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The Mountaineer 
The reconnaissance was successful and interesting. Our 
minor 9000-foot peak enabled us to look across at the summit 
we had in mind and to lay out alternative routes, and offered 
glorious views of the snow and ice world about us. The Star- 
bird Glacier, which stretched its immense leneth in a horseshoe 
beneath us, is perhaps twelve miles long, possibly the largest 
in the Selkirks. On every hand were immense ice fields, while 
hanging glaciers, due to the peculiarly precipitous nature of 
the mountain walls, abounded. From one such, over an almost 
vertical mountain precipice across Horse Thief Creek, we wit- 
nessed within ten minutes of each other two tremendous ava- 
lanches, the shattered ice streamine thousands of feet down 
the mountain side in cascades and finally debouching on to the 
great glacier itself. Some goats also passed in review at rea- 
sonably close range. 
Making camp at the nearest point to our peak where wood 
seemed available, we turned in, prepared to climb the next day. 
We started long before sunrise, the route upon which we had 
determined lying over the surface of the glacier for several 
miles, swinging from south to west to the summit of a pass over 
into west Kootenay, then turning sharply to the left and fol- 
lowing a long “switchback” glacier, which skirted our peak on 
the north side, to an ice and snow slope which, with broad 
eross crevasses and a final bergschrund, rose steeply and direct- 
ly to the rock-ecapped summit. An alternative route, if this 
should prove impracticable, involved the attack of a rock 
comb from a point near the pass and working along this comb 
to a high snow-field, assailing the summit from the rear. 
It soon became clear that the elements were against us. 
Heavy clouds and mists formed, and did not break away with 
the rising sun. We crossed the pass and got some grand views 
of the lower West Kootenay mountains, but our summit re- 
mained obscured and weather conditions were threatening. 
Finally, we were reluctantly obliged to give up the climb. 
Fate had other knocks in store. Shortly after returning 
to our main camp a telegram came up the line ealling the 
Emersons home; and one of the trail-cutters, Ernest Rafford, 
a former Maine guide and woodsman, who joined us and wished 
to participate in a second attempt on the mountain, had not 
been in camp five minutes before he had cut himself well into 
the ankle bone with an axe. My comrades sadly departed, say- 
