First Ascent: Mt. Humphreys. 165 



left, and finally came along a narrow horizontal shelf 

 back to the main gorge, while I tried a chimney to the 

 right, and then worked horizontally to the left, striking 

 the main gorge at about the same elevation as the others. 

 From here on the gorge was very steep and the rocky 

 surface highly polished, either by snow-avalanches or 

 boulders sliding over it. It was difficult traveling, and 

 would have baffled us completely except for the cleavage- 

 planes which ran diagonally across the polished slope. 



After an hour of steep climbing we reached the gorge 

 running at right angles to the one we were in. From 

 this place Whitney continued up the first gorge to where 

 it ran out at the knife-edge. On his return he reported 

 that the eastern slope was a sheer polished precipice of 

 several thousand feet. The second gorge, which we had 

 just reached, was almost straight and sloped down to us 

 at an angle of forty-five degrees. It was very narrow 

 and V-shaped, the bottom scarcely ten feet wide. The 

 right-hand wall, forming the knife-edge of the mountain, 

 arose almost vertically above us, perhaps a thousand feet. 

 The left-hand wall, which formed a sort of buttress, 

 which I have already described as extending south from 

 the summit, inclined somewhat from the perpendicular. 

 This wall also was the merest knife-edge, with precipitous 

 sides down to where it joined the main mass of the 

 mountain near us. 



The whole mountain — at least the cap of it for a 

 thousand feet down — is composed of terra-cotta-colored 

 granite, cracked and broken into huge blocks by the 

 frost and ice. As we looked up the gorge we saw that 

 the cleavage-planes all ran parallel and dipped down 

 toward the east at an angle of sixty or seventy degrees. 



