severe shock since the San Francisco
disturbance of 1906. There could be no doubt that the earthquake had
disrupted this ridge. The huge bergs all around us were not the normal
discharge of hanging glaciers as we had at first wonderingly supposed;
they were the incrustation of ages, maybe, ripped off the rocks and
hurled down from the ridge by this convulsion. It was as though, as soon
as the Parker-Browne party reached the foot of the mountain, the ladder
by which they had ascended and descended was broken up.

[Illustration: The Northeast Ridge shattered by the earthquake in July,
1912.

The earthquake cleavage is plainly shown half-way down the ridge in the
background. The Browne Tower is the uppermost point in the picture. The
Parker Pass is along its base.]

What a wonderful providential escape these three men, Parker, Browne,
and La Voy had! They reached a spot within three or four hundred feet of
the top of the mountain, struggling gallantly against a blizzard, but
were compelled at last to beat a retreat. Again from their
seventeen-thousand-foot camp they essayed it, only to be enshrouded and
defeated by dense mist. They would have waited in their camp for fair
weather had they been provided with food, but their stomachs would not
retain the canned pemmican they had carried laboriously aloft, and they
were compelled to give up the attempt and descend. So down to the foot
of the mountain they went, and immediately they reached their base camp
this awful earthquake shattered the ridge and showered down bergs on
both the upper and lower glaciers. Had their food served they had
certainly remained above, and had they remained above their bodies would
be there now. Even could they have escaped the avalanching icebergs they
could never have descended that ridge after the earthquake. They would
either have been overwhelmed and crushed to death instantly or have
perished by starvation. One cannot conceive grander burial than that
which lofty mountains bend and crack and shatter to make, or a nobler
tomb than the great upper basin of Denali; but life is sweet and all men
are loath to leave it, and certainly never men who cling to life had
more cause to be thankful.

The difficulty of our task was very greatly increased; that was plain at
a glance. This ridge, that the pioneer climbers of 1910 went up at one
march with climbing-irons strapped beneath their moccasins, carrying
nothing but their flagpole, that the Parke