The Mt. Ritter Knapsack Trip. 



295 



so we decided to chance it and began the cUmb. It was 

 now getting late in the day and we hastened as much as 

 possible, but the fatigue of the long day's tramp was 

 beginning to tell, and it was fully an hour before we 

 reached a little basin at timber line, which here cannot 

 be much below 11,000 feet. When we went into camp 

 dusk was already gathering. While we were busy 

 making camp our leader climbed another five hundred 

 feet to determine, if possible, whether it was really 

 Ritter that was looming above us, but he was forced to 

 return on account of darkness, and we went to sleep that 

 night in uncertainty. 



Although the moon was still nearly full, the moun- 

 tains on the east were so high that deep darkness soon 

 fell on the camp and we had to finish our preparations 

 for the night by the light of the campfire. There was a 

 little creek in the basin which dropped from a high 

 altitude just a short distance back of the camp. In the 

 evening there was quite a large volume of water coming 

 over these falls and the pounding and splashing of the 

 water reminded us of that of the Yosemite Falls, which 

 we heard all night long while in the Yosemite camp. 

 The music of the waterfall lulled us to sleep, but when 

 we were astir again at four in the morning everything 

 was quiet. The creek was only a trickling rill and the 

 snow bank beside the camp was a hard mass of ice. 

 The night was one of the coldest of the whole outing. 



We were away by five. We realized there was a hard 

 day's work ahead of us, but fortunately could not see 

 that it would stretch out to nearly fifteen hours, and 

 that darkness would be falling before we had again picked 

 a camping place for the night. 



We were compelled to make a detour to the north in 

 order to surmount the rim of the basin. With reluctance 

 we turned our faces from the direction where we knew 

 Ritter lay. Immediately there was a stiff climb which 

 took away our breath but offered no other particular 



