Publishing Co. 
