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[1]
Getting Started with
NativeScript

Explore the possibility of building truly native,

cross-platform mobile applications using your
JavaScript skill—NativeScript!

Nathanael J. Anderson

BIRMINGHAM - MUMBAI
Getting Started with NativeScript

Copyright © 2016 Packt Publishing

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written
permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in
critical articles or reviews.

Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy
of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is
sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author, nor Packt
Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages
caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book.

Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the
companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals.
However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.

First published: January 2016

Production reference: 1220116

Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.

Livery Place
35 Livery Street
Birmingham B3 2PB, UK.

ISBN 978-1-78588-865-6
www.packtpub.com
 Credits

Author Project Coordinator

Nathanael J. Anderson Shipra Chawhan

Reviewer Proofreader
TJ VanToll Safis Editing

Commissioning Editor Indexer

Veena Pagare Monica Ajmera Mehta

Acquisition Editor Production Coordinator

Prachi Bisht Conidon Miranda

Content Development Editor Cover Work

Mehvash Fatima Conidon Miranda

Technical Editor
Abhishek R. Kotian

Copy Editor
Lauren Harkins
 Foreword
Are you tired of writing the same mobile app from scratch for iOS, Android and
Windows? Yes? Then, you should be glad you found NativeScript!

Owing to the mobile platforms diversification, it is clear that to build a successful

mobile application, you should make it available on all of the major mobile
marketplaces, namely, Apple AppStore, Google PlayStore, and Microsoft Windows
Store. This created a need for companies and developers to publish native apps
that are available on all three major mobile stores without compromising on the
native user experience. The problem, however, is that these three operating systems
are very different and companies need to implement three different applications
for these stores. Essentially, your company has to write and maintain multiple
implementations for the same problem. Teams write (and have to support) the
same apps multiple times. There is a good chance that bugs reported on one
platform also exist on the others but remain unnoticed. Apps that are meant to
behave identically on all platforms may exhibit subtle differences due to their
differing implementations. Also, shipping new features at the same time on all
platforms is difficult. This is neither optimal, nor very productive and requires a
significant investment to gain the knowledge of three different operating systems,
languages, IDEs, APIs, and marketplaces. There has got to be a better way. Enter
NativeScript—a framework using the native platform APIs, rendering and layout
capabilities to deliver ultimate user experience and will allow developers to reuse
their coding skills, eliminating the need to learn new languages and IDEs.

The NativeScript framework enables developers to use the pure JavaScript language
to build native mobile applications running on all major mobile platforms—Apple
iOS, Google Android, and Windows Universal. The application's UI stack is built
on the native platform rendering and layout engine using native UI components,
and because of that, no compromises with the User Experience of the applications
are made. It is also worth mentioning that a full native API access is provided
using JavaScript.
This book has everything you need to get started with NativeScript. It starts with
the fundamentals, such as the project structure, the command-line interface, how
to use basic UI element, how to use third-party native components, and finally,
how to target different platforms with NativeScript.

The author, Nathanael Anderson, is one of the faces of NativeScript. He has a deep
understanding of how the framework operates from inside out and is the best person
who can teach you how to use it.

"I'm confident that by reading this book, you will be able to quickly get into
NativeScript and start building your next cross-platform native mobile
application."

Valio Stoychev
Product Manager NativeScript at Telerik
 About the Author

Nathanael J. Anderson has been developing software for over 20 years in a wide
range of industries, including areas of games, time management, imaging, service,
printing, accounting, land management, security, web, and even (believe it or not)
some successful government projects. He is currently a contract developer for master
technology and can create a solution for several types of applications (native, web,
mobile, and hybrid) running on any operating system.

As a senior developer engineer, he can work, tune, and secure everything from
your backend servers to the final destination of the data on your desktop or
mobile devices. By understanding the entire infrastructure, including the real and
virtualized hardware, he can completely eliminate different types of issues in all
parts of a framework.

Currently, he has multiple highly rated cross-platform plugins for NativeScript,

and he works heavily in the NativeScript community by providing things such as
bleeding edge build servers to build knightly code. He has also provided multiple
patches and features to the main NativeScript project.
 About the Reviewer

TJ VanToll is a senior developer advocate for Telerik, a jQuery team member,

and the author of jQuery UI in Action. He has over a decade of web development
experience—specializing in performance and the mobile Web. He speaks about
his research and experiences at conferences around the world and has written for
publications such as Smashing Magazine, HTML5 Rocks, and MSDN Magazine. You
can follow him on Twitter at @tjvantoll and on GitHub at tjvantoll.
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 Table of Contents
Preface vii
Chapter 1: Introduction to NativeScript 1
NativeScript 1
Telerik's NativeScript 2
Other competitors 2
NativeScript uniqueness 2
NativeScript is easy 3
NativeScript and TypeScript 4
What is TypeScript? 4
TypeScript's use in NativeScript 4
Choosing a development language 5
Common modules 5
Installing NativeScript 6
Prerequisites 6
node.js 6
iOS 6
Android 7
Installation 7
Installation help 8
The NativeScript command line 8
NativeScript commands 8
Creating your first application 10
Creating the application in easy steps 11
Running the app 12
Summary 13
Chapter 2: The Project Structure 15
Project directory overview 15
The root folder 17
The app folder 18
[i]
Table of Contents

The lib folder 18

The hooks folder 18
The node_modules folder 19
The tns-core-modules folder 19
The platforms folder 20
The platforms/android folder 20
The platforms/iOS folder 22
The app folder 24
The .gradle folder 24
The App_Resources folder 24
The fonts folder 25
The app folder files 25
The package.json file 25
License 25
App.js 26
App.css 27
Application page 27
The main-page.js file 27
The main-page.css file 28
The main-page.xml file 28
The main-view-model.js file 29
Foundational components 31
Application component 31
Frame component 32
Page component 32
Creating a second page 33
Creating additional files and pages 34
Creating settings.js 34
Navigating to another page 35
Running the application 36
Viewing our screen 36
Summary 37
Chapter 3: Declarative UI, Styling, and Events 39
Declarative UI 39
XML parser 40
Page, StackLayout, label, and more 41
<Page ...> node 41
<StackLayout ...> node 42
<Label ...> node 42
<Button ...> node 45
Second <Label...> node 46
Declarative UI and components 46
Visual components 47

