72 The Mountaineer 
But I am widely digressing—leaving the Big Arroyo we 
took the dim zigzag up Lost Creek, so called because the creek 
slips so inconspicuously down the canyon wall that many seek- 
ing Lost Creek have followed up Soda Creek, its more preten- 
tious rival. 
Pausing here and there under the cooling shade of some 
isolated pine, to glance backward at the widening view, we 
soon entered clumps of timber interspersed with little glades, 
where dodocatheon and other dainty dabs of color blossomed 
on the green turf edging the tumultuous stream. Near the trail 
we passed a camp-fire and paused to glance at a.bear cub tied 
by a halter rope with a hobble for a collar. The cub, terrified, 
climbed up the hunter’s coat and whimpering, clasped him by 
the neck, and for want of better shelter buried his head against 
the hunter’s broad shoulder, a large skin stretched near by 
pathetically demonstrating why the cub’s mother did not offer 
the desired protection. 
Late in the afternoon we made camp in the tamrac pine 
at 10,500 feet elevation, and after bath and supper drew close 
to the genial rays of the camp-fire on the ledge, the wall of rock 
reflecting the heat and offering support for tired limbs. 
In the morning the men rose with the dawn and soon had 
breakfast sufficiently advanced to warrant calling the ladies. 
Where the ladies had selected sleeping quarters a self appointed 
committee of three solemn looking mules were seen, with long 
ears forward, immovable as statues, gazing at the strange mum- 
my-like sleeping bags, hidden from us; but detected by them, 
as foraging they had wandered up the glade from the hunter’s 
camp below. <A call from us produced mutual consternation, as 
fair heads emerged from dunnage bags and met the downward 
stoical glance of the inquisitive intruders. 
Breakfast over we followed up the creek. Tamrac gave 
way to scattered Japanese-looking foxtail pines, whose clustered 
tips like fox tails extended on twisted limbs from dark brown 
trunks, and polished golden brown dead branches and stems 
rose above the green boughs, offering an effective contrast to 
the huge white granite boulders, erratics—left by a retreating 
glacier ages ago. 
Halting at Columbine Lake to absorb the reflection of Saw- 
tooth lifting its jagged crest like a shark’s tooth ripping the 
heavens above, we slowly worked up the steep slope and at last 
made the huge slab which formed the summit, 12,340 feet. 
