If you take one side of a rock, and your companion another, it is enough to separate you sometimes for the rest of the ascent.

July 19. 

July 19, 2018

Get home at noon.

For such an excursion as the above, carry and wear: —

• Three strong check shirts. 
• Two pairs socks. 
• Neck ribbon and handkerchief.
• Three pocket handkerchiefs.
• One thick waistcoat. 
• One thin (or half-thick) coat. 
• One thick coat (for mountain). 
• A large, broad india-rubber knapsack, with a broad flap.
• A flannel shirt. India-rubber coat. 
• Three bosoms (to go and come in). 
• A napkin. 
• Pins, needles, thread. 
• A blanket. .
• A cap to lie in at night. 
• Tent (or a large simple piece of india-rubber cloth for the mountain tops ?). 
• Veil and gloves (or enough millinet to cover all at night).
•  Map and compass. 
• Plant book and paper. 
• Paper and stamps. 
• Botany, spy-glass, microscope. 
• Tape, insect-boxes. 
• Jack-knife and clasp-knife. 
• Fish-line and hooks. 
• Matches. 
• Soap and dish-cloths. 
• Waste-paper and twine. 
• Iron spoon. 
• Pint dipper with a pail-handle added (not to put out the fire), and perhaps a bag to carry water in. 
• Frying-pan, only if you ride. 
• Hatchet (sharp), if you ride, and perhaps in any case on mountain, with a sheath to it. 
• Hard-bread (sweet crackers good); a moist, sweet plum cake very good and lasting; pork, corned beef or tongue, sugar, tea or coffee, and a little salt.

As I remember, those dwarf firs on the mountains grew up straight three or four feet without diminishing much if any, and then sent forth every way very stout branches, like bulls’ horns or shorter, horizontally four or five feet each way. They were stout because they grew so slowly. Apparently they were kept flat-topped by the snow and wind. But when the surrounding trees rose above them, they, being sheltered a little, apparently sent up shoots from the horizontal limbs, which also were again more or less bent, and this added to the horn-like appearance. 

We might easily have built us a shed of spruce bark at the foot of Tuckerman’s Ravine. I thought that I might in a few moments strip off the bark of a spruce a little bigger than myself and seven feet long, letting it curve as it naturally would, then crawl into it and be protected against any rain. Wentworth said that he had sometimes stripped off birch bark two feet wide, and put his head through a slit in the middle, letting the ends fall down before and behind, as he walked. 

The slides in Tuckerman’s Ravine appeared to be a series of deep gullies side by side, where sometimes it appeared as if a very large rock had slid down without turning over, plowing this deep furrow all the way, only a few rods wide. Some of the slides were streams of rocks, a rod or more in diameter each. In some cases which I noticed, the ravine-side had evidently been undermined by water on the lower side. 

It is surprising how much more bewildering is a mountain-top than a level area of the same extent. Its ridges and shelves and ravines add greatly to its apparent extent and diversity. You may be separated from your party by only stepping a rod or two out of the path. We turned off three or four rods to the pond on our way up Lafayette, knowing that Hoar was behind, but so we lost him for three quarters of an hour and did not see him again till we reached the summit. One walking a few rods more to the right or left is not seen over the ridge of the summit, and, other things being equal, this is truer the nearer you are to the apex. 

If you take one side of a rock, and your companion another, it is enough to separate you sometimes for the rest of the ascent. 

On these mountain-summits, or near them, you find small and almost uninhabited ponds, apparently with out fish, sources of rivers, still and cold, strange as condensed clouds, weird-like, -- of which nevertheless you make tea! -- surrounded by dryish bogs, in which, perchance, you may detect traces of the bear or loup-cervier. 

We got the best views of the mountains from Conway, Jefferson, Bethlehem, and Campton. Conway combines the Italian (?) level and softness with Alpine peaks around. Jefferson offers the completest view of the range a dozen or more miles distant; the place from which to behold the manifold varying lights of departing day on the summits. Bethlehem also afforded a complete but generally more distant view of the range, and, with respect to the highest summits, more diagonal. Campton afforded a fine distant view of'the pyramidal Franconia Mountains with the lumpish Profile Mountain. The last view, with its smaller intervals and partial view of the great range far in the north, was somewhat like the view from Conway. 

Belknap in his “ History of New Hampshire,” third volume, page 33, says: “On some mountains we find a shrubbery of hemlock [?] and spruce, whose branches are knit together so as to be impenetrable. The snow lodges on their tops, and a cavity is formed underneath. These are called by the Indians, Hakmantaks.” 

Willey quotes some one  as saying of the White Mountains, “Above this hedge of dwarf trees, which is about 4000 feet above the level of the sea, the scattered fir and spruce bushes, shrinking from the cold mountain wind, and clinging to the ground in sheltered hollows by the sides of the rocks, with a few similar bushes of white and yellow [?] birch, reach almost a thousand feet high.” 