[ ii ]
 Table of Contents

Using the Declarative UI for our settings page 47

Our settings.xml file 47
Binding and event system 49
Event system 50
Binding 51
Styling the UI 52
What is CSS? 52
Why use CSS? 53
How to use CSS 53
Configuring your CSS Rules 54
Existing CSS properties 56
Exploring app.css 58
Trying CSS out and styling our application 60
Styling on your own 61
Summary 62
Chapter 4: Building a Featured Application 63
Layouts 63
StackLayout 64
WrapLayout 64
AbsoluteLayout 65
DockLayout 66
GridLayout 66
Building our featured application 68
Nonvisual components 69
Dialogs 72
Alert dialog 73
Confirm dialog 73
Prompt dialog 74
Login dialog 74
Action dialog 75
Promises 75
The settings screen Declarative UI 76
GridLayouts 76
Building the main screen 79
JavaScript code 79
Declarative UI 82
Main page Declarative UI 83
Main page body 83
ScrollViews 84
More about bindings 84
Repeaters 84
Main-body footer 85

[ iii ]
Table of Contents

The main-page.css file 87

Application CSS 89
Fonts 90
Icons 91
Communication with the server 91
Trying out our application 95
The server 95
Setting up your own server 96
Trying crossCommunicator out. 97
Summary 98
Chapter 5: Installing Third-Party Components 99
Places to find third-party components 99
The Telerik plugin site 100
npmjs.com 100
The NativeScript unofficial plugin list 100
How to install a third-party plugin component 100
Installing the vibration plugin 101
Installing the webSockets plugin 101
Installing the Telerik SideDrawer plugin 101
Using third-party components 102
Using the vibration plugin 102
Using Websockets 102
Using Telerik's side drawer 108
Easily using the components 110
Useful third-party components 110
Summary 110
Chapter 6: Platform Differences 111
Android and iOS differences 111
The soft keyboard 112
The Page.loaded event 112
Code differences 113
Platform classes 114
Declarative UI 115
Declarative UI properties 116
Declarative UI platform qualifiers 116
Platform- and device-specific files 117

[ iv ]
 Table of Contents

Screen size differences 117

Fonts 118
Our own custom resource folders 118
Compiled application resources on iOS 119
Compiled application resources on Android 121
Device differences 123
Summary 124
Chapter 7: Testing and Deploying Your App 125
Testing your application 126
Test frameworks 126
Local testing of your code 128
Unit testing on the device 131
Installing the test framework 132
Writing tests 132
Running tests 133
Testing your app on a device or emulator 134
Understanding the call stack 136
Android call stack 136
iOS call stack 138
Debugging your application 139
Publishing your application 140
Publishing to iOS 141
Summary 141
Index 143

