Poor Enoch had suffered terribly from cold during the night, and begged our permission to return to Laggan, promising to come back the next day—“sun so high,” pointing to its place in the early afternoon. He said in his broken English: “No grass for pony here, too cold me; no like it me.” So we took pity on him and sent him back to more comfortable quarters while we rested in comparative quiet, it being Sunday.
Early Monday morning we had our breakfast and were on foot at four o’clock. The gloom of early dawn, the chill of morning, and the cloudy sky had no cheering effect on our anticipations. Our plan was to traverse the mountain side till we should come to the southeast shoulder, where we had once observed an outline of apparently easy slope.
By eleven o’clock we had reached an altitude of nearly 10,000 feet without meeting with any very great difficulty, but here we came suddenly to a vertical wall of rock about 400 feet high and actually leaning over in many places, a barrier that completely defeated us, as the wall extended beyond our view and offered no prospect of giving out. At the base of this cliff was a steep, narrow slope of loose, broken limestone, and then another precipice below. Along this dangerous pathway we continued for some distance, keeping close to the base of the cliff. The loose stones, set in motion by our feet, slid down and rolled over the precipice, where we could hear them grinding to powder on the cliffs below.
Never in my life have I been so much impressed with the stern and desolate side of nature. The air was bitter cold and had the frosty ozone odor of winter. A strong wind rushed constantly by us, and, as it swept up the gorges of the precipice above, and over the countless projections of the cliffs, made a noise like the hoarse murmur of wind in a ship’s rigging, or the blast of some great furnace. To the south and east, range beyond range of bare, saw-edged mountains raised their cold, sharp summits up to a cloudy sky, where the strong wind drove threatening clouds in long trains of dark and lighter vapors. The intervening valleys, destitute of vegetation or any green thing, were filled with glaciers and vast heaps of moraine, and the slides of debris from the adjacent mountain side. All was desolate, gloomy, cold, and monotonous in color. Three thousand feet below, a small lake was still bound fast in the iron jaws of winter, surrounded as it was by the walls of mountains which shut out the light and warmth of the summer sun. Inert, inanimate nature here held perpetual rule in an everlasting winter, where summer, with its flowers and birds and pleasant fertility, is unknown, and man rarely ventures.
Overcome with the terrors of this lonely place and the hopelessness of further attempt to reach the summit, where a snow-storm was now raging, we turned back. As we reached our camp we found Enoch just approaching, according to his promise, and though the afternoon was well advanced, we packed up and moved with all speed toward Laggan. We reached Lake Louise at 10.30 P.M., after almost nineteen hours of constant walking.
Now, however, at our camp in Paradise Valley, the conditions were somewhat different. We were at the very base of the mountain, and had learned much more about it, in the year that had elapsed since our first attempt.
The mountaineer has many discomforts mingled with the keen enjoyment of his rare experiences. None is more trying than the early hour at which he is compelled to rise from his couch of balsam boughs and set forth on his morning toil. At the chill hour before dawn, when all nature stagnates and animate creation is plunged in deepest sleep, the mountain climber must needs arouse himself from heavy slumber and, unwilling, compel his sluggish body into action.
This is the deadest hour of the twenty-four—the time just before dawn. The breezes of early night have died away into a cold and frosty calm; the thermometer sinks to its lowest point, and even the barometer, as though in sympathy, reaches one of its diurnal minima at this untimely hour. And if inanimate nature is thus greatly affected, much more are the creations of the vegetable and animal kingdoms. The plants are suffering from the cold and frost; the animals of daytime have not as yet aroused themselves from sleep, while the nocturnal prowlers have already ceased their quest of prey and returned to their dens. Even man is affected, for at this dead hour the ebb and pulse of life beat slow and feeble, and the lingering spark of life in those wasted by disease comes at this time most near going out.
At such an unseasonable hour, or more accurately at four A.M., were we up, on the 17th of August preparing for our ascent of Mount Temple. There was no trace of dawn, and the waning moon, now in her last quarter, was riding low in the southern sky, just above the sharp triangular peak at the end of our valley.
At nine o’clock in the morning, we had gained the summit of the pass between Mount Temple and Pinnacle Mountain, where we were 9000 feet above sea-level. The ascent so far had not been of an encouraging nature, as we had encountered a long, loose slide where everything moved threateningly at each step. I have never seen a more unstable slope. The stones and boulders would slide, and begin to move at a distance of ten and fifteen feet above the place where we stood, and on every side also. F., who was one of the party, was terror-stricken, for he now had a horror of moving stones of any description.