The Cincinnati Commercial, October 18, 1876, p.3
The First Woman to Climb the Great South Dome in the Yosemite Valley Tells How She Did It.
— Letter from Lizzie K. Pershing to the Pittsburg[h] Telegraph —
Seven o'clock next morning found us on our
horses, ready to start for the great South Dome,
the highest goal of our ambition.
As we rode up the mountain, Mr. Hutchings explained
to us the manner in which the seeming
invincible Dome had been conquered. "I tried",
he said, "to climb it in [1859?], and persons have been
trying to climb it ever since. A man came to me
one day to tell me that he had been around the
dome for three days, had examined it very carefully,
and was satisfied he could reach the top.
"Very well", said I, "you plant a flag there when
you get up, then come to me in the evening, and I
will give you the best supper a man ever sat down
to and twenty dollars besides for your day's work".
The man agreed, and went off; but somehow he
forgot to call again".
Among others who endeavored to accomplish
this feat was George Anderson, a brave young
Scotchman, from Montrose. Various were the expedients
to which he resorted. He collected turpentine
from the neighboring pine trees and
smeared his hands and feet with it. He put
coarse bagging upon his extremities and covered
it with pitch. After having several serious
falls, one of them nearly fatal, he acknowledged
the impracticability of all such
methods, and tried the only one by which
a mortal could ever have accomplished this feat.
Climbing as far as possible he drilled a hole in the
rock. A wooden block was placed in this, and
into it an iron pin was driven. Throwing a rope
over this, he drew himself up and stood upon one
pin while preparing a place in the rock for another,
and so on to the top, which he reached at
3 P. M., October 12, 1875, two days and a half from
the time that the first iron pin was placed in the
rock.
We had been riding up the mountain side
while listening to this story, and now came
upon a little cabin in the forest, which Mr.
Hutchings informed us was the home of our hero.
In a moment he came out himself to greet us, and
we saw a well formed man, a little above medium
height, with brown hair, honest blue eyes and
modest mien. He showed us the cabin which
forms his dwelling place in winter, when frequently
the snow is on a level with the roof. We
examined, too, the long snow shoes with which
he makes his way about at such times, and listened
to stories of the narrow escapes he made
once or twice last winter from burial under "the
beautiful snow".
Mr. Anderson joined us here, and we rode up on
the trail. Passing through the woods, we saw
great numbers of wooden steps, and learned that
Mr. Anderson had made about eleven hundred of
these and with them expects to construct a stairway
up the side of the Dome, so as to open to a
greater number the glories to be seen from its
summit. But twelve[!] persons had ever stood there
previously to that day, and these had been conducted
by Mr. Anderson as he was now taking us.
Some four miles from Snow's, at an altitude of
about three thousand feet above the valley, we
found ourselves at the foot of the "Shoulder", as
it is termed, over which we must climb, before
reaching the Dome proper. Had there be no
dome, I imagine this would have looked sufficiently
formidable to most of us, but it dwindled into
insignificance compared with what was ahead.
Besides, Mr. Hutchings, Mr. Anderson and the
guide apparently thought nothing of it, so the
rest of us kept our opinion to ourselves.
Leaving our horses here, we began to climb over
this mass of granite, stopping very frequently to
rest and inflate our lungs and so avoid weariness,
and become accustomed to the rarified atmosphere.
The stone is crumbling away in many places, leaving
a bed of gravel in its place. This is not the
firmest foundation imaginable, and we held each
others hands to keep one another up. In some
places it was quite steep, and there, in the classical
language of the guide, we were obliged "to shin it".
We made the ascent of about one thousand feet
and stood at last at the front of the so-called Dome.
It is really only a half dome, and presents a
perpendicular face to the valley. We were on the
bulging side of it. The perpendicular height,
from the shoulder to the summit, is over seven
hundred feet. The rope, attached to the top of
the Dome and fastened at intervals to the iron
pins, is nine hundred and sixty feet long.
It is a little slack, of course; I think
there is about two hundred feet
difference between the perpendicular height and
the slope. I have been particular in these details,
because I understand that an article from a
Louisville paper has been republished in one of
the city dailies, making me the heroine of this
expedition. From questions which have been asked
me, and remarks I have heard made, I think that
article has been misunderstood. I have not seen
it, but knowing the writer can not think that she
meant to give the impressions which some persons
have received.
We did not pull ourselves by a rope up a
perpendicular wall. We walked up the smooth granite
side of the mountain, holding on to the rope
for support; only occasionally pulling ourselves
up, or crawling over a bulge in the rock. In a few
places we were enabled to rest, too, by planting
our feet against narrow, projecting ridges, and
leaning back against the mountain wall.
