The sun was now high. The clouds had stopped coming up over the head walls of the ravines. They could see for miles, even to the blue ramparts of Lafayette and Moosilauke in the west and southwest. Directly south they looked over a billowing sea of mountains and green, forest-covered valleys, a wilderness in which there was no sign of human beings. To their left was the deep hole of Tuckerman’s Ravine, gouged out of the solid rock. Only the very summit of Washington behind them still wore a hood of white vapor.
It was only three-quarters of a mile to the nose of the spur, and they were soon there. Here the two parties were to divide, the boys going down to the left into the yawning hole of Tuckerman’s Ravine, which they could now see plainly, directly below them, the other trampers turning to the southwest, for their long descent over the Davis Path and the Montalban range. At the nose of the spur was a big cairn, and out of it the bugler fished an Appalachian Mountain Club cylinder, opened it, and disclosed the register, upon which they all wrote their names. Then they all shook hands, the bugler blew a long blast on his bugle, and the Scouts watched their friends of the night go striding off down the Davis Path.
“Now, where do we go?” asked Art.
Mr. Rogers pointed down into Tuckerman’s Ravine, the wooded floor of which, sheltering the dark mirror of Hermit Lake, lay over fifteen hundred feet below them.
“Golly, where’s your parachute?” said Peanut.
“We don’t need a parachute,” Mr. Rogers laughed. “Here’s the path.”
The boys looked over into the pit. Across the ravine rose another precipitous wall, with a lump at the end called the Lion’s Head. The ravine itself was like a long, narrow horseshoe cut into the rocky side of Mount Washington—a horseshoe more than a thousand feet deep. They were on one side of the open end.
“Well, here goes!” cried Peanut, and he began to descend.
At first the trail went down over a series of levels, or steps, close to the edge of the precipice. At one point this precipice seemed actually to hang out over the gulf below, and it seemed as if they could throw a stone into Hermit Lake.
Peanut tried it, in fact, but the stone sailed out, descended, and disappeared, as if under the wall.