Page:Canadian Alpine Journal I, 2.djvu/30

208 and it was snowing; so, dejected, we returned to camp. Now happened what nearly ruined the whole expedition. Four of the party wanted to go home, and one of the leaders was willing, but the other bitterly opposed to it. The fate of that virgin peak hung in the balance. It was settled by the "youngster" of the party stepping alongside the "foolish" guide, as he was rated, and with him swearing to retreat not one step till more than mere clouds and snow flurries barred the way to the summit. It had been "do or die" sitting before a cosy hearth in town, so now the only way home was the Spartan one: with your shield or on it!

At sundown the wind veered to the north and in a few hours there was not a vestige of a cloud in the sky. Now we had cold to contend with, for an icy wind blew from the glaciers behind Garibaldi, and our supply of wood was ended. The break of dawn on the twelfth was the scene of a lifetime. All hands were up early and, just as the sun was tipping the surrounding peaks and tinting glacier after glacier, we set off for the third time up that mountain ridge. The peak showed clear but was clad with new snow and looked anything but easy. In a couple of hours we reached the base and here roped, with the two men of the former expedition as guides. Then we stepped out upon the glacier at an altitude of about eight thousand feet, and began to circle the peak—a pyramid rising two thousand feet—by the north. For an hour we walked steadily over new frozen snow of dazzling whiteness, constantly encountering ugly crevasses, the peak on our right, a wall of unscaleable precipices overhung by a glacier. For another hour we hurried on, gradually rising, the silence of those dismal wastes broken only by the sound of an alpenstock biting the frozen snow. Once the whole place was shaken by an avalanche which came thundering down the precipice on our flank. At eleven o'clock we reached the nine-thousand foot level where began the final struggle.