Page:Canadian Alpine Journal I, 1.djvu/183

120 For a mile or more it was easy going over a gentle slope covered with rocks and snow. The clouds had gradually broken up before the genial warmth of the sun, and the Kicking-Horse river seemed a little thread of silver that wound, with countless twists and turns, in a level valley below. Field, with its roundhouse and trains and big hotel, seemed but a little dot, and when an engine whistled, a thousand echoes tossed the sound from side to side, from peak to peak, from canyon to canyon, until it was lost in immensity.

The climb was uneventful up to the time the cliffs near the top were reached. It had been a fairly easy slope all the way. The snow began at timber line, and was hard enough to walk on its top. Mt. Dennis was slowly left behind and sank to a mere hillock beneath. Mts. Field and Burgess gradually slipped down until Wapta and then the Vice-President, with an emerald glacier in its lap, came in full view from behind.

By making a detour, I could have found an easier way, but, having no guide and never having been there before, I began to climb the wall of rock immediately in front. It was a most difficult climb. The short day was nearly ended, the warmth of the sun had given place to a raw, cold wind, and my pack being large and heavy, got in the way. Nearing the top of this almost vertical clift, my numb fingers slipped and I barely escaped a sheer fall of fully one hundred feet. Surmounting the cliff, it proved but a vanguard of many. Height on height of barefaced cliffs offered their resistance in succession, each crowned with snow-covered ledges. Gradually, however, they were vanquished, one by one, and at last I stood on the glory-crowned summit, ten thousand five hundred feet above the sea.

Mts. Field, Burgess and Wapta lay far beneath. President and Vice-President gleamed and glistened in the near distance. Cathedral mountain, close by,