[v]
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
“It all depends on what winds Father Aeolus keeps
chained, perhaps in the deep caverns of the Great Gulf, or
which ones he lets loose to rattle the chains of the Tip Top
House”
“I guess she’ll sleep all right to-night,” said the man with the bugle,
who had entered with the boys.
“And she won’t tackle the Crawford Bridle Path with high heeled
shoes on very soon again, either!” said Rob. “Are we going to sleep
here, too, Mr. Rogers? I don’t believe we’ll want to sleep outside.
The thermometer by that window is still down almost to freezing.”
The man with the bugle whispered to them, so the proprietor
wouldn’t hear, “Don’t stay here. They’ll stick you for supper and put
you in rooms where you can’t get any air. The windows are made
into the roof, and don’t open. I got a horrible cold from sleeping
here last year. Guess they never air the bedding. We are all down at
the coach house. You may have to sleep on the floor, but the
window will be open, and you can cook your own grub on the stove.”
“That’s us!” said Peanut. “Say, we want to get some sweet chocolate
first, though, and some post-cards, don’t we?”
The Scouts all piled over to the long counter at one side of the
room, and stocked up with sweet chocolate, and also wrote and
mailed post-cards, to be sent down on the train the next day. The
summit of Washington in summer is a regular United States post-
office, and you can have mail delivered there, if you want.
“Be sure you don’t scare your families with lurid accounts of to-day!”
Mr. Rogers cautioned them. “Better save that till you’re safe home.”
“Why don’t you write out a little account of your adventure for
Among the Clouds?” said the proprietor. “You can have copies sent
to your homes, if you leave before it comes out.”
“What’s Among the Clouds?” the boys asked.
He picked up a small eight page newspaper. “Printed at the base
every day,” he said. “It was printed on top here, till the hotel burned.
All the arrivals at the summit are put in daily.”
“You write the story, Rob,” cried Art. “When will it be printed?”
“Make it short, and I can telephone it down for to-morrow,” the man
said.
“Fine! We’ll all take two copies,” said Peanut. “Save ’em for us. We’ll
be around here for two or three days. Hooray, we’re going to be in
the paper!”
“You might all register over there while the story is being written,”
said the proprietor.
Rob took a pencil and piece of paper and sat down by the stove to
write, while the rest walked over to the register. There were very few
entries for that day, as you can guess. The top of the page (the day
before) showed, however, the names of two automobile parties, who
had written, in large letters under their names, the make of the cars
they had come up the mountain in.
“Gee, how silly,” said Art.
“Wait,” said Peanut, his eyes twinkling, “till I register.”
He wrote his name last, and under it he printed, in big, heavy
letters:
Smith and Jerome’s Shoes.
“There,” he cried, “that’s the motor I came up in! Good ad. for old
Smith and Jerome, eh? Might as well advertise our Southmead
storekeepers.”
The man with the bugle, who was standing behind the boys, peeked
over at the register, and roared with laughter.
“You’re all right, kid!” he said. “I wish the motor parties could see it.
It would serve ’em right for boasting about owning a car. Besides,
that’s the lazy loafer’s way of climbing a mountain. If I were boss,
I’d dynamite the carriage road and the railroad, and then nobody
could get here but folks who knew how to walk.”
“You’re like the man on Moosilauke,” said Lou.
“I’m like all true mountaineers,” he answered.
“And Scouts,” said Peanut.
Rob had now finished a brief account of their adventure on the
Crawford Bridle Path, and the proprietor went up-stairs to find out
the name of the man they had rescued. The girl’s name they already
knew.
“Don’t say we rescued them, Rob,” Mr. Rogers cautioned. “Say they
overtook us at Monroe, and we all went on together, because we
had blankets and provisions.”
“That’s what I have said,” laughed Rob. “But it doesn’t alter the
facts.”
The proprietor came back with the name, and Rob added to the man
with the bugle, “And the names of your party, too?”
“Say five trampers,” the other answered. “I’ll tell you our names
later. We aren’t essential to the story.”
“But I would like to know why you have the bugle,” said Rob.
“I’ll tell you that later, also,” the man laughed.
Rob turned his little account over to the proprietor, and the party left
the warm house, and went out again into the cloud and the chilling
wind.
It was almost like stepping out upon the deck of a ship in a heavy
fog. They could see the board walk ahead, as far as the railroad
platform—and that was all. The rest of the world was blotted out.
The wind was wailing in the telephone wires and through the beams
of the railroad trestle, just as it wails through the rigging of a ship. It
was getting dark, too. The boys shivered, and nobody suggested any
exploring.
“Me for supper, and bunk,” said Peanut.
They crossed the railroad with its cog rail between the two wheel
rails, and descended a long flight of steps. At the bottom was the
end of the carriage road, which they could see disappearing into the
cloud to the east, a barn on the left, chained down to the rocks, and
on the right a square, two-story building, the carriage house.
Inside, a lamp was already lighted, and the four men who had come
down the mountain with the bugler, as well as the evident proprietor
of the house, were sitting about the stove, which was crammed with
wood and roaring hotly.
“Well?” said the four, as the Scouts and the bugler entered. “Any
more people to go down and rescue?”
The bugler shook his head. “Haven’t heard of any,” he said. “There’s
no word of any one else trying the Crawford Path to-day. Anybody
that tackled Tuckerman’s will certainly have had sense enough to
stay in the camp. That party who came over the Gulf Side this
morning with us decided to go down the carriage road, they tell me.
I guess we’ve got this place to ourselves.”
“Oh, it’s a good, soft floor,” one of the men laughed. “You boys don’t
mind a good, soft floor, do you?”
“Not a bit,” said Peanut. “I always sleep on the floor—prefer it, in
fact.”
The others laughed, and the Scouts got off their packs, spread their
blankets out to dry, and took off their sweaters.
Then everybody began to prepare for supper. The proprietor of the
coach house moved out a table, and put some boards across it to
make it larger. The Scouts compared provisions with the five
trampers, and found that the strangers had coffee which the boys
were rather shy on, and condensed milk, which the boys didn’t have
at all, while the boys had powdered eggs and dehydrated
vegetables, which the strangers didn’t have. There wasn’t time
enough, however, to soak the vegetables.
“You make us coffee, and we’ll make you an omelet,” said Art.
“That’s a fair swap. I’ll cook griddle cakes for the bunch.”
“More than fair,” said the bugler. “It’s taking a whole meal from you
chaps, while we have more than enough coffee. Here, use some of
our minced ham in that omelet.”
“Just the thing!” said Art. “We ate most of ours in the shelter.” He
began at once to mix the omelet.
In a short time the party of eleven (the proprietor cooked his supper
later) sat down to the rough table, with bouillon cube soup first, and
then steaming coffee, omelet made with minced ham, griddle cakes
flavored with butter and sugar furnished by the proprietor, and
sweet chocolate for dessert.
For a time nobody said much. The men and boys were all hungry,
and they were busy putting away the delicious hot food.
“Nothing could keep me awake to-night,” said Peanut, presently.
“May I have another cup of coffee?”
“Who else wants more?” asked the bugler, who was pouring.
“Me,” said Art.
“And me,” said the bugler.
“And me,” said Mr. Rogers.
