"Oh, say, but this is a corker!" said Cal, as he steadied himself and leaned against a tree for a little rest.
"I often wish my tongue would hang out like a dog's when I get to climbing these high peaks. Seems as though mine fills my throat up so I can't breathe," said Jack, his remark causing much merriment.
The summit was not far distant at ten o'clock, and as they surmounted the last slope the clouds rolled in above them like a great drop curtain, black and dense. Onward the great canopy spread toward the sunlit peaks beyond, leaving a trail of drizzle, sleet and snow. Then the entire party was swallowed up in an immense gray fog bank, while darker electrically charged masses of moisture bowled along, chasing each other through phosphorously illuminated paths, much to the consternation of the ladies.
"Oh, it's lightning right here! Won't it strike us?" exclaimed Miss Asquith.
"It might give you a little shock that would tingle some, but not enough to hurt you," vouchsafed Jack.
The light clouds soon followed, then the sun shone bright, and in a few minutes the gum coats provided for just such an emergency had been relegated to the strings on the saddles. To the left, on the slope of another hogback, rose tier after tier of little lakes, seven terraces in all, each fringed with a belt of green pine trees; behind each belt rose a precipitous ledge of rock.
"Just look at that, isn't it grand?" said Hazel.
Jack had provided plates and the panoramic camera snapped its welcome to the view. Five exposures were made to insure a good one, then the party filed along the ragged, dimly outlined trail which Indians had used for a century or more. In the distance could be seen the headwaters of the Cache le Poudre and to the immediate right a huge snow bank formed a horseshoe half a mile in its arc. Leaving their ponies, at a suggestion from Jack the party walked over to the edge of the slide rock and gazed down into a small lake, of perhaps a thousand acres, nestled in a rocky embrace, twenty-five hundred feet below them, into the nearer edge of which stones were sent splashing by those who attempted a throw. Groups of pine trees dotted the farther shore of the lake and upon its bosom floated half a dozen immense icebergs, which remain summer after summer, during the months of July and August, never entirely disappearing.
Again and again Jack attempted the difficult feat of obtaining a focus to register that grandest of picturesque spots on the plates especially prepared, but none proved successful when developed.
Slowly, regretfully, the march was again taken up and camp was made on the low pass where pools of water flow from two outlets, one north into North Park, the other south into Middle Park and the Grand River. This camp was beneath the famous Specimen mountain and its fantastic spire-like rock formations, on the apex of which the "Big Horn" dozed in perfect security, the spires succeeding each other and making the great aerial stairway accessible only to the sure-footed mountain sheep.