“You’d probably get used to it,” the Scout Master answered, “but I guess we’ll not experiment any more just now, where there’s no path. Look, our friends are almost up.”
The boys, who had forgotten the two men, turned and saw them far above, working carefully toward the summit of the wall. They shouted, and waved their hats, and the men waved back, though the Scouts could hear no voices.
“Gee, and folks have climbed those side walls, too, eh?” said Peanut. “Believe me, real mountain climbing is some work!”
“It is, surely,” Mr. Rogers said. “But in the Alps, of course, people go roped together, and if one falls, the rest brace and the rope holds him. How would you like to climb that gully if it was all ice and snow instead of rock, and you had to cut steps all the way with an ice ax, for ten thousand feet?”
“Say, there’d have to be a pretty big pile of twenty dollar gold pieces waiting at the top,” answered Peanut.
“Oh, get out,” said Art. “That isn’t what makes folks climb such places. It’s the fun of getting where nobody ever got before—just saying, ‘You old cliff, you can’t stump me!’ isn’t it, Mr. Rogers?”
“About that, I guess,” the Scout Master replied. “There’s some fascination about mountain climbing which makes men risk their lives at it all over the globe, every year, on cliffs beside which this one would look like a canoe beside the Mauretania. I’m glad we’ve had a taste of real climbing this afternoon, anyhow, to see what it’s like. Look, the men have reached the top, and are waving good-bye.”
The boys waved back, and as the men disappeared from sight, they themselves moved slowly down the trail, toward the Raymond Path, looking up with a new respect at the walls on either side, and speculating how they could be climbed. Consulting the Appalachian Mountain Club guide book, they found no description of how to get up the west wall, but the ascent of the eastern wall, to Nelson’s Crag, which was called “the most interesting rock climb in the White Mountains,” was described briefly. The Scouts easily identified the gully up which the ascent must be made, but nobody seemed very eager to make it.
“No, sir,” said Peanut, “not for me, till I’ve had more practice on cliff work, and have bigger hobnails in my shoes, and can keep right on up.”
“Still,” said Frank, “people who go up places like that in the Alps have to come down again.”