At Length, After Gaining The Upper Extreme Of Our Guiding Ridge, We
Found A Good Place To Rest And Prepare Ourselves To Scale The
Dangerous Upper Curves Of The Dome.
The surface almost everywhere was
bare, hard, snowless ice, extremely slippery; and, though smooth in
general, it was interrupted by a network of yawning crevasses,
outspread like lines of defense against any attempt to win the summit.
Here every one of the party took off his shoes and drove stout steel
caulks about half an inch long into them, having brought tools along
for the purpose, and not having made use of them until now so that the
points might not get dulled on the rocks ere the smooth, dangerous ice
was reached. Besides being well shod each carried an alpenstock, and
for special difficulties we had a hundred feet of rope and an axe,
Thus prepared, we stepped forth afresh, slowly groping our way through
tangled lines of crevasses, crossing on snow bridges here and there
after cautiously testing them, jumping at narrow places, or crawling
around the ends of the largest, bracing well at every point with our
alpenstocks and setting our spiked shoes squarely down on the
dangerous slopes. It was nerve-trying work, most of it, but we made
good speed nevertheless, and by noon all stood together on the utmost
summit, save one who, his strength failing for a time, came up later.
We remained on the summit nearly two hours, looking about us at the
vast maplike views, comprehending hundreds of miles of the Cascade
Range, with their black interminable forests and white volcanic cones
in glorious array reaching far into Oregon; the Sound region also, and
the great plains of eastern Washington, hazy and vague in the
distance.
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