Scaling Rope Cliff. 149 



obliged to change our plan, and endeavored to reach a mountain 

 spur projecting from the western border of the glacier. The sun- 

 light reflected from the snow Avas extremely brilliant, and the 

 glare from every surface about us was painful to our eyes, already 

 weakened by many days' travel over the white snow. Each 

 member of the party was provided with colored glasses, but in 

 traversing snow-bridges and jumping crevasses these had to be 

 dispensed with. The result was that all of us were suffering 

 more or less from snow-blindness. 



About noon we reached the base of the mountain spur toward 

 which our course was bent. It projects into the western border 

 of Agassiz glacier. It is the extension of this cliff underneath the 

 glacier that caused the ice-fall which blocked our way. To go 

 round the end of the cliff with our packs was impracticable, but 

 there seemed a way up the face of the cliff itself, which one could 

 scale by taking advantage of the joints in the rocks. I ascended 

 the snow-sloj)e to the base of the precipice, but found the way 

 upward more difficult than anticipated ; and, as the light was 

 very painful to my eyes when not protected by colored glasses, I . 

 decided to postpone making the climb until I was in better con- 

 dition, and in the meantime to see if some other route could not 

 be found. We decided to camp on a small patch of debris near 

 the base of the cliff, and there left our loads. Kerr and Linds- 

 ley, taking a rope and alpenstocks, went around the end of the 

 rocky spur and worked their way upward with great difficulty 

 to the top of the cliff immediately above where I had essayed to 

 climb it. A rope was made fast at the top, and our way onward 

 was secured. This place was afterward called Rope cliff. The 

 remainder of the afternoon I rested in the tent, with my eyes 

 bound up with tea-leaves, and when evening came found the 

 pain in my head much relieved. 



Our tent that night was so near the brink of a crevasse that in 

 order to stay the tent one end of the ridge-rope Avas made fast to 

 a large stone, which was loAvered into the gulf to serve as a stake. 

 Above us rose a precipice nearly a thousand feet high, from Avhich 

 stones Avere constantlj^ falling ; but a deejD black gulf intervened 

 between the position avc had chosen and the base of the cliffs, 

 and into this the stones were precipitated. Not one of the fall- 

 ing fragments reached the edge of the snow slope on Avhich Ave 

 were camped, but many times during the night Ave heard the 

 Avliiz and hum of the rocks as they shot doAvn from the cliffs. 



21— Nat. Geog. Mag., vol. Ill, 1801. 



