THE ULTIMATE HEIGHT
We lay down for a few hours on the night of the 6th June, resolved to
rise at three in the morning for our attempt upon the summit of Denali.
At supper Walter had made a desperate effort to use some of our ten
pounds of flour in the manufacture of "noodles" with which to thicken
the stew. We had continued to pack that flour and had made effort after
effort to cook it in some eatable way, but without success. The sour
dough would not ferment, and we had no baking-powder. _Is_ there any way
to cook flour under such circumstances? But he made the noodles too
large and did not cook them enough, and they wrought internal havoc upon
those who partook of them. Three of the four of us were unwell all
night. The digestion is certainly more delicate and more easily
disturbed at great altitudes than at the lower levels. While Karstens
and Tatum were tossing uneasily in the bedclothes, the writer sat up
with a blanket round his shoulders, crouching over the primus stove,
with the thermometer at -21° F. outdoors. Walter alone was at ease, with
digestive and somnolent capabilities proof against any invasion. It was,
of course, broad daylight all night. At three the company was aroused,
and, after partaking of a very light breakfast indeed, we sallied forth
into the brilliant, clear morning with not a cloud in the sky. The only
packs we carried that day were the instruments and the lunch. The sun
was shining, but a keen north wind was blowing and the thermometer stood
at -4° F. We were rather a sorry company. Karstens still had internal
pains; Tatum and I had severe headaches. Walter was the only one feeling
entirely himself, so Walter was put in the lead and in the lead he
remained all day.
[Illustration: The South Peak from about 18,000 feet.
The ridge with two peaks in the background is shaped like a horseshoe,
and the highest point on the mountain is on another little ridge just
beyond, parallel with the ridge that shows, almost at the middle point
between the two peaks.]
[Sidenote: Start to the Summit]
[Sidenote: Cold]
We took a straight course up the great snow ridge directly south of our
camp and then around the peak into which it rises; quickly told but
slowly and most laboriously done. It was necessary to make the traverse
high up on this peak instead of around its base, so much had its ice and
snow been shattered by the earthquake on the lower portions. Once around
this peak, there rose before us the horseshoe ridge which carries the
ultimate height of Denali, a horseshoe ridge of snow opening to the east
with a low snow peak at either end, the centre of the ridge soaring
above both peaks. Above us was nothing visible but snow; the rocks were
all beneath, the last rocks standing at about 19,000 feet. Our progress
was exceedingly slow. It was bitterly cold; all the morning toes and
fingers were without sensation, kick them and beat them as we would. We
were all clad in full winter hand and foot gear--more gear than had
sufficed at 50° below zero on the Yukon trail. Within the writer's No.
16 moccasins were three pairs of heavy hand-knitted woollen socks, two
pairs of camel's-hair socks, and a pair of thick felt socks; while
underneath them, between them and the iron "creepers," were the soles
cut from a pair of felt shoes. Upon his hands were a pair of the
thickest Scotch wool gloves, thrust inside huge lynx-paw mitts lined
with Hudson Bay duffle. His moose-hide breeches and shirt, worn all the
winter on the trail, were worn throughout this climb; over the shirt was
a thick sweater and over all the usual Alaskan "parkee" amply furred
around the hood; underneath was a suit of the heaviest Jaeger
underwear--yet until nigh noon feet were like lumps of iron and fingers
were constantly numb. That north wind was cruelly cold, and there can be
no possible question that cold is felt much more keenly in the thin air
of nineteen thousand feet than it is below. But the north wind was
really our friend, for nothing but a north wind will drive all vapor
from this mountain. Karstens beat his feet so violently and so
continually against the hard snow to restore the circulation that two of
his toe-nails sloughed off afterward. By eleven o'clock we had been
climbing for six hours and were well around the peak, advancing toward
the horseshoe ridge, but even then there were grave doubts if we should
succeed in reaching it that day, it was so cold. A hint from any member
of the party that his feet were actually freezing--a hint expected all
