er. Most climbers
underestimate the time required to make a chosen trip, and, starting
out with the day before them, ascend at their leisure, making frequent
and unnecessarily long stops to rest, drinking in the beauty of the
prospect from each rise attained, forgetting to allow themselves
sufficient time for the even more difficult descent. Consequently the
return trip is crowded on the edge of darkness, a dangerous condition
on any trail any time, but especially hazardous when the climber is
weary and, therefore, not alert. It is impossible for him to see the
slight footholds or handholds on which he must put his trust, and
weight.

One day, as a boy, I came to grief because I was so absorbed by the
interesting things about me that I took no note of the passing of time
or of the altitude to which I had climbed. From my camp at Bear Lake I
had followed the old Flattop trail to the Divide, from which I could
see a hundred miles or more in all directions; to the north the
mountains of Wyoming peeped through purple haze; eastward, the
foothills dropped away to the flat and endless prairies, with gleaming
lakes everywhere. West and south, my own Rockies rose, tier on tier,
to snowy heights. Gay and fragrant flowers beckoned my footsteps off
the trail; friendly conies "squee-eked" at me from their rocky lookout
posts; fat marmots stuffed themselves, making the most of their brief
summer. A buck deer left off polishing his new horns on a scraggly
timberline tree to look at me. Overhead an eagle swept round and round
in endless circles.

From the rim of the canyon, between Flattop and Hallett, I viewed the
spot where I had blundered over the edge of the snow-cornice on the way
to the dance. Beneath lay Tyndall glacier, its greenish ice exposed by
the summer thaw. I circled the head of the canyon and climbed to the
top of Hallett. From my eerie height, I got an eagle's view of the
world below--a hazy, hushed world where the birds called faintly, the
brooks murmured quietly and even the wind spoke in whispers. From near
by came the crash of glacier ice; falling rocks that thundered down the
cliffs.

All the afternoon I traveled along the crest of the Divide, wandering
southward, away from familiar country into a new maze of peaks and
glaciers, deep canyons and abrupt precipices. Suddenly a gale of wind
struck me, blinded me with penetrating snow. In that instant, without
preliminary or warning, summer changed