I 



The Mountaineer 11 



afloat on a great iceberg. Major Ingraham and his four 

 companies, who had spent the night on the summit, 

 came down as early as they could see to travel, and 

 rejoined the main party at St. Elmo Pass. Returning 

 to camp, we walked down into this mass of clouds and 

 found camp shut in by a dense fog. 



During the last week of the outing, fifty-five mem- 

 bers of the party made a knapsack trip to Spray Park, 

 taking bedding, camp equipage and two days' provis- 

 ions. They crossed the Carbon Glacier about midway 

 in its length, and entered the lower part of the park, 

 just where the meadows begin. 



It had been found impracticable to move the main 

 camp to Spray Park, and yet it was too great a treat 

 to omit entirely. As day after day the eye feasted 

 upon the beauties of ice-bound mountain crag or flow- 

 ery meadow, the mind became satiated, and it required 

 the unusual to attract attention. Yet nowhere else on 

 the mountain had the effect been so strange as here. 

 The park winds in and out among the crags, with small 

 lakes ; streams that course through meadows or plunge 

 over rocks in beautiful cascades ; trees bent and broken 

 by the wind ; flowers of every hue, so thickly strewn 

 that it was impossible to step without crushing them. 

 Each step brought a change of view, and at first the 

 expressions of praise were lavish, but as we climbed 

 and the view became more general all this gave way to 

 a feeling of sadness. 



The park was so beautiful that it seemed unreal, 

 and one regretted that so few could see it. Nature had 

 fashioned this playground much better than man could 

 hope to, and had set it away here between two great 

 glaciers at the base of a mighty mountain. Thousands 

 on thousands of acres in extent, it stretched from the 

 dark belt of timber 4,000 feet upward to the ice-clad 

 slopes below Liberty Cap itself. The last trees clung 

 low down to the rocks at an elevation of almost 8,000 