Willey says that “the tops of the mountains are covered with snow from the last of October to the end of May;” that the alpine flowers spring up under the shelter of high rocks. Probably, then, they are most abundant on the southeast sides? 

To sum up (omitting sedges, etc.), plants prevailed thus on Mt. Washington:— 

1st. For three quarters of a mile: Black (?) spruce, yellow birch, hemlock, beech, canoe birch, rock maple, fir, mountain maple, red cherry, striped maple, etc. 

2d. At one and three quarters miles: Spruce prevails, with fir, canoe and yellow birch. Rock maple, beech, and hemlock disappear. (On Lafayette, lambkill, Viburnum nudum, nemopanthes, mountain-ash.) Hard woods in bottom of ravines, above and below.

3d. At three miles, or limit of trees (colliers’ shanty and Ravine Camp): Fir prevails, with some spruce and canoe birch; mountain-ash, Alnus iridis (in moist ravines), red cherry, mountain maple, Salix (humilis-like and Torreyana-like, etc.), Vaccinium Camdense, Ribes lacustre, prostratum, and floridum (?), rhodora, Amelanchier oligocarpa, tree-cranberry, chiogenes, Cornus Camdensis, Oxalis Acetosella, clintonia, gold-thread, Listera cordata, Smilacina bifolia, Solidago thyrsoidea, Ranunculus abortiims, Platanthera obtusata and dilatata, Oxyria digyna, Viola blanda, Aster prenanthes (?), A. acumimtus,A ralia nudicaulis,Polystichum aculeatum(?), wool-grass, etc.

4th. Limit of trees to within one mile of top, or as far as dwarf firs: Dwarf fir, spruce, and some canoe birch, Vaccinium uligimsum and Vitis-Idwa, Salim Uva-ursi, ledum, Empetrum nigrum, Oxalis Acetosella, Limuea borealis, Cornus Canadensis, Alsima Graenlamlica, Dia pensia Lappo'nica, gold-thread, epigaéa, sorrel, Geum radiatum var. Peckii, Solidago Virgaurea var. alpina, S. thyrsoidea (not so high as last), hellebore, oldenlandia, clintonia, Viola palustris, trientalis, a little Vaccinium angustifolium (?), ditto of Vaccinium coespitosum, Phyllodoce taxifolia, Uvularia grandiflora, Loiseleuria procumbe'ns, Cassiope hypnoides, Rubus triflorus, Heracleum lanatum, archangelica, Rhododendron Lapponi cum, Arctostaphylos alpina, Salix herbacea, Polygonum viviparum, Veronica alpina, Nabalus Boottii, Epilo bium alpinum, Platanthera dilatata, common rue, Cas tilleja septentrionalis, Arnica mollis, Spirwa salicifolia,Saliw repens,1 Solidago thyrsoidea, raspberry (Hoar), Lycopodium annotinum and Selago, small fern, grass, sedges, moss and lichens.2 (On Lafayette, Vaccinium. Oxycoccus, Smilacina trifolia, Kalmia glauca, Andro meda calyculata, red cherry, yellow (water) lily, Erio phorum vaginatum.) 

5th. Within one mile of top: Potentilla tridentata, a very little fir, spruce, and canoe birch, one mountain ash, Alsine Graenlandica, diapensia, Vaccinium Vitis Idaaa, gold-thread, Lycopodium annotinum and Selago, sorrel, Silene aca-ulis, Solidago Virgaurea var. alpina, hellebore, oldenlandia, Lonicera coerulea, clintonia, Viola palustris, trientalis, Vaccinium, angustifolium (?), a little fern, Geum‘ radiatum var. Peckii, sedges, rush, moss, and lichens, and probably more of the last list. 

6th. At apex: Sedge, moss, and lichens, and a little alsine, diapensia, Solidago Virgaurea var. alpina(?), etc.

The 2d may be called the Spruce Zone; 3d, the Fir Zone; 4th, the Shrub, or Berry, Zone; 

5th, the Cinque foil, or Sedge, Zone; 6th, the Lichen, or Cloud, Zone. 

Durand in Kane (page 444, 2d vol.) thinks that plants suffer more in alpine regions than in the polar zone. Among authorities on northern plants, names E. Meyer’s “Plantae Labradoricae” (1830) and Giesecke’s list of Greenland plants in Brewster’s Edinburgh Encyclopedia (1832). 

It is remarkable that what you may call trees on the White Mountains, i. e. the forests, cease abruptly with those about a dozen feet high, and then succeeds a distinct kind of growth, quite dwarfish and flattened and confined almost entirely to fir and spruce, as if it marked the limit of almost perpetual snow, as if it indicated a zone where the trees were peculiarly oppressed by the snow, cold, wind, etc. The transition from these flattened firs and spruces to shrubless rock is not nearly so abrupt as from upright or slender trees to these dwarfed thickets.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 19, 1858