Frank W. Freeborn

“ We were almost exactly eight hours in going from the Glacier House to the summit. We had been shut in by clouds and snow squalls for some time, and in a continuance of such condition with no view beyond a few rods, we sat there and ate our lunch. It was a cold eating place; no sun to cheer us, no landscape to repay the toilsome climb, a cold wind blowing, our benumbed feet in a snow-bank, the flakes falling thickly over us. ”

“ So carefully had we to pick our way, that even with less stops than on the way up, we were more than an hour longer in descending from the summit to the glacier than in covering the same space in the ascent. But once on the glacier, we could avail ourselves of the same tactics that had served us so well on the peaks and passes about Paradise Valley; now rushing down in the yielding snow by leaps and bounds, now sitting and taking a long glissade. ”

“ Its sharp pyramid, rising to the height of 10,808 feet, is so steep that little snow can rest on its surface, but in its lap it holds a living glacier. In actual height it is overtopped by some mountains that are oftener climbed, but in elevation above any convenient starting point it considerably surpasses them. Add to this fact its excessive steepness, the difficulty of crossing its bergschund, and the danger from falling rock, and you have the ex- planation of the infrequency of its ascent. ”