along--would have sent us all back. When there is no sensation left in
the feet at all it is, however, difficult to be quite sure if they be
actually freezing or not--and each one was willing to give the attempt
upon the summit the benefit of the doubt. What should we have done with
the ordinary leather climbing boots? But once entirely around the peak
we were in a measure sheltered from the north wind, and the sun full
upon us gave more warmth. It was hereabouts, and not, surely, at the
point indicated in the photograph in Mr. Belmore Browne's book, that the
climbing party of last year was driven back by the blizzard that
descended upon them when close to their goal. Not until we had stopped
for lunch and had drunk the scalding tea from the thermos bottles, did
we all begin to have confidence that this day would see the completion
of the ascent. But the writer's shortness of breath became more and more
distressing as he rose. The familiar fits of panting took a more acute
form; at such times everything would turn black before his eyes and he
would choke and gasp and seem unable to get breath at all. Yet a few
moments' rest restored him completely, to struggle on another twenty or
thirty paces and to sink gasping upon the snow again. All were more
affected in the breathing than they had been at any time before--it was
curious to see every man's mouth open for breathing--but none of the
others in this distressing way. Before the traverse around the peak just
mentioned, Walter had noticed the writer's growing discomfort and had
insisted upon assuming the mercurial barometer. The boy's eager kindness
was gladly accepted and the instrument was surrendered. So it did not
fall to the writer's credit to carry the thing to the top as he had
wished.
[Sidenote: Climbing-Irons]
The climbing grew steeper and steeper; the slope that had looked easy
from below now seemed to shoot straight up. For the most part the
climbing-irons gave us sufficient footing, but here and there we came to
softer snow, where they would not take sufficient hold and we had to cut
steps. The calks in these climbing-irons were about an inch and a
quarter long; we wished they had been two inches. The creepers are a
great advantage in the matter of speed, but they need long points. They
are not so safe as step-cutting, and there is the ever-present danger
that unless one is exceedingly careful one will step upon the rope with
them and their sharp calks sever some of the strands. They were,
however, of great assistance and saved a deal of laborious step-cutting.
At last the crest of the ridge was reached and we stood well above the
two peaks that mark the ends of the horseshoe.[4]
Also it was evident that we were well above the great North Peak across
the Grand Basin. Its crest had been like an index on the snow beside us
as we climbed, and we stopped for a few moments when it seemed that we
were level with it. We judged it to be about five hundred feet lower
than the South Peak.
[Illustration: The climbing-irons.]
But still there stretched ahead of us, and perhaps one hundred feet
above us, another small ridge with a north and south pair of little
haycock summits. This is the real top of Denali. From below, this
ultimate ridge merges indistinguishably with the crest of the horseshoe
ridge, but it is not a part of it but a culminating ridge beyond it.
With keen excitement we pushed on. Walter, who had been in the lead all
day, was the first to scramble up; a native Alaskan, he is the first
human being to set foot upon the top of Alaska's great mountain, and he
had well earned the lifelong distinction. Karstens and Tatum were hard
upon his heels, but the last man on the rope, in his enthusiasm and
excitement somewhat overpassing his narrow wind margin, had almost to be
hauled up the last few feet, and fell unconscious for a moment upon the
floor of the little snow basin that occupies the top of the mountain.
This, then, is the actual summit, a little crater-like snow basin, sixty
or sixty-five feet long and twenty to twenty-five feet wide, with a
haycock of snow at either end--the south one a little higher than the
north. On the southwest this little basin is much corniced, and the
whole thing looked as though every severe storm might somewhat change
its shape.
So soon as wind was recovered we shook hands all round and a brief
prayer of thanksgiving to Almighty God was said, that He had granted us
our hearts' desire and brought us safely to the top of His great
mountain.
