252 



Sierra Club Bulletin 



cowled figures that were settling their domestic arrange- 

 ments for the night. Later there was silence, dull glow- 

 ing coals, wisps of floating smoke, the crisp exuberant rush 

 of numerous snow water torrents, hurrying down over the 

 rocks by our pillows, and finally slumber that had almost 

 the quality of gaiety. 



Abruptly, out of strange joyous nothingness, came from 

 below the long-drawn waking cry, mysterious, dimly ap- 

 prehended through dreams at first, then taken up and made 

 an intelligible reality by neighbors far and near. 



Our rocky, forested shelf was dark as midnight, but we 

 knew the hour must be three. High in the sky a clear 

 moon was sailing, and great stars glittered through the black 

 boughs. Dying coals were stirred up into smoky light, 

 numb hands fumbled with shoe laces, and ablutions were 

 made in rushing streams of ice water, perceived not at all 

 by sight, but solely by their whispering, dashing sound, and 

 by the breath of cool spray in our faces as we bent to the 

 sound. 



Blackness turned to grayness as we rolled our beds and 

 kicked them before us to the commissary below. There in 

 the dawn, anticipating snow-burn, we made our faces 

 strange with grease paint and pot-black. Soup and beans 

 and coffee, taken standing from tin cups, is after all a 

 ghoulish feast at that hour in the morning, and one that 

 could not hold us long. In cohorts of ten, each under com- 

 petent leaders, every soul numbered and keeping his place, 

 our long line was formed, and we began to step up, up 

 the first incline of the huge mass above and beyond us. 

 Among the rocks there was grass at first, and flowers, 

 hoary with heavy dew, and we crushed these in a narrow 

 trail under our hob-nails and brushed the cold wetness from 

 the bushes with our garments. Soon the sky was flooded 

 with rose and purple hues, succeeded by the sun, beating 

 never more warmly on our backs. On we climbed through 

 stunted tree growth and rocks, then rocks only and increas- 

 ingly large stretches of snow, leading up to the huge rock 

 pile of Lyell in the distance. This snow had melted un- 

 evenly, so that its surface was a succession of pits about a 



