56 GREEN TRAILS AND UPLAND PASTURES 



clouds to lift from the Great Divide that we might cross 

 by one of the high passes. Far to the eastward we could 

 see the sun on the prairie, and at length we decided that 

 by the same token it might be shining over the range, 

 so at noon we set out, with a pack train and guides 

 twenty horses in all up the switchbacks of the head 

 Wall which leads to Swift Current Pass. There are no 

 gaps in the Continental Divide; a pass is merely a 

 col, as low as possible, between two higher summits. 

 Swift Current Pass, just above a hanging glacier of the 

 same name, is more than seven thousand feet above sea 

 level; but at this point the Divide is perhaps a quarter 

 of a mile wide, not, as in many places, a knifeblade 

 ridge. We went up the steep switchbacks, past the 

 glacier, into a dense cloud, the horses picking their way 

 carefully over extensive snowfields, and entered a 

 small level meadow, ground squirrels chattering at us 

 and a ptarmigan hen and her chicks, the colour of the 

 rocks, scattering away into the low shrubbery. We 

 crossed the meadow to the western side, and suddenly, 

 without warning, we looked out under the cloud, across 

 ten miles of hole, to the Livingstone Range, which 

 stood up nobly in full sunlight, peak after peak of mys- 

 terious blue, snowcapped and snowmantled, stretching 

 northward out of sight! Directly opposite stood 

 Heaven's Peak, which, when snow-blanketed, has real 

 Alpine quality. The whole western range, in fact, 

 more nearly merits the term Alpine than the eastern, 



