Page:Canadian Alpine Journal I, 2.djvu/168

284 forming a combination toboggan of sixteen persons linked together by interlocked arms and feet. At a signal we pushed off and began to whiz down the snow slope. For a time all went well. Suddenly some projecting foot caught in the snow, the human toboggan split in two, and the part in front of me continued on its own responsibility. My section, however, came on with terrific impetus, and in their efforts to pass me while still holding on to me, forced my head and shoulders into the snow, and described over me a parabola which must have filled with joy the hearts of the onlookers. After we had gathered up our limbs, alpenstocks and ice-axes we continued our way in strictly independent fashion, and really enjoyed the long slide to the bottom of the snow-field.

The rest of the journey to camp was an easy scramble down the ravine, and we soon arrived rather wet and weary and quite ready for the usual afternoon tea.

For my part, when I have climbed a mountain, I like to sit down for a while and think about it. Yet you will see people coming back into camp with half the nails gone from their soaking boots and with a considerable gap in the garment that bears the brunt of a glissade, who will at once rush to the bulletin board hunting for more trouble. What are you to do with people like that? Mild cases are often satisfied with an enrollment for an ascent of Mt. Temple (11,626 ft.) on the opposite side of the valley, but for others this is as nothing; and for these the President unfalteringly prescribes a two-day trip. To grasp the psychic value of a two-day trip you must understand that the Paradise Valley is a narrow playground running for some six miles north-east and south-west, fenced on the south-west by a wall of rock one mile in height, and on the south-east and north-west by similar walls of from half a mile to one mile in height. Unfortunately no