The Aftermath of a Club Outing. 167 



requested, but that he could "in imagination feel the 

 shoestrings flapping in his face!" 



That we might miss no sort of vegetation suitable to 

 this altitude, we saw in abundance that phenomenon, al- 

 ways of interest, known as "pink snow," under the micro- 

 scope appearing as interesting little red balls, primitive 

 and husky representatives of the vegetable kingdom. 

 Two little lakelets now came into view, one of them still 

 frozen tight, the other half open. We were at twelve 

 thousand feet elevation, well above the trees; a few 

 stunted willow bushes still accompanied us, the buds not 

 yet burst. Soon rocks compelled us to take to the snow 

 again — so steep that we had to cross it quartering. A 

 little alpine buttercup (Ranunculus oxynotus) grew by its 

 bank, two or three inches high, and the eye recognized 

 ancient glacial action on the rocks, though here we ap- 

 proached its upper limits. A lone gooseberry bush grew 

 in a crevice at 12,400 feet. Above this was a granite 

 cirque, quite bare to the eye save for a scattering butter- 

 cup or tv/o and a little dry sedge of the preceding summer, 

 where the disintegrated rock permitted and the ledge 

 focused the sun. Two thirds of the way up the cirque, 

 a fine view of mountain-peaks began to be opened. Read- 

 ing them from left to right, they were Mt. King, Genevra, 

 Thunder Mountain, Table Mountain, and Milestone, — a 

 view very agreeable after honest toil, and, like approach- 

 ing spring or other nice things in their beginning, which 

 the imagination of each will readily suggest, perhaps 

 as dear in retrospect as the more complete and always 

 longed-for fulfillment. The snow, across which devastat- 

 ing summer winds had blown, was pitted as a human 

 face by smallpox; elsewhere we saw it eroded into little 

 waves, like a miniature sea congealed. A junco flew 

 over our heads, in the main slate-colored, but noticeable 

 for his pinkish-brown sides, and one of the sparrow 

 clan flitted by. I fear my notes are not sufficiently definite 

 quite to identify him. Below us on the little lake a small 

 bird perched on an iceberg; all along the ice the hunting 



