They started off without delay, and as they reached the rough shingle at the edge of the lake, Hugh pointed to some tracks where the stones and sand were thrown up and said, “That’s what we heard a little while ago.” On the large stones it was impossible to tell just what animal had made the tracks, but before they had gone far they saw where it had come down to the lake to drink, and in the grass and in the bare soil above they found the tracks of a good-sized moose.
The work of making their way over the talus at the lake border and through the willows and alders which grew among the fallen rocks was slow and difficult. The stones were more or less covered with moss and care was needed in stepping, lest a slip should send one of the men sliding down the slope and into the cold waters below.
At last, however, they had passed through the alders and reached the rocky promontory where the going was open, and passing over this, were soon in the open meadow below the precipice, where they took a moment’s breathing spell, then started on, breasting a steep shoulder which gave an easy ascent for a couple of hundred feet to the lowest step of the cliff they wished to climb. Soon they reached the ledge and walked along it until they came to the very bed of the falls, and here began the serious work of the day.
The icy torrent which for ages had been flowing over this precipice had cut for itself a deep channel. On one side or the other of this channel the rock had fallen away so as to furnish here a crevice, there a projecting knob, which gave hand or foothold to the climber. At times, to be sure, they found before them a smooth, naked cliff which could not be climbed, and then search must be made along its face for a place up which they could pass.
They climbed slowly and carefully, often crossing the stream from one side to the other, clinging to little spruce trees that grew in the crevices of the rock, thrusting their fingers into cracks and fitting their feet on some knob or projecting splinter that would give them support. Slowly they worked their way upward, inch by inch, foot by foot.
Often the crossing of the stream was nervous work, for the boulders which lay in it were worn smooth as glass, and the fine mist which rose from the falling waters froze to the rocks, making them very slippery. Sometimes long jumps had to be made from one to another of these rocks, often in places where a slip might cause a bad fall on rough rocks below.
About two-thirds of the way to the top of the precipice they came out on a shelf perhaps a hundred feet wide, which was almost covered by high heaped rocks and gravel—morainal drift brought down by the glacier from above. This was composed of boulders and stones of all sizes, from masses as large as a small house to grains no bigger than a pin’s head.
Here they stopped to rest, and Hugh, with his back against a great rock, smoked a comforting pipe.
Close at hand they could see the beauty of the white, quivering falls rushing down the cliff, often by vertical plunges of a hundred feet or more, or down steep inclines, and in one place they had worn a deep fissure in the slate and shot down with a hissing sound thirty or forty feet back from one who looked in on them from the narrow opening of the crevice. Everywhere there was spray and dampness, and Jack was reminded in some respects of the high mountain torrents which he had seen during his famous canoe trip in British Columbia.
From here the going was much easier. The precipice was no longer vertical, but ascended in a series of huge steps to the level of the glacier.