Jack London

“ Going down, he knew, was even more dangerous than coming up, but how dangerous he did not realise till he had slipped half a dozen times, and each time saved himself by what appeared to him a miracle. Time and again he ventured upon the slide, and time and again he was balked when he came to the grasses.
He sat down and looked at the treacherous snow-covered slope. It was manifestly impossible for him to make it with a whole body, and he did not particularly relish arriving at the bottom in the shattered condition of the pine tree. ”

“ It stood to reason, Swanson said, that good dry firewood could not be found so close to Dawson; that whatever firewood there was originally had long since been gathered in; that firewood would not be selling at forty dollars a cord if any man could go out and get a sled-load and be back in the time Clay expected to make it.
Then it was Clay's turn to laugh as he sprang on the sled and mushed the dogs on to the river-trail. For, coming up from the Siwash village the previous day, he had noticed a small dead pine in an out-of-the-way place which had defied discovery by eyes less sharp than his. ”

“ This he succeeded in doing, though he lay quiet for a couple of minutes to get back his nerve. He would have taken off his muclucs and gone at it in his socks, only the cold was thirty below zero, and at such temperature his feet would quickly freeze. Pulling himself together, he went on, and after ten minutes of risky work made the safe and solid rock where stood the pine.
A few strokes of the axe felled it into the chasm, and peeping over the edge he indulged in a laugh at the startled dogs. They were on the verge of bolting when he called aloud to them, soothingly, and they were reassured. ”