Outing of the Alpine Club of Canada. 191 



saddle above the glacier. Again the guides pointed to a 

 forbidding wall in front, an apparent barrier between us 

 and the summit beyond. Deceived by the first wall, we 

 belittled the second, which we found far more difficult. 

 Climbing up a short snow slope so steep that one almost 

 tipped backwards, often dropping into the back track in 

 making the next step forward, sinking at times to the 

 hips in the loosely packed, curiously porous snow, we felt 

 relieved on reaching the rock. Here the guide, like a 

 mountain goat, went along a narrow ledge with a slight 

 uplift, reversed first one way and then the other, con- 

 fidently turned when there seemed no way to turn, and 

 worked up an open chimney here and there, dislodging 

 quantities of loose rock, the accumulation of many years. 

 By waiting for one party to pass a point before proceed- 

 ing to the point above, we finally made the snow and 

 again varied our experience. Here the snow rose sharply 

 in front, sloped almost sheer to the right, and slightly 

 overhung on the left, with a faintly defined, irregular 

 crack denoting an early breaking away of the overhang. 

 It was straight up, turning neither right nor left, to the 

 summit, and here we met our reward. 



No more stupendous or spectacular scene could be con- 

 ceived. Just across the chasm rose the giant bulk of 

 Victoria, with sheer walls of ice ; to the left Lefroy, hardly 

 less impressive, with Abbott Pass and the Death Trap 

 between ; while in the distance rose Temple, a majestic 

 mass. Turning back again and swinging away from 

 Victoria, to the right we could dimly see Cathedral en- 

 veloped in banks of clouds, sun and shadow emphasizing 

 every curve; indeed, everything was curved, for nature 

 here was one vast upheaval. We were on the grand 

 continental divide — "The Roof of the World." Here 

 streams, starting from almost the same source, flowed 

 different ways, finding their goal eventually in three dif- 

 ferent oceans. An hour of sunshine on the summit and 

 a descent in a snowstorm ended an impressive day. 



