little flat plants
decked out with red or blue or white wax berries, Christmas fashion.

In this green-and-gold room one journeys for days. Occasionally a chance
opening affords a momentary glimpse of hills or of the river sweeping
below; but not for long. It is a chilly room. The frost has hardened the
mud in the trail. One's feet and hands ache cruelly. At night camp is
made near the banks of the river, whence always one may in a few moments
catch as many trout as are needed, fine, big, fighting trout.

By the end of three or four days the prospect opens out. Tremendous
cliffs rise sheer from the bottom of the valley; up tributary canons one
can see a dozen miles to distant snow ranges glittering and wonderful.
Nearer at hand the mountains rise above timber line to great buttes and
precipices.

CHAPTER II

THE FIRST CLIMB

Fisher, Frank, and I had been hunting for elk in the dense forests along
the foot of one of these mountains; and for a half day, drenched with
sweat, had toiled continuously up and down steep slopes, trying to go
quietly, trying to keep our wind, trying to pierce the secrets of the
leafy screen always about us. We were tired of it.

"Let's go to the top and look for goats," suggested Frank. "There are
some goat cliffs on the other side of her. It isn't very far."

It was not very far, as measured by the main ranges, but it was a two
hours' steady climb nearly straight up. We would toil doggedly for a
hundred feet, or until our wind gave out and our hearts began to pound
distressingly; then we would rest a moment. After doing this a few
hundred times we would venture a look upward, confidently expecting the
summit to be close at hand. It seemed as far as ever. We suffered a
dozen or so of these disappointments, and then learned not to look up.
This was only after we had risen above timber line to the smooth,
rounded rock-and-grass shoulder of the mountain. Then three times we
made what we thought was a last spurt, only to find ourselves on a
"false summit." After a while we grew resigned, we realized that we were
never going to get anywhere, but were to go on forever, without
ultimate purpose and without hope, pushing with tired legs, gasping with
inadequate lungs. When we had fully made up our minds to that, we
arrived. This is typical of all high-mountain climbing--the dogged,
hard, hopeless work that can never reach an accomplishment; and then at
last the sudden, unexpected culmina