Page:Canadian Alpine Journal I, 2.djvu/28

206 country open; and in a few hours we were in the foothills, with the Tsee-Ki's milky waters boiling through canyons, and our mountain looming ever higher and more forbidding. By noon we reached a place where the way by the stream was barred and we were obliged to begin the ascent by a ridge on the left. And now our toils commenced. For 1,000 feet we had some very awkward rock-work made risky by loose fragments; and beyond this, a laborious grind of 5,000 feet up a wooded slope at an angle of 45 degrees. For hours we toiled up that interminable mountain-side with never a glimpse of a view to encourage us; until at last, when quite near the summit of the ridge, we "played out." We had been travelling for twelve hours. Camp was made in an open glade carpeted with heather, and with plenty of wood and pure water, we were soon comfortable for the night.

Early next morning we broke camp and continued the work of the previous day with keen anticipation. In a short while we were rewarded by our first panorama, for all at once we stepped on open ground and, looking back, beheld the whole Squamish Valley lying six thousand feet beneath us with its roads, rivers and farms showing as depicted upon a living map. Beyond lay Howe Sound stretching away to the open sea, and in the far distance Vancouver Island. We were feasting upon this scene when a shout from our amateur guides hurried us on. Almost before we knew what had happened, we found ourselves on the first crest with Garibaldi beyond in full view, and quite close. Towering heavenwards in one magnificent mass of rock, his precipices crowned with hanging glaciers, and all his upper heights wrapt in a mantle of fresh snow, he seemed some terrible monarch of the skies not to be approached by man. A rising ridge in the form of a crescent connected our present point with the glaciers behind the mountain. A steep descent of some three hundred feet