[Sidenote: The Instrument Readings]
This prime duty done, we fell at once to our scientific tasks. The
instrument-tent was set up, the mercurial barometer, taken out of its
leather case and then out of its wooden case, was swung upon its tripod
and a rough zero established, and it was left awhile to adjust itself to
conditions before a reading was attempted. It was a great gratification
to get it to the top uninjured. The boiling-point apparatus was put
together and its candle lighted under the ice which filled its little
cistern. The three-inch, three-circle aneroid was read at once at
thirteen and two-tenths inches, its mendacious altitude scale
confidently pointing at twenty-three thousand three hundred feet. Half
an hour later it had dropped to 13.175 inches and had shot us up another
one hundred feet into the air. Soon the water was boiling in the little
tubes of the boiling-point thermometer and the steam pouring out of the
vent. The thread of mercury rose to 174.9° and stayed there. There is
something definite and uncompromising about the boiling-point
hypsometer; no tapping will make it rise or fall; it reaches its mark
unmistakably and does not budge. The reading of the mercurial barometer
is a slower and more delicate business. It takes a good light and a good
sight to tell when the ivory zero-point is exactly touching the surface
of the mercury in the cistern; it takes care and precision to get the
vernier exactly level with the top of the column. It was read, some
half-hour after it was set up, at 13.617 inches. The alcohol minimum
thermometer stood at 7° F. all the while we were on top. Meanwhile,
Tatum had been reading a round of angles with the prismatic compass. He
could not handle it with sufficient exactness with his mitts on, and he
froze his fingers doing it barehanded.
[Sidenote: The View]
The scientific work accomplished, then and not till then did we indulge
ourselves in the wonderful prospect that stretched around us. It was a
perfectly clear day, the sun shining brightly in the sky, and naught
bounded our view save the natural limitations of vision. Immediately
before us, in the direction in which we had climbed, lay--nothing: a
void, a sheer gulf many thousands of feet deep, and one shrank back
instinctively from the little parapet of the snow basin when one had
glanced at the awful profundity. Across the gulf, about three thousand
feet beneath us and fifteen or twenty miles away, sprang most splendidly
into view the great mass of Denali's Wife, or Mount Foraker, as some
white men misname her, filling majestically all the middle distance. It
was our first glimpse of her during the whole ascent. Denali's Wife does
not appear at all save from the actual summit of Denali, for she is
completely hidden by his South Peak until the moment when his South Peak
is surmounted. And never was nobler sight displayed to man than that
great, isolated mountain spread out completely, with all its spurs and
ridges, its cliffs and its glaciers, lofty and mighty and yet far
beneath us. On that spot one understood why the view of Denali from Lake
Minchúmina is the grand view, for the west face drops abruptly down with
nothing but that vast void from the top to nigh the bottom of the
mountain. Beyond stretched, blue and vague to the southwest, the wide
valley of the Kuskokwim, with an end of all mountains. To the north we
looked right over the North Peak to the foot-hills below, patched with
lakes and lingering snow, glittering with streams. We had hoped to see
the junction of the Yukon and Tanana Rivers, one hundred and fifty miles
away to the northwest, as we had often and often seen the summit of
Denali from that point in the winter, but the haze that almost always
qualifies a fine summer day inhibited that stretch of vision. Perhaps
the forest-fires we found raging on the Tanana River were already
beginning to foul the northern sky.
[Illustration: Denali's Wife from the summit of Denali]
It was, however, to the south and the east that the most marvellous
prospect opened before us. What infinite tangle of mountain ranges
filled the whole scene, until gray sky, gray mountain, and gray sea
merged in the ultimate distance! The near-by peaks and ridges stood out
with dazzling distinction, the glaciation, the drainage, the relation of
each part to the others all revealed. The snow-covered tops of the
remoter peaks, dwindling and fading, rose to our view as though floating
in thin air when their bases were hidden by the haze, and the beautiful
crescent curve of the whole Alaskan range exhibited itself from Denali
to the sea. To the right hand the glittering, tiny threads of streams
draining the mountain range into the Chulitna and Sushitna Rivers, and
so to Cook's Inlet and the Pacific Ocean, spread themselves out; to the
left the affluents of the Kantishna and the Nenana drained the range
into the Yukon and Bering Sea.
