[Sidenote: Climbing-Irons]

The climbing grew steeper and steeper; the slope that had looked easy
from below now seemed to shoot straight up. For the most part the
climbing-irons gave us sufficient footing, but here and there we came to
softer snow, where they would not take sufficient hold and we had to cut
steps. The calks in these climbing-irons were about an inch and a
quarter long; we wished they had been two inches. The creepers are a
great advantage in the matter of speed, but they need long points. They
are not so safe as step-cutting, and there is the ever-present danger
that unless one is exceedingly careful one will step upon the rope with
them and their sharp calks sever some of the strands. They were,
however, of great assistance and saved a deal of laborious step-cutting.

At last the crest of the ridge was reached and we stood well above the
two peaks that mark the ends of the horseshoe.[4]

Also it was evident that we were well above the great North Peak across
the Grand Basin. Its crest had been like an index on the snow beside us
as we climbed, and we stopped for a few moments when it seemed that we
were level with it. We judged it to be about five hundred feet lower
than the South Peak.

[Illustration: The climbing-irons.]

But still there stretched ahead of us, and perhaps one hundred feet
above us, another small ridge with a north and south pair of little
haycock summits. This is the real top of Denali. From below, this
ultimate ridge merges indistinguishably with the crest of the horseshoe
ridge, but it is not a part of it but a culminating ridge beyond it.
With keen excitement we pushed on. Walter, who had been in the lead all
day, was the first to scramble up; a native Alaskan, he is the first
human being to set foot upon the top of Alaska's great mountain, and he
had well earned the lifelong distinction. Karstens and Tatum were hard
upon his heels, but the last man on the rope, in his enthusiasm and
excitement somewhat overpassing his narrow wind margin, had almost to be
hauled up the last few feet, and fell unconscious for a moment upon the
floor of the little snow basin that occupies the top of the mountain.
This, then, is the actual summit, a little crater-like snow basin, sixty
or sixty-five feet long and twenty to twenty-five feet wide, with a
haycock of snow at either end--the south one a little higher than the
north. On the southwest this little basin is much corniced, and the
whole