Page:The Columbia River - Its History, Its Myths, Its Scenery Its Commerce.djvu/528

372 is the place for the Mountaineers and Mazamas to take the half-hour rest on their arduous march. A sweet rest it is. We pick out some sheltered place on the eastern slope, and stretch ourselves at full length on the warm rocks, while the icy wind from the summit goes hurtling above us. And how good the chocolate and the malted milk and the prunes and raisins of the scanty lunch taste, while we rest and feel the might of elemental nature again fill our veins and lungs and hearts.

But then comes a fifth zone, the last, the zone of the Arctic. This is the zone of the snow-cap. The glaciers are now below. All life has ceased. The grade has ever steepened, till now it is forty degrees or more. The snow is hummocked and granulated. Here is where part of the climbers begin to stop. Legs and lungs fail. Camp looks exceedingly good down there at the verge of the forests. They feel as though they had lost nothing on the summit worth going up for. A nausea, mountain sickness, attacks some. Nosebleed attacks others. Things look serious. Icy mists sometimes begin to swirl around the presumptous climbers. Frost gathers on hair and mustache and eyebrows. The unaccustomed or the less ambitious or weaker lose heart and bid the rest go on, for they will turn toward a more summer-like clime. Generally about half an ordinary party drop out at this beginning of the Arctic zone. But the rest shout "Excelsior," take a firmer grasp of alpenstock, stamp feet more vehemently into the snow, and with dogged perseverance move step by step up the final height. Inch by inch, usually in the teeth of a biting gale, leaning forward, and panting heavily, they force