ight it was always cold, 10 deg.
below zero being the highest minimum during our stay in the Grand Basin,
and 21 deg. below zero the lowest. But we always slept warm; with
sheep-skins and caribou-skins under us, and down quilts and camel's-hair
blankets and a wolf-robe for bedding, the four of us lay in that
six-by-seven tent, in one bed, snug and comfortable. It was disgraceful
overcrowding, but it was warm. The fierce little primus stove, pumped up
to its limit and perfectly consuming its kerosene fuel, shot out its
corona of beautiful blue flame and warmed the tight, tiny tent. The
primus stove, burning seven hours on a quart of coal-oil, is a little
giant for heat generation. If we had had two, so that one could have
served for cooking and one for heating, we should not have suffered from
the cold at all, but as it was, whenever the stew-pot went on the stove,
or a pot full of ice to melt, the heat was immediately absorbed by the
vessel and not distributed through the tent. But another primus stove
would have been another five or six pounds to pack, and we were "heavy"
all the time as it was.

[Illustration: Traverse under the cliffs of the Northeast Ridge to enter
the Grand Basin.]

[Sidenote: The Labor of Packing]

Something has already been said about the fatigue of packing, and one
would not weary the reader with continual reference thereto; yet it is
certain that those who have carried a pack only on the lower levels
cannot conceive how enormously greater the labor is at these heights. As
one rises and the density of the air is diminished, so, it would seem,
the weight of the pack or the effect of the weight of the pack is in the
same ratio increased. We probably moved from three hundred to two
hundred and fifty pounds, decreasing somewhat as food and fuel were
consumed, each time camp was advanced in the Grand Basin. We could have
done with a good deal less as it fell out, but this we did not know, and
we were resolved not to be defeated in our purpose by lack of supplies.
But the packing of these loads, relaying them forward, and all the time
steeply rising, was labor of the most exhausting and fatiguing kind, and
there is no possible way in which it may be avoided in the ascent of
this mountain. To roam over glaciers and scramble up peaks free and
untrammelled is mountaineering in the Alps. Put a forty-pound pack on a
man's back, with the knowledge that to-morrow he must go down for
another, and you have