I did nothing more than the most of the party,
and would not like to have my friends believe
that any of us risked our lives for a whim. I do
not see why any one can not make this ascent who
has the physical strength and the courage to do
so; had we been afraid, it would have been
dangerous—but the fear would have made the danger.
I will here take the opportunity to set at rest all
anxious inquirers by remarking that we "came
down as we went up". In fact, we saw no choice
in the matter: we did not think it would be comfortable
to roll down, or safe to slide (which we
did only occasionally and involuntarily), so we
walked, holding the rope—perhaps a little more
firmly than in the ascent. As for coming down
"some easier way", as has been once or twice
intelligently suggested, had there existed any
easier way, we would probably have ascended
by it.
Those who visit the valley next year will,
perhaps, find that easier way in the steps which
Mr. Anderson expects to put up. He told us that he
hopes some day to have cars running up and down
the slope, as on our own inclined plane, "so that
old people may go up". I shall never be surprised
to hear of anything Mr. Anderson accomplishes,
but he has greater power of persuasion than most
men, if he succeeds in inducing many old people
to go up that place in a car.
We reached the top of the Dome about noon,
finding some ten acres of rock upon which one can
securely walk, but very little perfectly flat surface.
We had been told that there was a flag on the
summit, but had been obliged to take the statement
on faith while in the valley. From the foot
of the rope we had seen something like a white
handkerchief fluttering in the air. We now found
this to be a flag, three yards long and a yard wide.
"Do you remember my pointing out a little
black spot to you yesterday", asked the guide.
"Yes", I replied, recalling the object, which
appeared to me then about the size of a man's hat.
"That was this clump of trees", he said, pointing
to a group of eight pines. There are three species of
pine growing here, pinus Jeffrei [Jeffreyi — black pine],
pinus menticola [monticola — mountain pine]
and pinus contorta [lodgpole pine]; also a
silver fern [fir!]—picea amabalis [amabilis].
A few varieties of ferns and grasses are
found in the crevices of the rock.
We were interested less, however, in what was
to be found on the Dome than in what might be
seen from it. We were too tired at first, however,
to give much heed to either, and it was not until
we had rested awhile, and slaked our thirst with
the snow that had to serve in lieu of water, that
we began to look about us. Our first care then
was to ascertain exactly how high we
were, and Mr. Hutchings' barometer, which
had afforded us interest and pleasure
all the way, was brought into requisition to
furnish the first accurate measurement of the height.
"Five thousand and three feet above the valley",
said Mr. Hutchings; "that is nine thousand feet
above the level of the sea" [actually, about 8836 feet].
This afforded us intense satisfaction, for we all wanted it to be
the even five thousand feet above the valley, and I
was anxious to stand on a loftier height than I had
ever before reached.
Looking around us now, we saw eighteen peaks,
each of which was from one thousand to four
thousand feet higher than the one on which we
stood. Mr. Hutchings and the guide "knew them
all by the name", and pointed them out to us. "There
is Mt. Dana; we climbed that last summer.
That is Mt. Lyell, at whose foot we saw a
living glacier, the source of five great
rivers. The Merced, which flows through the
valley, is one; the Tuolumne, which we saw last
week, another". "There is Monastery Peak".
"That is Coliseum Point". "Over yonder is grand
old Starr King between his two children, as those
lesser peaks have been facetiously called".
We followed them from peak to peak, the sense
of grandeur growing upon us all the time. Between
those loftier ones, innumerable lesser
mountains lifted their snow-crowned summits.
We looked out in front of us to where the Coast
Range traced its purple line upon the horizon—one
hundred and fifty miles away. Then turned
and gazed again upon the snowy peaks bathing
their white foreheads in the liquid blue of heaven.
Then we cast our eyes downward into the valley
and found in lake and river a clear, deep blue,
which made rhyme with the blue above us. On
every side, near and far, above, below and around
about us, all was grandeur, all was glory. Ah,
surely, no scene more full of matchless beauty, of
overwhelming sublimity, can be found outside the
Celestial City.
We walked to the edge of an overhanging rock
and looked down five thousand feet—almost a
mile. Nowhere else in the Sierras can be found so
high a perpendicular wall.
Sitting by the flag staff, the guide fired some
cartridges of giant powder. A feeble answer
came to us from a party at Mirror Lake. The
mountains responded grandly, one voice after
another sending back the sound to us, making an
echo which Mr. Hutchings and the guide, who
had been among the mountains for years, pronounced
the finest they had ever heard. We timed
one of these echoes and between the first mountain
voice and the last fifteen seconds elapsed.
We spent two or three hours upon the Dome,
enjoying the magnificent view, and gathering ferns
and crystals to keep among our most prized treasures,
and then made a slow and wearisome descent.
We reached our horses about 4 P. M., and I,
for one, was too tired to eat the lunch which
we had left there.