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We climbed above timberline, headed through Storm Pass, and finally reached Keyhole without a single incident to mar the perfect day. The ladies were new, but plucky, climbers; the man rather blustery, but harmless. Beyond Keyhole lies rough going, smooth, sloping rocks and the "Trough" with its endless rock-slides that move like giant treadmills beneath the climber's feet.
The pines are nowhere abundant in the State. The other is found here and there well up toward the edge of the timberline. The Alaska Indians make their canoe paddles of it and weave matting and coarse cloth from the fibrous brown bark.
The others, big men all and not very much afraid of responsibility, are selling horses, breaking trails, drinking sangaree, running railways beyond the timberline, swimming rivers, blowing up tree-stumps, and making cities where no cities were, in all the five quarters of the world. Only people will not believe this when you tell them. They are too near things and a great deal too well fed.
The wind rose; crashing among the peaks, tearing along the ridges, roaring through the passes. Blinding clouds came sifting down from the wind-swept heights. After days of patient waiting, I started the laborious climb upward, for it was impossible to make progress downward, where the soft snow lay. Now, like the sheep, I would take advantage of those wind-swept stretches above timberline.
Now you know what're you goin' to do about it?" "Shall I have Wild Cat take you out, one at a time," Jo asked mischievously, after a thoughtful pause. Keddie shrugged. "I ain't achin' for my portion o' that," he confessed, "but ol' Timberline will know he's been in a fight." "It was despicable of you boys," Jo said sternly. "We'll not fight that way." "But the empty water tank, Jo!" cried Heine.
Meadows, little strips of alpine freshness, begin before the timberline is reached. Here one treads on a carpet of dwarf willows, downy catkins of creditable size and the greatest economy of foliage and stems. No other plant of high altitudes knows its business so well.
She stopped a moment, peering through the snow curtain, but she could see nothing. She ran on lightly, laughing a little. Then her feet met a projection, she stumbled, and fell flat over a slab of wood that jutted out of the ground. She lay there a moment, dazed. Then she sat up, and bent down to look at this thing that had tripped her. Probably a tree trunk. Then she must be near timberline.
A good trail has been cut through the woods to the base of the mountain on the north; but the summit of the mountain never has been reached from this side, though many brave attempts have been made upon it. Last summer I gained the summit from the south side, in a day and a half from the timberline, without encountering any desperate obstacles that could not in some way be passed in good weather.
Outside, the night and the storm swallowed him at once. Before he had gone fifty feet the house was out of sight. Then, entering the forest of balsam firs, the force of the wind was lessened, and he made good time up the first part of the grade. There would probably be no use for the snowshoes in this region of broken shrubbery before he came to the timberline.
In the Rockies, around timberline, gales often reach a velocity of a hundred miles, or more, an hour. Here during the long alpine winters, the wind booms and crashes among the peaks, roars through the passes, and rips through the shattered trees. That first night I lay in camp and listened to its unceasing roar, as it tore along the ridge tops. Occasionally, a gust would scatter my fire.
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