nched, I made an enthusiastic move toward the bank. Now snowshoes
are not adapted for walking either in swift water or among boulders.
I realized this thoroughly after they had several times tripped me,
sprawling, into the liquid cold. Finally I sat down in the water, took
them off, and came out gracefully.

I gained the bank with chattering teeth and an icy armor. My pocket
thermometer showed two degrees above zero. Another storm was bearing
down upon me from the range, and the sun was sinking. But the worst of
it all was that there were several miles of rough and strange country
between me and Grand Lake that would have to be made in the dark. I
did not care to take any more chances on the ice, so I spent a hard
hour climbing out of the canon. The climb warmed me and set my
clothes steaming.

My watch indicated six o'clock. A fine snow was falling, and it was
dark and cold. I had been exercising for twelve hours without rest,
and had eaten nothing since the previous day, as I never take
breakfast. I made a fire and lay down on a rock by it to relax, and
also to dry my clothes. In half an hour I started on again. Rocky and
forest-covered ridges lay between me and Grand Lake. In the darkness
I certainly took the worst way. I met with too much resistance in the
thickets and too little on the slippery places, so that when, at
eleven o'clock that night, I entered a Grand Lake Hotel, my appearance
was not prepossessing.

The next day, after a few snow-measurements, I set off to re-cross the
range. In order to avoid warm bear-dens and cold streams, I took a
different route. It was a much longer way than the one I had come by,
so I went to a hunter's deserted cabin for the night. The cabin had no
door, and I could see the stars through the roof. The old sheet-iron
stove was badly rusted and broken. Most of the night I spent chopping
wood, and I did not sleep at all. But I had a good rest by the stove,
where I read a little from a musty pamphlet on palmistry that I found
between the logs of the cabin. I always carry candles with me. When
the wind is blowing, the wood damp, and the fingers numb, they are of
inestimable value in kindling a fire. I do not carry firearms, and
during the night, when a lion gave a blood-freezing screech, I wished
he were somewhere else.

Daylight found me climbing toward the top of the range through the
Medicine Bow National Forest, among some of the noblest evergreens in
Colorado. When the sun