Yet the chief impression was not of our connection with the earth so far
below, its rivers and its seas, but rather of detachment from it. We
seemed alone upon a dead world, as dead as the mountains on the moon.
Only once before can the writer remember a similar feeling of being
neither in the world nor of the world, and that was at the bottom of the
Grand Cañon of the Colorado, in Arizona, its savage granite walls as
dead as this savage peak of ice.
[Sidenote: The Dark Sky]
Above us the sky took a blue so deep that none of us had ever gazed upon
a midday sky like it before. It was a deep, rich, lustrous, transparent
blue, as dark as a Prussian blue, but intensely blue; a hue so strange,
so increasingly impressive, that to one at least it "seemed like special
news of God," as a new poet sings. We first noticed the darkening tint
of the upper sky in the Grand Basin, and it deepened as we rose. Tyndall
observed and discussed this phenomenon in the Alps, but it seems
scarcely to have been mentioned since.
It is difficult to describe at all the scene which the top of the
mountain presented, and impossible to describe it adequately. One was
not occupied with the thought of description but wholly possessed with
the breadth and glory of it, with its sheer, amazing immensity and
scope. Only once, perhaps, in any lifetime is such vision granted,
certainly never before had been vouchsafed to any of us. Not often in
the summer-time does Denali completely unveil himself and dismiss the
clouds from all the earth beneath. Yet we could not linger, unique
though the occasion, dearly bought our privilege; the miserable
limitations of the flesh gave us continual warning to depart; we grew
colder and still more wretchedly cold. The thermometer stood at 7° in
the full sunshine, and the north wind was keener than ever. My fingers
were so cold that I would not venture to withdraw them from the mittens
to change the film in the camera, and the other men were in like case;
indeed, our hands were by this time so numb as to make it almost
impossible to operate a camera at all. A number of photographs had been
taken, though not half we should have liked to take, but it is probable
that, however many more exposures had been made, they would have been
little better than those we got. Our top-of-the-mountain photography was
a great disappointment. One thing we learned: exposures at such altitude
should be longer than those below, perhaps owing to the darkness of the
sky.
[Illustration: Robert Tatum raising the Stars and Stripes on the highest
point in North America.
This photograph was exposed upon a previous exposure.]
[Sidenote: The Stars and Stripes]
When the mercurial barometer had been read the tent was thrown down and
abandoned, the first of the series of abandonments that marked our
descent from the mountain. The tent-pole was used for a moment as a
flagstaff while Tatum hoisted a little United States flag he had
patiently and skilfully constructed in our camps below out of two silk
handkerchiefs and the cover of a sewing-bag. Then the pole was put to
its permanent use. It had already been carved with a suitable
inscription, and now a transverse piece, already prepared and fitted,
was lashed securely to it and it was planted on one of the little snow
turrets of the summit--the sign of our redemption, high above North
America. Only some peaks in the Andes and some peaks in the Himalayas
rise above it in all the world. It was of light, dry birch and, though
six feet in length, so slender that we think it may weather many a gale.
And Walter thrust it into the snow so firmly at a blow that it could not
be withdrawn again. Then we gathered about it and said the Te Deum.
[Illustration: The saying of the Te Deum.
This picture was snapped three times instead of once. Karstens' fingers
were freezing and the bulb-release was broken. Only three figures were
in the group.]
It was 1.30 P. M. when we reached the summit and two minutes past three
when we left; yet so quickly had the time flown that we could not
believe we had been an hour and a half on top. The journey down was a
long, weary grind, the longer and the wearier that we made a détour and
went out of our way to seek for Professor Parker's thermometer, which he
had left "in a crack on the west side of the last boulder of the
northeast ridge." That sounds definite enough, yet in fact it is
equivocal. "Which is the last boulder?" we disputed as we went down the
slope. A long series of rocks almost in line came to an end, with one
rock a little below the others, a little out of the line. This egregious
boulder would, it seemed to me, naturally be called the last; Karstens
thought not--thought the "last boulder" was the last _on_ the ridge. As
we learned later, Karstens was right, and since he yielded to me we did
not find the thermometer, for, having descended to this isolated rock,
we would not climb up again for fifty thermometers. One's disappointment
is qualified by the knowledge that the thermometer is probably not of
adequate scale, Professor Parker's recollection being that it read only
to 60° below zero, F. A lower temperature than this is recorded every
winter on the Yukon River.
