20 



Sierra Club Bulletin. 



Unicorn itself was reached, a steep, flat-topped mass 

 rising from fifty to seventy-five feet above the rocky, 

 rounded backbone of the summit. Several of the best 

 mountaineers set to work at once on an attempt to climb 

 this horn, a task which proved unexpectedly difficult, — 

 in fact, from the point first chosen, impossible for a 

 single, unaided climber, except for one man, who com- 

 bined a longer stretch of arm with more than usual 

 strength and skill. He wormed his way up through a 

 cleft or chimney, hands, elbows, knees, and back all 

 working at once, and clambered out on a narrow ledge 

 from which he could reach down a helping hand to the 

 scramblers below, whose futile attempts to find hand- and 

 footholds made them look ludicrously like spiders im- 

 prisoned under a glass trying to scale its smooth sides. 

 It was a very tough little piece of climbing, far outclass- 

 ing any of the rock-work encountered on Rainier. 



Two of the girls also decided on going to the summit 

 of the horn, while about half of the party remained on 

 the ridge watching their more strong-minded sisters and 

 more agile brothers being derricked to the goal. A much 

 easier way was later discovered, where the least-skilled 

 climber could readily have made the ascent, but, rather to 

 our regret afterwards, we decided that the approaching 

 evening made it inadvisable to spend any more time on 

 the summit, and so left without attempting it. 



Before the more daring climbers descended from their 

 perch, they caught sight of a band of mountain goats, or 

 mazamas, on the snow to the south. One ambitious 

 photographer spent all of his resting-time on the summit 

 in stalking the goats. There were fifteen of them, some 

 on the snow, the rest lying on a grassy slope. Two of 

 them allowed him to get near enough to snap their 

 picture. The great increase of these animals since the 

 Mazama Club outing of 1897, after which the Mt. Rainier 

 National Park was established, forms a strong argument 

 in favor of the proposed game refuges. Three times 

 bands were seen this summer, and it was a common 



