Page:Canadian Alpine Journal I, 1.djvu/148

Rh The couloir led us almost directly to the shoulder of the eastern arête, at no great distance beneath the peak itself, to which, however, all progress seemed barred by a precipitous wall of rock. We had breakfast at this point—nine o'clock—and had leisure to look back on one of the noblest and grandest panoramas it is given man to see. The great peaks of the Summit range, from Tupper on the right to our nearest neighbor, Rogers, on the left, with Macdonald, Sir Donald, Dawson and Bonney in the centre, were clad in the soft pink light of the rising sun. From the side of Mt. Hector I have seen this light covering that beautiful ice-mountain, Balfour, and resting on that terrible display of rock and ice—that tortured world of barren crags, which one views from Lefroy; but these scenes lacked something of the mystery of distance and contrast of color and coutour which took one's breath away on Hermit. Truly, Hermit is the mountain for the view which no man can describe,—or forget. Turning about, we witnessed another spectacle, only less impressive. The Rockies lay that way, a solid wall of vast and unexplored grandeur, above which hung a rich canopy of cloud fired from the east.

Feuz did a little reconnoitering here, to find a way round the precipice above us. He found it on the north face of the mountain, and we were soon at work with the axes on the snow. This difficulty being surmounted with comparative ease, there remained only a rock-stairway to be climbed to reach the peak. This was grand work, enlivened by long reaches and undignified pushes from below. An ice-axe would be shoved into a cleft above to yield a foothold for the first man. The rope from above solved the problem for the rest. After an hour or less of this fine exercise, we reached the summit, on the run. There was no cairn, and, as no record of a previous ascent is extant, we were likely the first to gain the top of Hermit.