I Believe The Last Unpublished Column

I still have a couple of pairs of my old hiking socks. I pull them out only during hunting season, because they fit between my feet and the old heavy boots better than my newer socks. In my backpacking days, they were just the trick for coping with the rubbing and pounding of those long miles spent lugging a 45 pound load along rocky mountain trails. They are thick gray wool, with a bright, one-inch wide band of red at the top. That bright red band attracted the hummingbird.

We were taking a breather after we had crested a shallow saddle at about 12,000 feet, rounded the ridge, and then wandered up a wide valley to about 500 feet higher. Our backpacks rested on sandy soil off to one side while we leaned back against the softest rocks we could find, munching down granola bars. Brilliant high altitude sunshine bombarded us from an unnaturally deep blue high altitude sky. The valley dropped away to the west, past Big Brewer Lake and down Brewer Creek. If memory serves, that was the route taken by William Brewer when he first climbed Mt. Brewer, way back in 1864.

A flash of emerald green caught my eye. The hummingbird hovered next to the red band of my right sock. We froze and watched. A hummingbird was about the last thing we expected to see up there. He perched ever so softly on my ankle before flitting off. Hummingbirds don’t weigh very much at all.

We thought that was pretty neat. The last trees were nearly a thousand feet lower on the slope beyond our feet, as timberline was about 11,200 feet. Except for a few columbine and monkey flowers near the rare watercourse, we had seen no flowers to attract the little bird. I suppose he was just passing through, and that red band on my sock caught his eye. There was no nectar in my hiking sock (no kidding!), so he didn’t stay long. And then he flashed away.

The open slope upon which we sat ended above us in a jumble of rocks between Mt. Brewer and a peak called North Guard, both of which we planned to climb. Spectacular as it was, the place was a bit of a moonscape, with no significant landmarks close by. So although I carried the topographical map, knowing my correct altitude involved some guesswork.

Sure, I wore a digital watch that doubled as a thermometer and an altimeter. The altimeter ran off a pressure sensor on the side of the watch. The higher we climbed, the less pressure the column of air above us, rising to the edge of space, would bear on our heads. The watch’s altimeter simply measured the pressure and then calculated our altitude. So as long as the weather didn’t present a rise or drop in pressure, we could read an accurate altitude off that digital watch.

Brewer and his party had a similar problem when they climbed the peak. They had two of those big heavy wood and glass barometers that were all the rage in 1864. Sealed within each was a colored liquid that changed height within a glass tube in response to air pressure changes, so as they climbed, the liquid level also changed, and the marks on the glass told the men their altitude. Except…when the weather changed.

This was a survey expedition, and these were scientists as well as adventurers, so they wanted to measure the height of the mountain, and do this accurately. Since their climb took several days, they were assured that the weather would change and thus introduce inaccuracy to their measurements. So they used two barometers, one that they carried along on their climb, and a second that stayed behind at a base camp at a known altitude. Measurements were taken with both at the same times each day, and as the weather changed the readings of the barometer at the base camp, the readings taken with the climbing one could later be adjusted to the same degree, so its altitude readings would be more accurate.

Obviously, they couldn’t get a mountain’s measurements down to the inch this way, but looking back, they didn’t do badly. Standing atop each mountain, they could look out at dozens of peaks of nearly the same height, and since they were hoping to find the tallest of the bunch, and then climb it, and there were so many, they came up with another shortcut to judge height. An unpatched lead ball left in a musket will roll out of the barrel if the front of the barrel is lowered. So they would aim their musket at the peak of each nearby mountain, and if the ball stayed in their barrel, they knew that mountain was higher, and worthy of a climb.

These men didn’t have any of the things that made our climb so much easier than theirs. We had a map of the area, guide books telling us where to turn, trails going to known places, digital watches with altimeters, nylon backpacks full of freeze dried food, and nice socks with red stripes around the top. We didn’t feel like wimps, but I sure do admire the guys who did this long before we did.