“And me,” said one of the men.
“And I,” said Rob, whereupon the rest all burst out laughing, and
Rob looked surprised, for he hadn’t intended to rebuke them by
using correct grammar.
“You see the advantages of a college education, gentlemen,” cried
Mr. Rogers, while poor Rob turned red.
It was a merry meal. After it was over, the five men pulled pipes out
of their pockets, and puffed contentedly, while the boys sat about
the stove, and Peanut said:
“Now, Mr. Bugler, tell us why you have the bugle.”
Much to the boys’ surprise, the man addressed blushed.
“Gee, you boys will laugh at me!” he said, like a boy himself. “But I’ll
tell you. I toted this bugle up from Randolph yesterday. We came in
around through the Great Gulf, and up the Six Husbands’ Trail——”
“Some trail, too!” the other four put in.
“—— and back over Adams to the Madison Hut. We spent last night
there, and came over the Gulf Side this morning. We’d reached Clay
before the bad weather hit us. The summit cone held it back. And
we got to the carriage road before it got so thick that you couldn’t
see at all. Lord, how the wind blew coming around Clay! Honestly, I
didn’t know if we could make it.”
“But the bugle?” said Peanut.
“Oh, yes, the bugle. I was forgetting the bugle, wasn’t I?”
“You were—maybe,” said Peanut.
The rest laughed.
“Well, now I’ll tell you about the bugle,” the speaker went on. “When
I was in college a chap roomed next to me who could punt a football
farther than anybody I ever knew——”
“How far?” asked Art.
“Well, I’ve seen him cover seventy yards,” was the answer.
“Some punt!” cried Peanut. “Did that make you buy a bugle?”
“Say, who’s telling the story?” the man said. “No, it didn’t make me
buy a bugle, but this chap who could punt so far bought a cornet.
What do you suppose he bought a cornet for?”
“I can’t imagine why anybody should buy a cornet,” put in one of the
other men.
“Shut up, Tom,” said the bugler. “Well, he bought a cornet so he
could learn to play it, and after he had learned to play it (keeping
everybody in the dormitory from studying while he learned, too!), he
spent a summer vacation in the Rocky Mountains, and carried that
cornet up to the highest peaks that he could climb, and played it. He
learned to play it just for that—just for the joy of hearing horn music
float out into the great spaces of the sky. Also, he made echoes with
it against the cliffs while he was climbing up. After that summer he
never played it again.”
“Why didn’t he see how far he could punt a football from the top of
Pike’s Peak?” Peanut grinned.
“He used up all his breath playing the cornet, and couldn’t blow up
the ball,” said the man.
Lou wasn’t taking this story as a joke, however. “And you brought
your bugle up here, to play it from the top of Washington?” he
asked. “I think that’s fine. Gee, I wish you’d go out and play taps
before we go to bed!”
The man looked at Lou keenly. “So you understand!” he said. “These
Philistines with me don’t, and your young friend Peanut there
doesn’t. They have no music in their souls, have they? You and I will
go outside presently, and play taps to the circumambient
atmosphere.”
“Some language,” snickered Peanut. “What we’ll need isn’t taps,
though, but reveille to-morrow.”
“Cheer up, you’ll get that all right,” the man laughed.
They all sat for a while discussing the day’s adventure, and planning
for the next day, if it was clear. The five men were going down over
the Davis Path, and as that path leads along Boott Spur, the Scouts
decided to go with them, leaving them at the end of the spur, the
Scouts to descend for the night into Tuckerman’s Ravine, while the
others kept on southwest, over the Giant’s Stairs, to the lower end of
Crawford Notch.
“But we want to visit the Lakes of the Clouds first,” said the Scout
Master. “We scarcely got a peep at ’em to-day.”
“Suits us,” said the man called Tom. “We’ll have time, if we start
early. I’d like to see the Alpine garden myself.”
“And now for taps,” cried the bugler.
He and Lou got up, and went out-of-doors. The rest followed, but
the first pair slipped away quickly into the cloud, going down the
carriage road till the lamp of the coach house was invisible.
The universe was deathly still save for the continual moaning of the
wind. There was nothing at all visible, either stars above, or valley
lamps below—nothing but a damp, chilly white darkness. Lou was
silent, awed. The man set his bugle to his lips, and blew—blew the
sweet, sad, solemn notes of taps.
As they rose above the moaning of the wind and seemed to float off
into space, Lou’s heart tingled in his breast. As the last note died
sweetly away, there were tears in his eyes—he couldn’t say why. But
something about taps always made him sad, and now, in this
strange setting up in the clouds, the tears actually came. The man
saw, and laid a hand in silence on his shoulder.
“You understand,” he said, presently, as they moved back up the
road, and that was all he said.
Back in the coach house, the proprietor showed them all the
available cots up-stairs. There were two shy, so Art and Peanut
insisted on sleeping down-stairs by the stove. They wabbed up an
extra blanket or two for a bed, made their sweaters into pillows, and
almost before the lamp was blown out, they were as fast asleep as if
they had been lying on feathers.
 CHAPTER XII
Down Tuckerman’s Ravine
But while it is comparatively easy to go to sleep on the floor, it is not
so easy to stay asleep on it. Both Art and Peanut awoke more than
once during the night, and shifted to the other shoulder. Finally,
toward morning, Art got up and tiptoed to the window, to look out.
He came back and shook Peanut.
“Whaz-a-matter?” said Peanut, sleepily.
“Get up, and I’ll show you,” Art whispered.
Peanut roused himself, and joined Art at the window.
Outside the stars were shining! But that was not all. Art pointed
down the carriage road, and far below, on the black shadow of the
mountain Peanut saw what looked like bobbing stars fallen to the
ground. These stars were evidently drawing nearer.
“Well, what do you make of that!” he exclaimed.
“Bless me if I know. It’s evidently somebody coming up the road
with lanterns.”
The two boys slipped noiselessly into their shoes, and struck a
match to look at their watches.
“Quarter to four,” said Art. “The sun will rise in half an hour. Gee, I’d
like to get that bugle and wake ’em up!”
“The owner’s using it himself, I should say,” whispered Peanut, as
the sound of a snore came from the room above. They looked
about, but the man had evidently taken his bugle up-stairs with him,
so they slipped out through the door to investigate the bobbing
lanterns coming up the mountain.
It was cold outside, and still dark, but they could make out dimly the
track of the carriage road, and walked down it. The lanterns were
drawing nearer, and now they could hear voices. A moment later,
and they met the lantern bearers, a party of nearly a dozen men and
women.
“Hello, boys! Where did you drop from?” cried the man in the lead,
suddenly spying Art and Peanut.
“Where did you come up from?” Peanut replied.
“We walked up from the Glen cottage to see the sunrise,” the other
replied.
“Oh, dear, I should say we did!” sighed a woman in the party. “If you
ever catch me climbing a mountain again in the middle of the night,
send me to Matteawan at once.”
“Cheer up, Lizzie, we’ll have some sandwiches pretty soon,”
somebody told her.
“Sandwiches for breakfast! Worse and worse!” she sighed. “I don’t
believe there’s going to be any sunrise, either. I don’t see any signs
of it.”
“Let’s shake this bunch,” Art whispered to Peanut. “They give me a
pain.”
The boys ran back, ahead, to the coach house, entered once more,
and bolted the door behind them, lest the new party try to get in.
“Golly, we’ve got to get that bugle, and have the laugh on whatever
his name is—he didn’t tell us, did he? I’m going up after it,” said
Peanut.
