ad of being
colder, as we expected, it was warmer, the minimum ranging around zero
instead of around 10 deg. below.

[Illustration: Camp at 13,000 feet on Northeast Ridge.]

[Sidenote: Clouds and Climate]

The rapidity with which the weather changed up here was a continual
source of surprise to us. At one moment the skies would be clear, the
peaks and the ridge standing out with brilliant definition; literally
five minutes later they would be all blotted out by dense volumes of
vapor that poured over from the south. Perhaps ten minutes more and the
cloud had swept down upon the glacier and all above would be clear
again; or it might be the vapor deepened and thickened into a heavy
snow-storm. Sometimes everything below was visible and nothing above,
and a few minutes later everything below would be obscured and
everything above revealed.

This great crescent range is, indeed, our rampart against the hateful
humidity of the coast and gives to us in the interior the dry, windless,
exhilarating cold that is characteristic of our winters. We owe it
mainly to this range that our snowfall averages about six feet instead
of the thirty or forty feet that falls on the coast. The winds that
sweep northward toward this mountain range are saturated with moisture
from the warm waters of the Pacific Ocean; but contact with the lofty
colds condenses the moisture into clouds and precipitates most of it on
the southern slopes as snow. Still bearing all the moisture their
lessened temperature will allow, the clouds pour through every notch and
gap in the range and press resolutely onward and downward, streaming
along the glaciers toward the interior. But all the time of their
passage they are parting with their moisture, for the snow is falling
from them continually in their course. They reach the interior, indeed,
and spread out triumphant over the lowlands, but most of their burden
has been deposited along the way. One is reminded of the government
train of mules from Fort Egbert that used to supply the remote posts of
the "strategic" telegraph line before strategy yielded to economy and
the useless line was abandoned. When the train reached the Tanana
Crossing it had eaten up nine-tenths of its original load, and only
one-tenth remained for the provisioning of the post. So these clouds
were being squeezed like a sponge; every saddle they pushed through
squeezed them; every peak and ridge they surmounted squeezed them; every
glaci