[Sidenote: Possible Temperatures]
A thermometer reading to 100° below zero, left at this spot, would, in
my judgment, perhaps yield a lower minimum than has ever yet been
authentically recorded on earth, and it is most unfortunate that the
opportunity was lost. Yet I did not leave my own alcohol minimum--scaled
to 95° below zero, and yielding, by estimation, perhaps ten degrees
below the scaling--there, because of the difficulty of giving explicit
directions that should lead to its ready recovery, and at the close of
such a day of toil as is involved in reaching the summit, men have no
stomach for prolonged search. As will be told, it is cached lower down,
but at a spot where it cannot be missed.
However, for one, the writer was largely unconscious of weariness in
that descent. All the way down, my thoughts were occupied with the
glorious scene my eyes had gazed upon and should gaze upon never again.
In all human probability I would never climb that mountain again; yet if
I climbed it a score more times I would never be likely to repeat such
vision. Commonly, only for a few hours at a time, never for more than a
few days at a time, save in the dead of winter when climbing is out of
the question, does Denali completely unveil himself and dismiss the
clouds from all the earth beneath him. Not for long, with these lofty
colds contiguous, will the vapors of Cook's Inlet and Prince William
Sound and the whole North Pacific Ocean refrain from sweeping upward;
their natural trend is hitherward. As the needle turns to the magnet so
the clouds find an irresistible attraction in this great mountain mass,
and though the inner side of the range be rid of them the sea side is
commonly filled to overflowing.
[Sidenote: The Te Deum]
Only those who have for long years cherished a great and almost
inordinate desire, and have had that desire gratified to the limit of
their expectation, can enter into the deep thankfulness and content that
filled the heart upon the descent of this mountain. There was no pride
of conquest, no trace of that exultation of victory some enjoy upon the
first ascent of a lofty peak, no gloating over good fortune that had
hoisted us a few hundred feet higher than others who had struggled and
been discomfited. Rather was the feeling that a privileged communion
with the high places of the earth had been granted; that not only had we
been permitted to lift up eager eyes to these summits, secret and
solitary since the world began, but to enter boldly upon them, to take
place, as it were, domestically in their hitherto sealed chambers, to
inhabit them, and to cast our eyes down from them, seeing all things as
they spread out from the windows of heaven itself.
Into this strong yet serene emotion, into this reverent elevation of
spirit, came with a shock a recollection of some recent reading.
Oh, wisdom of man and the apparatus of the sciences, the little columns
of mercury that sling up and down, the vacuum boxes that expand and
contract, the hammer that chips the highest rocks, the compass that
takes the bearings of glacier and ridge--all the equipage of hypsometry
and geology and geodesy--how pitifully feeble and childish it seems to
cope with the majesty of the mountains! Take them all together, haul
them up the steep, and as they lie there, read, recorded, and done for,
which shall be more adequate to the whole scene--their records?--or that
simple, ancient hymn, "We praise Thee, O God!--Heaven and earth are full
of the majesty of Thy Glory!" What an astonishing thing that, standing
where we stood and seeing what we saw, there are men who should be able
to deduce this law or that from their observation of its working and yet
be unable to see the Lawgiver!--who should be able to push back effect
to immediate cause and yet be blind to the Supreme Cause of All Causes;
who can say, "This is the glacier's doing and it is marvellous in our
eyes," and not see Him "Who in His Strength setteth fast the mountains
and is girded with power," Whose servants the glaciers, the snow, and
the ice are, "wind and storm fulfilling His Word"; who exult in the
exercise of their own intelligences and the playthings those
intelligences have constructed and yet deny the Omniscience that endowed
them with some minute fragment of Itself! It was not always so; it was
not so with the really great men who have advanced our knowledge of
nature. But of late years hordes of small men have given themselves up
to the study of the physical sciences without any study preliminary. It
would almost seem nowadays that whoever can sit in the seat of the
scornful may sit in the seat of learning.