He kicked off his shoes, and started on tiptoe up the stairs. Art
heard the floor creak overhead, and then he heard a smothered
laugh.
A moment later the man appeared with the bugle in one hand, and
Peanut’s ear in the other. Peanut was still attached to the ear, and he
was trying hard not to laugh out loud.
“Caught you red-handed,” said the man. “Hello, there, Art! You up
too? How’s the weather?”
“Fine,” said Art. “Come on out and wake ’em all up.”
The man looked at his watch, then at the sky through the window.
The east was already light. The stars were paling. You could see out
over the bare rock heaps of the mountain top.
“Come on!” he said.
The three went outdoors. The party with lanterns had already
passed the coach house and climbed the steps to the summit. They
could be heard up there, talking. The man and the boys went
around to the south of the coach house, out of sight of the summit,
and setting his bugle to his lips, tipping it upward toward the now
rosy east, the man pealed out the gay, stirring notes of reveille.
“Oh, do it again!” cried Peanut. “Gee, I like it up here! I know now
why you brought the bugle.”
The man smiled, and blew reveille again.
Before the last notes had died away, they heard stampings in the
house behind them, and cries of “Can it!” “Say, let a feller sleep,
won’t you?” “Aw, cut out the music!”
“Get up, you stiffs, and see the sun rise!” shouted Peanut. “Going to
be a grand day!”
Five minutes later the Scouts and the men were all out of the coach
house, on the rocks beside Art and Peanut.
“It is a good day, that’s a fact,” said Mr. Rogers. “Where’s the best
place to see the sun rise?”
“I’d suggest the top of the mountain,” said the bugler.
It was light now. The east was rosy, and as they looked down
southward over the piles of bare, tumbled rock toward Tuckerman’s
Ravine, they could see masses of white cloud, like cotton batting. Up
the steps they all hurried, and found the lantern party eating
sandwiches in the shelter of the Tip Top House, out of the wind.
“They’d rather eat than see the sun rise,” sniffed Art.
“Maybe you would, if you’d spent the night walking up the carriage
road,” laughed somebody.
Peanut led the way to the highest rock he could find, and they
looked out upon the now fast lightening world.
Northward, far out beyond the great shoulders of the mountain, they
could see glimpses of the lower hills and valleys. But all nearer the
mountain was hidden by the low white cloud beneath their feet. To
the northeast and east was nothing but cloud, about a thousand feet
below them. The same was true to the south. Southwestward, over
the long shoulders of the Crawford Bridle Path, where they had
climbed the day before, lay the same great blanket of white wool.
“Say, this peak of Washington looks just like a great rock island in
the sea,” cried Lou.
Now the world was almost bright as day. The east was rosy, the
upper sky blue, the stars gone. The great white ocean of cloud
below them heaved and eddied under the gusts of northwest wind
which swept down from the summit, wherever a wave crest rose
above the level. The sun, a great red ball, appeared in the east, and
the bugler set his bugle to his lips and blew a long blast of welcome.
It was a wonderful, a beautiful spectacle. As they watched, the
clouds below them heaved and stirred, and seemed to thin out here
and there, and suddenly to the northeast a second rock island,
shaped like a pyramid, appeared to rise out of the pink and white
sea.
“Hello, there’s Jefferson!” cried one of the men.
Then a second island, also a peak of bare rock, rose beyond
Jefferson.
“And there’s Adams,” said Mr. Rogers.
“And there’s Madison,” said the bugler, as a third peak rose up from
the cloud sea, beyond Adams.
“What is between those peaks and the shoulder of Washington I see
running northeast?” asked Frank.
“The Great Gulf,” one of the men replied. “There must have been a
heavy dew in the Gulf last night. It’s packed full of clouds.”
“Probably got soaked with the rain yesterday, too,” somebody else
said. “The clouds will get out of it before long, though. They are
coming up fast.”
Even as he spoke, one rose like a long, white finger over the head
wall of the Gulf, stretched out to the gray water-tanks of the railroad
and almost before any one could speak, it blew cold into the faces of
the party on the summit.
“Hello, cloud!” said Peanut, making a swipe with his hand at the
white mist. “Does that mean bad weather again?” he added.
Cataract of clouds pouring over the Northern Peaks into
the Great Gulf, seen from the summit of Mount Washington
“No, they’re just rising from the gulfs. They’ll blow off before we
start, I fancy,” one of the trampers said. “It’s the clouds which come
down, or come from the plains, which make the trouble. Come on,
breakfast now! If we are going to make a side trip to the Lakes of
the Clouds with you Scouts, we’ve got to get an early start, for our
path down over the Giant’s Stairs is fifteen or twenty miles long, and
hard to find, in the bargain.”
As they went, however, a look away from the sun showed the
shadow of Washington cast over the clouds westward as far as the
eye could see. Peanut waved his arm. “The shadow of that gesture
was on the side of Lafayette!” he cried.
Breakfast was prepared as quickly as possible, the boys furnishing
powdered eggs, the men bacon and coffee. Then, after they had
paid the keeper of the coach house for their night’s lodging, the
combined parties shouldered packs, went back up the steps in a thin
white cloud, stocked up with sweet chocolate at the Tip Top House,
and still in the cloud set off southwest down the summit cone, by
the Crawford Bridle Path.
The descent was rapid. The cone is a thousand feet high, but they
were soon on Bigelow Lawn, and though the white mists were still
coming up over the ridge from the gulfs below, they were thin here,
and the sunlight flashed in, and below them they could see the
green intervale of Bretton Woods, shining in full morning light.
“Rather more cheerful than yesterday,” said Frank.
“Ra-ther,” cried Peanut.
At the junction of the Boott Spur Trail, everybody unloaded all
baggage, and the packs and blankets were piled under a boulder.
Then they hurried on down the Bridle Path, past the refuge hut
which had been such a friend the day before, and soon reached the
larger of the two Lakes of the Clouds, which lies just north of the
Crawford Trail, on the very edge of the Monroe-Washington col,
exactly two miles below the summit. The larger lake is perhaps half
an acre in extent, the smaller hardly a third of that size.
“These lakes are the highest east of the Rocky Mountains,” said Mr.
Rogers. “They are 5,053 feet above sea level.”
“And a deer has been drinking in this one,” said Art, pointing to a
hoof mark in the soft, deep moss at the margin.
“Sure enough!” one of the men said. “He must have come up from
timber line, probably over from Oakes Gulf.”
“You remember, boys,” Mr. Rogers said, “that I told you I was going
to show you the head waters of a river? Well, we saw one at the
Crawford House—the head of the Saco. This lake is one of the head
waters of the Ammonoosuc, which is the biggest northern tributary
of the Connecticut.”
“It’s a bit cleaner than the Connecticut is at Hartford or Springfield,”
laughed Rob. “My, it’s like pure glass! Look, you can see every stick
and piece of mica on the bottom.”
“And it’s cold, too!” cried Art, as he dipped his hand in.
“Now, let’s look at the Alpine wild flowers as we go back,” said the
bugler. “They are what interest me most.”
The party turned toward the path again, and they became aware
that almost every crevice between the loose stones was full of rich
moss of many kinds, and this moss had made bits of peaty soil in
which the wild flowers grew. There were even a few dwarfed
spruces, three or four feet high, all around the border of the lake.
