On Mt. St. Helens with the Mazamas. 175 



consciously grasp. We rested only long enough to regis- 

 ter our names and to elect to membership in the Mazama 

 Club those who had qualified by the ascent. Short as the 

 delay was, our captain was already impatiently calling us 

 to hurry. The bitter cold, too, gave scant encouragement 

 to loiterers, so we hastened to start on the descent. 



It has been asked why we did not choose the less haz- 

 ardous experience of remaining on the summit all night. 

 We might have more safely done so, indeed, had we been 

 better equipped for it; but some of us were without 

 sweaters or coats, our feet were soaking wet and almost 

 numb with cold, and we were without food. With sev- 

 eral rather delicate women and one boy of twelve in the 

 party, the risk of exposure was deemed too great. 



The sun was now quite out of sight and a chill gray 

 twilight was creeping up the glacial cafions from the 

 darker wooded valleys. As we stood on the brink of 

 the ice slope the last gleam of color faded from the 

 distant mountains. A luminous, winding band of silver^ 

 marking the course of the Toutle River, still shone in 

 the dark forest to westward, but all else was gray and 

 cold, desolate and forbidding. 



We were placed in line, alternately, a man and a 

 woman, and the rope stretched between us with the cau- 

 tion not to grasp it except in case of a slip, but to pass 

 it lightly through our hands. It was fastened at the 

 upper end to two alpenstocks which were planted as se- 

 curely as possible in the ice and were held by a strong 

 man. Two men then went ahead with ice axes, with which 

 they enlarged the steps we had used on the ascent, for 

 the surface of the ice was now so hard frozen and 

 slippery that every change of position had to be made 

 with the utmost care. The step-makers went forward to 

 the end of our fifty feet of rope, and then the signal was 

 given for us to advance. Facing the mountain, alpen- 

 stock in one hand, rope in the other, we went down back- 

 wards as on a ladder, one step at a time, as far as the line 

 would permit. Then we halted. The last man followed,. 