[Sidenote: The Scientists]
A good many years ago, on an occasion already referred to, the writer
roamed through the depths of the Grand Cañon with a chance acquaintance
who described himself as "Herpetologist to the Academy of Sciences" in
some Western or Mid-Western State, and as this gentleman found the
curious little reptiles he was in search of under a root or in a cranny
of rock he repeated their many-syllabled names. Curious to know what
these names literally meant and whence derived, the writer made inquiry,
sometimes hazarding a conjectural etymology. To his astonishment and
dismay he found this "scientist," whom he had looked up to, entirely
ignorant of the meaning of the terms he employed. They were just
arbitrary terms to him. The little hopping and crawling creatures might
as well have been numbered, or called x, y, z, for any significance
their formidable nomenclature held for him. Yet this man had been keenly
sarcastic about the Noachian deluge and had jeered from the height of
his superiority at hoary records which he knew only at second-hand
reference, and had laid it down that if the human race became extinct
the birds would stand the best chance of "evolving a primate"! Since
that time other "scientists" have been encountered, with no better
equipment, with no history, no poetry, no philosophy in any broad sense,
men with no letters--illiterate, strictly speaking--yet with all the
dogmatism in the world. Can any one be more dogmatic than your modern
scientist? The reproach has passed altogether to him from the
theologian.
The thing grows, and its menace and scandal grow with it. Since coming
"outside" the writer has encountered a professor at a college, a Ph.D.
of a great university, who confessed that he had never heard of certain
immortal characters of Dickens whose names are household words. We shall
have to open Night-Schools for Scientists, where men who have been
deprived of all early advantages may learn the rudiments of English
literature. One wishes that Dickens himself might have dealt with their
pretensions, but they are since his day. And surely it is time some one
started a movement for suppressing illiterate Ph.D.'s.
[Sidenote: The Psalmist and Dr. Johnson]
Of this class, one feels sure, are the scientific heroes of the
sensational articles in the monthly magazines of the baser sort, of
which we picked up a number in the Kantishna on our way to the mountain.
Here, in a picture that seems to have obtruded itself bodily into a page
of letter-press, or else to have suffered the accidental irruption of a
page of letter-press all around it, you shall see a grave scientist
looking anxiously down a very large microscope, and shall read that he
has transferred a kidney from a cat to a dog, and therefore we can no
longer believe in the immortality of the soul; or else that he has
succeeded in artificially fertilizing the ova of a starfish--or was it a
jellyfish?--and therefore there is no God; not just in so many bald
words, of course, but in unmistakable import. Or it may be--so commonly
does the crassest credulity go hand in hand with the blankest
scepticism--he has discovered the germ of old age and is hot upon the
track of another germ that shall destroy it, so that we may all live
virtually as long as we like; which, of course, disposes once for all of
a world to come. The Psalmist was not always complaisant or even
temperate in his language, but he lived a long time ago and must be
pardoned; his curt summary stands: "Dixit insipiens!" But the writer
vows that if he were addicted to the pursuit of any branch of physical
knowledge he would insist upon being called by the name of that branch.
He would be a physiologist or a biologist or an anatomist or even a
herpetologist, but none should call him "scientist." As Doll Tearsheet
says in the second part of "King Henry IV": "These villains will make
the word as odious as the word 'occupy'; which was an excellent good
word before it was ill-sorted." If Doctor Johnson were compiling an
English dictionary to-day he would define "scientist" something thus: "A
cant name for an experimenter in some department of physical knowledge,
commonly furnished with arrogance and dogmatism, but devoid of real
learning."