The wild flowers were now in full bloom.
“It’s spring up here, you know, in early July,” said the bugler. “Look
at all those white sandwort blossoms, like a snow-storm. What
pretty little things they are, like tiny white cups.”
“What’s the yellow one?” asked Lou, who was always interested in
plants.
“That’s the geum,” the man replied. “Look at the root leaves—they
are just like kidneys.”
“It’s everywhere,” said Lou. “Look, it even grows in cracks half-way
up the rocks.”
The man also pointed out the tiny stars of the Houstonia, which
interested the boys, because their Massachusetts home was near the
Housatonic River. But the botanist assured them that there was no
connection between the names, the flower being named for a
botanist named Houston, while the river’s name is Indian.
There were several other kinds of flowers here, too, as well as
grasses, and conspicuous among them was the Indian poke, sticking
up its tall stalk three feet in the boggy hollows between rocks, its
roots in the wet tundra moss, with yellowish-green blossoms at the
top.
“Well, who’d ever guess so many things could live way up here, on
the rocks!” Lou exclaimed. “But I like the little sandwort best. That’s
the one which gets nearest the top of Washington, isn’t it?”
“It’s the only one which gets there, except the grass, I believe,” the
bugler answered.
Everybody picked a few sandwort cups, and stuck them in his hat
band or buttonhole, and thus arrayed they reached once more the
junction of the Boott Spur Trail, shouldered packs, and set off
southward, down the long, rocky shoulder of the spur, which pushes
out from the base of the summit cone.
The sun was now high. The clouds had stopped coming up over the
head walls of the ravines. They could see for miles, even to the blue
ramparts of Lafayette and Moosilauke in the west and southwest.
Directly south they looked over a billowing sea of mountains and
green, forest-covered valleys, a wilderness in which there was no
sign of human beings. To their left was the deep hole of Tuckerman’s
Ravine, gouged out of the solid rock. Only the very summit of
Washington behind them still wore a hood of white vapor.
It was only three-quarters of a mile to the nose of the spur, and they
were soon there. Here the two parties were to divide, the boys going
down to the left into the yawning hole of Tuckerman’s Ravine, which
they could now see plainly, directly below them, the other trampers
turning to the southwest, for their long descent over the Davis Path
and the Montalban range. At the nose of the spur was a big cairn,
and out of it the bugler fished an Appalachian Mountain Club
cylinder, opened it, and disclosed the register, upon which they all
wrote their names. Then they all shook hands, the bugler blew a
long blast on his bugle, and the Scouts watched their friends of the
night go striding off down the Davis Path.
“Now, where do we go?” asked Art.
Mr. Rogers pointed down into Tuckerman’s Ravine, the wooded floor
of which, sheltering the dark mirror of Hermit Lake, lay over fifteen
hundred feet below them.
“Golly, where’s your parachute?” said Peanut.
“We don’t need a parachute,” Mr. Rogers laughed. “Here’s the path.”
The boys looked over into the pit. Across the ravine rose another
precipitous wall, with a lump at the end called the Lion’s Head. The
ravine itself was like a long, narrow horseshoe cut into the rocky side
of Mount Washington—a horseshoe more than a thousand feet deep.
They were on one side of the open end.
“Well, here goes!” cried Peanut, and he began to descend.
At first the trail went down over a series of levels, or steps, close to
the edge of the precipice. At one point this precipice seemed actually
to hang out over the gulf below, and it seemed as if they could
throw a stone into Hermit Lake.
Peanut tried it, in fact, but the stone sailed out, descended, and
disappeared, as if under the wall.
“These are the hanging cliffs,” said Mr. Rogers. “We’ll go down faster
soon.”
Presently the path did swing back to the left, and began to drop
right down the cliff side. The cliff wall wasn’t quite so steep as it had
looked from above, and the path was perfectly possible for travel;
but it was the steepest thing they had tackled yet, nonetheless, and
it kept them so busy dropping down the thousand feet or more to
the ravine floor that they could barely take time to glance at the
great, white mass of snow packed into the semi-shadow under the
head wall.
“Say, we are making some time, though!” Peanut panted, as he
dropped his own length from one rock to the next.
“Faster’n you’d make coming back,” laughed Lou.
The path soon dropped them into scrub spruce, which had climbed
up the ravine side to meet them, and this stiff spruce grew taller and
taller as they descended, till in less than fifteen minutes they were
once more—for the first time since leaving the side of Clinton—in the
woods. At the bottom of the cliff the path leveled out, crossed a
brook twice, and brought them suddenly into another trail, leading
up into the head of the ravine. Almost opposite was a sign pointing
down another path to the Appalachian Mountain Club camp.
“We’ll leave our stuff there at the camp,” said Mr. Rogers, “and go
see the snow arch before lunch, eh?”
“You bet!” the boys cried.
It was only a few minutes after ten. They had started so early from
the summit of Washington that they still had the better part of the
day before them. A few steps brought them to the camp, which was
a log and bark lean-to, with the back and sides enclosed, built facing
the six or eight foot straight side of a huge boulder. This boulder side
was black with the smoke of many fires. It was no more than four
feet away from the front of the lean-to, so that a big fire, built
against it, would throw back a lot of warmth right into the shelter. All
about the hut were beautiful thick evergreens.
“That’s a fine idea!” Art exclaimed. “You not only have your fire
handy, and sheltered completely from the wind, but you get the full
heat of it. Say, we must build a camp just like this when we get
back!”
“Somebody was here last night,” said Rob, inspecting the ashes in
the stone fire pit. “Look, they are still wet. Soused their fire, all
right.”
“And left a bed of boughs—for two,” added Peanut, peeping into the
shelter.
“Let’s leave our stuff, so we’ll have first call on the cabin to-night,”
somebody else put in. “Will it be safe, though?”
“Sure,” the Scout Master said—“safe from people, anyhow. The folks
who tramp up here are honest, I guess. But I don’t trust the
hedgehogs too far. The last time I slept in Tuckerman’s, five or six
years ago, two of us camped out on the shore of Hermit Lake, and
the hedgehogs ate holes in our rubber ponchos while we slept.”
“Say, you must have slept hard—and done some dreaming!” laughed
Peanut.
“Fact,” said Mr. Rogers; “cross my heart, hope to die!”
“Well, then let’s hang our blankets over this string,” said Art,
indicating a stout cord strung near the roof from the two sides of the
shelter.
They hung their blankets over the cord, stacked their packs in a
corner, and set off up the trail toward the head wall of the ravine,
nearly a mile away.
A few steps brought them to a sight of Hermit Lake, a pretty little
sheet of water which looked almost black, it was so shallow and
clear, with dark leaf-mould forming the bottom. It was entirely
surrounded by the dark spires of the mountain spruces, and held
their reflections like a mirror, and behind them the reflections of the
great rocky walls of the ravine sides, and then the blue of the sky.
The path now began to ascend the inclined floor of the ravine, and
the full grandeur of the spectacle burst upon the boys. Even Peanut
was silent. It was the most impressive spot they had ever been in.
To their left the cliffs shot up a thousand feet to Boott Spur, to their
right they went up almost as high to the Lion’s Head. And directly in
