On Mt. St. Helens with the Mazamas. 177 



Our way now for awhile led down a rocky crest, com- 

 posed, like much of St. Helens, of large, easily detached 

 boulders set among smaller rocks and loose pumice. We 

 formed in a close phalanx, two and two^ a man and a 

 woman, with the rope between us. Walking as near to- 

 gether as possible, we moved slowly forward. If a large 

 rock showed signs of starting we threw our united 

 weight against it, and either stopped it or deflected it 

 to one side, where it could roll its course to the foot of 

 the mountain, if need be, without harming us. The 

 detonations of these crashing rocks, the crunch of our 

 marching feet, and the flash of steel caulks on the stones 

 remain vivid recollections of this part of the descent. 



A rock slide was the next incident. Such great quan- 

 tities of rock were displaced with each step that it was 

 judged wisest to cross this only two at a time. By 

 holding hands and keeping step the transit was made 

 safely, though with a tremendous accompaniment of roll- 

 ing stones. We emerged from this on the snow, fortu- 

 nately a deeply furrowed and not very steep field, which 

 brought us to the top of the Lizard. So far we had been 

 following our course of the afternoon, but here, instead 

 of descending to the snowfields on the right from which 

 we had made the ascent, we concluded to keep on down 

 the Lizard to avoid if possible the steeper snow, which, 

 in its frozen condition, would have been very dangerous. 

 The Lizard's backbone was composed of less formidable 

 boulders than we had encountered nearer the summit, but 

 even these smaller missiles became objects of terror in 

 the darkness, especially as, owing to the delay on the rock 

 slide, the party had become scattered and it was impos- 

 sible to know in what direction danger lay. The cry of 

 ''Rock coming!" was so frequent and was attended by 

 such breathless moments of suspense — ears trying to locate 

 the ominous crashing, eyes straining the blackness in a 

 vain attempt to see the threatening object — that for many 

 a night afterwards we were haunted by it in our dreams. 

 Once we followed the wrong arm of rock and found 