Here is no gibe at the physical sciences. To sneer at them were just as
foolish as to sneer at religion. What we could do on this expedition in
a "scientific" way we did laboriously and zealously. We would never have
thought of attempting the ascent of the mountain without bringing back
whatever little addition to human knowledge was within the scope of our
powers and opportunities. Tatum took rounds of angles, in practice
against the good fortune of a clear day on top, on every possible
occasion. The sole personal credit the present writer takes concerning
the whole enterprise is the packing of that mercurial barometer on his
back, from the Tanana River nearly to the top of the mountain, a point
at which he was compelled to relinquish it to another. He has always had
his opinion about mountain climbers who put an aneroid in their pocket
and go to the top of a great, new peak and come down confidently
announcing its height. But when all this business is done as closely and
carefully as possible, and every observation taken that there are
instruments devised to record, surely the soul is dead that feels no
more and sees no further than the instruments do, that stirs with no
other emotion than the mercury in the tube or the dial at its point of
suspension, that is incapable of awe, of reverence, of worshipful
uplift, and does not feel that "the Lord even the most mighty God hath
spoken, and called the world from the rising of the sun even to the
going down of the same," in the wonders displayed before his eyes.
* * * * *
We reached our eighteen-thousand-foot camp about five o'clock, a weary
but happy crew. It was written in the diary that night: "I remember no
day in my life so full of toil, distress, and exhaustion, and yet so
full of happiness and keen gratification."
[Sidenote: The Amber Glasses Again]
The culminating day should not be allowed to pass without another
tribute to the efficiency of the amber glasses. Notwithstanding the
glare of the sun at twenty thousand feet and upward, no one had the
slightest irritation of the eyes. There has never been an April of
travel on the Yukon in eight years that the writer has not suffered from
inflammation of the eyes despite the darkest smoke-colored glasses that
could be procured. A naked candle at a road-house would give a stab of
pain every time the eyes encountered it, and reading would become almost
impossible. The amber glasses, however, while leaving vision almost as
bright as without them, filter out the rays that cause the irritation
and afford perfect protection against the consequences of sun and glare.
There is only one improvement to make in the amber glasses, and that is
some device of air-tight cells that shall prevent them from fogging when
the cold on the outside of the glass condenses the moisture of
perspiration on the inside of the glass. We use double-glazed sashes
with an air space between on all windows in our houses in Alaska and
find ourselves no longer incommoded by frost on the panes; some
adaptation of this principle should be within the skill of the optician
and would remove a very troublesome defect in all snow-glasses.
If some one would invent a preventive against shortness of breath as
efficient as amber glasses are against snow-blindness, climbing at great
altitudes would lose all its terrors for one mountaineer. So far as it
was possible to judge, no other member of the party was near his
altitude limit. There seemed no reason why Karstens and Walter in
particular should not go another ten thousand feet, were there a
mountain in the world ten thousand feet higher than Denali, but the
writer knows that he himself could not have gone much higher.
FOOTNOTE:
[4] The dotted line on the photograph opposite page 346 of Mr. Belmore
Browne's book, "The Conquest of Mt. McKinley," does not, in the writer's
opinion, represent the real course taken by Professor Parker, Mr.
Belmore Browne, and Merl La Voy in their approach to the summit, and it
is easy to understand the confusion of direction in the fierce storm
that descended upon the party. If, as the dots show, the party went to
the summit of the right-hand peak, they went out of their way and had
still a considerable distance to travel. "Perhaps five minutes of easy
walking would have taken us to the highest point," says Mr. Browne. It
is probably more than a mile from the summit of the snow peak shown in
the picture to the actual summit of the mountain. One who took that
course would have to descend from the peak and then ascend the horseshoe
ridge, and the highest point of the horseshoe ridge is perhaps two
hundred feet above the summit of this snow peak. In the opinion that
Professor Parker expressed to the writer, the dotted lines should bear
much more to the left, making directly for the centre of the horseshoe
ridge, which is the obvious course. But it should again be said that men
in the circumstances and condition of this party when forced to turn
back, may be pardoned for mistaking the exact direction in which they
had been proceeding.