front of them, curved in a semicircle, like the wall of a stadium, and
carved out of the solid rock of the mountain, was the great head
wall, in the half shadow at its base a huge snow-bank glimmering
white, on the tenth day of July. Above the snow-bank the rocks
glistened and sparkled with hundreds of tiny water streams. All
about, at the feet of the cliffs, and even down the floor of the ravine
to the boys, lay piled up in wild confusion great heaps of rock
masses, the debris hurled down from the precipitous walls by
centuries of frost and storm.
“It looks like a gigantic natural colosseum,” said Lou. “The head wall
is curved just like the pictures of the Colosseum in our Roman
history.”
“Right-o,” cried Peanut. “Say, what a place to stage a gladiator fight,
eh? Sit your audience all up on the debris at the bottoms of the
cliffs.”
“And have your gladiators come out from under the snow arch,”
laughed Mr. Rogers.
“Sure,” said Peanut.
They now came to the snow arch, which is formed every June under
the head wall, and sometimes lasts as late as August. The winter
storms, from the northwest, blow the snow over Bigelow Lawn
above, and pack it down into Tuckerman’s Ravine, in a huge drift
two hundred feet deep. This drift gradually melts down, packs into
something pretty close to ice, and the water trickling from the cliff
behind joins into a brook beneath it and hollows out an arch.
The Scouts now stood before the drift. It was perhaps eight or ten
feet deep at the front now, and a good deal deeper at the back. It
was something like three hundred feet wide, they reckoned, and
extended out from the cliff from sixty to a hundred feet. The arch
was about in the centre, and the brook was flowing out from
beneath it.
“Look!” cried Art, “a few rods down-stream the alders are all in leaf,
nearer they are just coming out, and here by the edge they are
hardly budded!”
“That’s right,” said Lou. “I suppose as the ice melts back, spring
comes to ’em.”
Rob put his hand in the brook. “Gee, I don’t blame ’em,” he said;
“it’s free ice water, all right.”
“Come on into the ice cave,” Peanut exclaimed, starting forward.
Mr. Rogers grabbed him. “No, you don’t!” he cried. “People used to
do that, till one day some years ago it caved in, and killed a boy
under it. You’ll just look in.”
Peanut poked at the edge of the roof with his staff. It looked like
snow, but it was hard as ice. “Gee, that won’t cave in!” said he.
“Just the same, we’re taking no chances,” said the Scout Master.
So the Scouts tried to content themselves with peeking into the cold,
crystal cave, out of which came the tinkle of dripping water from the
dangling icicles on the roof, and a breath of damp, chilling air. It was
like standing at the door of a huge refrigerator.
Then they climbed up the path a few steps, on the right of the drift,
and made snowballs with the brittle, mushy moraine-stuff on the
surface, which was quite dirty, with moss and rock dust blown over
from the top of Washington.
“Snowballs in July!” cried Peanut, letting one fly at Art, who had
walked out on the drift.
Art retaliated by washing Peanut’s face.
It was getting close to noon now, and the party started back to
camp. Hermit Lake was first inspected as a possible swimming pool,
but given up because of the boggy nature of the shores. Instead,
everybody took one chill plunge in the ice water of the little river
which came down from the snow arch, and then they rubbed
themselves to a pink glow, and started for the camp. Before they
reached camp, Art sniffed, and said, “Smoke! Somebody’s got a fire.”
A second later, they heard voices, and came upon two men, building
a fire against the boulder in front of the shelter.
“Hello, boys. This your stuff?” one of the men said. He was a tall,
thin man, with colored goggles and a pointed beard. The other man
was short and stout.
“Sure is,” Peanut answered.
“Well, we’re going on after lunch. Won’t bother you to-night,” the
men said. “Don’t mind our being here for lunch, do you?”
“Depends on what you’ve got to eat,” said Peanut, with a laugh.
“Not much,” the tall man answered. “Enough for two men, but not
enough for a huge person like yourself.”
Peanut grinned, as the laugh was on him, and the boys set about
getting their lunch ready, also.
The two newcomers had come up from Jackson that morning, they
said, and were bound for the top of Washington via the head wall of
Huntington Ravine. They spoke as if the head wall of Huntington
were something not lightly to be tackled, and of course the boys
were curious at once.
“Where’s Huntington?” asked Art. “Mr. Rogers, you’ve never told us
about that.”
“I never was there myself,” said Mr. Rogers. “I can’t have been
everywhere, you know.”
“Well, neither have I been there,” said the tall, thin man, “but my
friend here has, once, and he alleges that it’s the best climb in the
White Mountains.”
“Hooray, let us go, too!” cried Peanut.
Mr. Rogers smiled. “We’ll go along with these gentlemen, if they
don’t mind, and have a look at it,” he said, “but I guess we’ll leave
the climbing to them. I don’t believe I want to lug any of you boys
home on a stretcher.”
“Aw, stretcher nothin’!” said Peanut. “I guess if other folks climb
there, we can!”
The short, stout man’s eyes twinkled. “Maybe when you see it you
won’t be so keen,” he said. “Come along with us and have a look.”
 CHAPTER XIII
Up the Huntington Head Wall
Luncheon over, the two men packed their knapsacks again, while Art
put some dehydrated spinach in a pot to soak for supper. He covered
the pot carefully, and stood it in the ashes of the fire, where it would
get the heat from the rock, even though the fire was put out. Then
falling into line behind the two men, the boys and Mr. Rogers started
off, apparently going backward away from the mountain down the
path toward Crystal Cascades and the Glen road.
“We just came up here,” the tall man said. “Came out of our way a
bit to see the shelter camp, as I want to build one like it near my
home.”
“So do we,” said the Scouts.
The two men walked very fast, so that the boys had hard work to
keep up with them. They were evidently trained mountain climbers.
After half a mile of descent, they swung to the left, by the Raymond
Path, and after a quarter of a mile of travel toward the northeast,
they swung still again to the left, up the Huntington Ravine Trail, and
headed back almost directly at right angles, toward the northwest,
where the cone of Washington was, though it could not be seen.
The path now ascended again, rather rapidly, and the Scouts puffed
along behind the tall man and his stout companion, who walked just
about as fast up-hill as they did down.
“Say!” called Peanut, “is there a fire in the ravine?”
The tall man laughed. “Sure,” he said. “Four alarms!”
A mile or more of climbing brought them into the ravine. It was not
so large as Tuckerman’s, and it had no lake embosomed in its rocky
depths, but in some ways it was an even wilder and more impressive
spot. On the right, to the east, the cliff wall rose up much steeper
than in Tuckerman’s, to Nelson’s Crag. On the west, also, the wall
was almost perpendicular, while the jagged and uneven head wall,
which did not form the beautiful amphitheatre curve of Tuckerman’s
head wall, and had no snow arch at its base, looked far harder to
climb.
“Wow!” said Peanut. “You win. I don’t want to climb here.”
“Why, it’s easy. You can climb where other folks have,” said the stout
man, with a wink. “Folks have climbed all three of these cliffs.”
“That one to the left?” asked Peanut.
“Sure,” said the man.
“What with, an aeroplane?”
“With hobnail boots,” said the other.
“I guess they had pretty good teeth and finger nails, also,” Frank put
in.
A half mile more, and the trail ended at a great mass of debris and
broken rocks piled up in the shape of a fan at the base of the head
wall.
“This is called the Fan,” said the stout man. “Here’s where the job
