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Updated: May 17, 2025
And whereas before the rock-slides had been wretchedly uncomfortable but at comparatively low altitudes, now we found ourselves climbing across slides which hugged the mountain thousands of feet above the valley. Our nerves began to go, too, I think, on that last day. We were plainly frightened, not for ourselves but each for the other.
It is a curious thing about mountains, but they have a hideous tendency to fall down. Whole cliff-faces, a mile or so high, are suddenly seized with a wandering disposition. Leaving the old folks at home and sliding down into the valleys, they come awful croppers and sustain about eleven million compound comminuted fractures. These family breaks are known as rock-slides.
Gradually rock-slides and rock-edges yielded a less insecure footing on the upper reaches, but the chasms widened and water dripping from lateral crevasses made the vague trail slippery and the occasional earth sodden and treacherous.
In the summer of 1868 a party in charge of W. N. Byers, who had led the first unsuccessful party, reached the top. Since that time each year has seen an increasing number of successful climbers. Dogs are dangerous companions on a climb, because they start rock-slides.
All was white, icy, pallid, save for the scoring of black rocks that jutted like roots sometimes, and sometimes were in naked faces. In the distance a slope sheered down from a peak, with many black rock-slides. It was like a shallow pot lying among the stone and snow of the upper world. In this pot Gerald had gone to sleep.
While a large part of the route offers no more difficulty than the conquest of limitless levels, there are portions that have taxed to the utmost the skill and patience of the engineer. In fifty-six miles there are thirty-nine tunnels, and thirteen galleries for protection against rock-slides. This short section is said to have cost £1,170,000.
There had, at one time, been a trail, but avalanches have a way, in these mountain valleys, of destroying all landmarks, and rock-slides come down from the great cliffs, fill creek-beds, and form swamps. Whether we could get down at all or not was a question. To the eternal credit of our guides, we made it. For the upper five miles below Cloudy Pass it was touch and go.
As we proceeded, another layer could be seen above this, the same limestone and with the same fossils an examination of the rock-slides told us as the topmost formation at the Grand Canyon. This was not unlike the cross-bedded sandstone in colour, but lacked its warmth and richness of tint.
We were mired at times, and again there were long stretches over rock-slides, where the horses scrambled like cats. But with every mile there came a sense of exhilaration. We were making progress. There was little or no life to be seen. The Woodsman, going ahead of us, encountered a brown bear reaching up for a cluster of salmon-berries.
At daylight Wunpost paused in his steady, plunging climb and looked back over the rock-slides and boulders; and while his mules munched their grain well back out of sight he focussed his new field glasses and watched.
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