begins. Goodbye, boys.”
“Oh, let’s go up a way!” cried Art. “If they can do it, we can.”
“Sure,” said Peanut, as he saw the two men begin to climb carefully
over the broken fragments of the Fan.
“Oh, please!” the rest cried.
“Well, just a short way,” Mr. Rogers reluctantly consented, “if you’ll
agree to come down when I give the order. We have no ropes, and
we are none of us used to rock climbing. I won’t take the risk. If we
had ropes and proper spiked staffs, it would be different.”
The Scouts, with a shout, started up behind the two men, who had
now ceased their rapid walking, and were going very slowly and
carefully. The boys soon found out why. The footing on the rocky
debris of the Fan was extremely treacherous, and you had to keep
your eyes on every step, and test your footing.
About fifty yards before the top of the Fan was reached, the two
climbers ahead turned to the right, and made their way along a shelf
on the ledge which they called a “lead,” toward a patch of scrub.
One by one, the boys followed them, using extreme caution on the
narrow shelf. At the patch of scrub, they could look on up the head
wall, and see that the mass of rocks which made the Fan had been
brought down by frost and water in a landslide from the top, and
made a gully all the way to the summit. To climb the wall, you had
to use this gully. It looked quite hopeless, but the stout man started
right up, the tall man following him, zigzagging from one lead, or
shelf, to another. The boys followed.
“Gee,” said Peanut, “wish it hadn’t rained so lately. These rocks are
slippery. And I don’t like walking with the ground in my face all the
time.”
“I think it’s fun,” said Art.
“Me, too,” said Frank. “But I don’t like to look back, though.”
They followed two or three leads up the gully, till they were perhaps
a hundred or a hundred and fifty feet above the floor of the ravine
below. Then Mr. Rogers, looking up, saw Peanut, in the lead, looking
about for the next lead, and, after finding it, trying with his short
legs to straddle the gap between it and the spot where he stood. His
foot slipped, and if Art hadn’t been firmly braced right behind him,
so that he threw his shoulder under, Peanut would have fallen off.
“Here’s where we stop!” said the Scout Master.
Peanut was rather white with the sudden shock of slipping. Still, he
looked longingly up the gully, toward the two climbers above, and
said, “Aw, no, let’s go on a little further!”
“Not a step—remember your promise,” Mr. Rogers declared.
The boys turned reluctantly, and started down. They found it far
harder than going up. Going up, you didn’t see that almost sheer
drop below you. But going the other way, you had to see it at every
step, and it made you constantly realize how easy it would be to fall.
Lou grew very pale, and paused on a wide bit of shelf. “I’m dizzy,” he
said. “Let me stand here a minute. I can’t help it. Makes me dizzy to
look down.”
Frank was directly in front of him below.
“You keep braced after every step, Frank,” said the Scout Master,
“and let Lou take his next step to you each time before you take
another. Better now, Lou? You’ll be all right. Just keep your eye on
your feet, and don’t look off.”
They started down once more, and after at least fifteen minutes
reached the Fan in safety and then the floor of the ravine. Lou sat
down immediately looking, as Peanut said, “some seasick.”
“I guess I was never cut out for rock climbing,” poor Lou declared. “I
wouldn’t have gone, and worried you, Mr. Rogers, if I’d known it
would make me dizzy like that.”
“You’d probably get used to it,” the Scout Master answered, “but I
guess we’ll not experiment any more just now, where there’s no
path. Look, our friends are almost up.”
The boys, who had forgotten the two men, turned and saw them far
above, working carefully toward the summit of the wall. They
shouted, and waved their hats, and the men waved back, though
the Scouts could hear no voices.
“Gee, and folks have climbed those side walls, too, eh?” said Peanut.
“Believe me, real mountain climbing is some work!”
“It is, surely,” Mr. Rogers said. “But in the Alps, of course, people go
roped together, and if one falls, the rest brace and the rope holds
him. How would you like to climb that gully if it was all ice and snow
instead of rock, and you had to cut steps all the way with an ice ax,
for ten thousand feet?”
“Say, there’d have to be a pretty big pile of twenty dollar gold pieces
waiting at the top,” answered Peanut.
“Oh, get out,” said Art. “That isn’t what makes folks climb such
places. It’s the fun of getting where nobody ever got before—just
saying, ‘You old cliff, you can’t stump me!’ isn’t it, Mr. Rogers?”
“About that, I guess,” the Scout Master replied. “There’s some
fascination about mountain climbing which makes men risk their
lives at it all over the globe, every year, on cliffs beside which this
one would look like a canoe beside the Mauretania. I’m glad we’ve
had a taste of real climbing this afternoon, anyhow, to see what it’s
like. Look, the men have reached the top, and are waving good-bye.”
The boys waved back, and as the men disappeared from sight, they
themselves moved slowly down the trail, toward the Raymond Path,
looking up with a new respect at the walls on either side, and
speculating how they could be climbed. Consulting the Appalachian
Mountain Club guide book, they found no description of how to get
up the west wall, but the ascent of the eastern wall, to Nelson’s
Crag, which was called “the most interesting rock climb in the White
Mountains,” was described briefly. The Scouts easily identified the
gully up which the ascent must be made, but nobody seemed very
eager to make it.
“No, sir,” said Peanut, “not for me, till I’ve had more practice on cliff
work, and have bigger hobnails in my shoes, and can keep right on
up.”
“Still,” said Frank, “people who go up places like that in the Alps
have to come down again.”
“Sure they do,” Peanut replied, “but they’re used to it. The older I
grow, the more I realize it doesn’t pay to tackle a job till you’re up to
it.”
“Hear Grandpa talk!” laughed Frank. “You’d think he was fifty-three.”
“He’s talking horse sense, though,” the Scout Master put in. “When
we get home, we’ll go over to the cliffs on Monument Mountain
some day, with a rope, and get some practice. As a matter of fact,
those cliffs, though they are only two hundred feet high, are steeper
than these here, and you haven’t any gully to go up, either. We’ll get
some Alpine work right at home.”
“I’ll stay at the bottom, and catch you when you fall off,” said Lou,
with a rather crooked smile. “Gee, to think I’d go dizzy like a girl!”
“Forget it, Lou,” Peanut cheered him. “’Twasn’t your fault, any
more’n getting seasick.”
The afternoon shadows were all across Tuckerman’s Ravine when
the boys once more reached the camp. It was not yet five o’clock,
and out behind them the green summits of Carter and Wildcat and
Moriah across the Glen, and all the peaks to the south and east,
were bathed in full sunlight; but down in the great hole of the ravine
the shadow of Boott Spur had risen half-way up the east wall toward
the Lion’s Head, and it seemed like twilight.
“Makes me want supper,” Frank laughed.
“I got an idea,” said Peanut. “Let’s take a loaf. Let’s just sit around
the camp-fire till supper, and do nothing.”
“Let’s cut our mileage on our staffs,” said Art.
“Hooray!”
Somebody lit the fire, for already the twilight chill was creeping
down from the snow-bank, and Art put the pot of dehydrated
spinach on to simmer. Then everybody got out his knife and cut
mileage.
“Only nine miles for yesterday!” said Art. “And think of the work we
did.”
“One mile against that hurricane is about equal to fifteen on the
level, I guess,” said Peanut. “Shall we call it eight plus fifteen?”
“You can, if you want to be a nature fakir,” Rob answered. “What’s
the total to-day? Who’s got the guide book?”