The north summit (21,834) and the south summit (22,200) of Huascarán. Only the Himalaya are tougher to climb than Peru's Andes, reports the author. Photo by Leigh Ortenburger.

After living through a mountaineering nightmare in The Himalaya—where
he lost two toes to frostbite, and a companion lost his life—the author
succumbed once more to "the passion to climb." Here he tells
of his hair-raising adventure in the Peruvian Andes.

I CLIMBED AGAIN

Saturday Evening Post, December 25th 1954

David Michael and Alex Cresswell ascend Huascarán, highest peak in the Peruvian Andes. Photo by Leigh Ortenburger.

Not many men wish to climb mountains. But for the few who do, the lure of difficult and distant peaks comes to exercise a magnetic and sometimes fatal fascination over the mind. The love of great peaks and the desire to climb them become a dominant theme which the climber cannot ignore for long without suffering pangs of restlessness and longing. He longs to walk again in a high valley rimmed with beautiful ice-sheathed mountains, and to band together with a group of trusty comrades in an effort to climb these peaks. He longs for the unequal contest in which he pits his nerve and strength against the precipices of rock, sheer slopes of ice, even the wind, the driving snow and the numbing cold.

The passion to climb is not easily lulled. Thus it was with Geoffrey Winthrop Young, a British climber of great skill whose writings on mountaineering are justly renowned. Young lost a leg in the First World War, yet he has returned time and again to his beloved mountains—to climb them with joy. Many mountaineers have suffered injury by frostbite on high peaks, losing toes, fingers or more—and yet they have returned to climb with undiminished enthusiasm. An example is Maurice Herzog, the French climber, who won world-wide fame with his heroic achievements and suffering on Annapurna in The Himalaya. Herzog lost most of his fingers and toes and barely escaped with his life in this adventure, but he has since climbed the Matterhorn and other peaks in the Alps.

The author conquered two Andes peaks despite his missing toes.

In early August of 1953 I was with seven other members of the Third American Karakoram Expedition at our Camp VIII, 25,500 feet high on K2, second-highest mountain in the world. We had been in the midst of a great storm for nine days. One of our tents had been torn apart by the savage wind. The others strained and flapped wildly. One of the men was sick and dying. Our desperate and unsuccessful attempt to get him down, and then our six days of descent to base camp in continuing storm were a nightmare which I shall never forget. I climbed down the last 1000 feet on feet swollen to near twice their normal size, toes black from frostbite. I was carried out from base camp—on a litter or pickaback—for eleven days. Weeks later I had two toes amputated in Boston—one big toe and one little one. It was November before I was beginning to walk again. I was well aware that the loss of toes is no particular handicap to a mountaineer. Of course, one must wait for new tissue to become toughened by use, and I knew that my feet, injured by frostbite, would have permanently impaired circulation and that they would be more sensitive to cold in the future. However, in general, toes are unnecessary appendages and one can do quite well without them. So there was never really any doubt in my mind that I could climb again. Nor was there doubt that I would want to.

However, I was somewhat surprised to find myself, last June, after only seven months on my feet, in the Peruvian Andes, a range second only to The Himalaya for altitude and difficulty of climbing—a range where I had climbed in 1952. We had a formidable list of objectives, no less than ten peaks, of which perhaps eight were higher than giant Mt. McKinley—at 20,300 feet the highest peak in North America. True, most of these peaks were easy, but properly to appraise what the word "easy" means to a mountaineer, one should note that on the smallest and easiest of these peaks an ice avalanche annihilated our route for hundreds of feet only shortly after we had descended from the mountain. Another small peak which we had listed as an easy acclimatization exercise—which was incidentally more than a mile higher than Mt. Rainier—confronted us with an appalling overhanging ice wall at its summit. This required all our skill and daring to circumvent.

From their high camp, members of the climbing expe- dition made the final assault on 19,600-foot Pisco peak. Photo by George Bell.

As a matter of fact, we climbed only one "hard" peak, Huandoy, 21,000 feet. I call it hard because it was difficult for a long distance, not just fifty feet or so at a time. Here we fastened something like 1500 feet of rope to the steep rock and ice of a great face, all the while being exposed to a deadly fall of rock and ice from precipices above. At one time Graham Matthews was working below the lip of a steep ice slope. Glancing up, he noted with decided interest that a boulder was streaking down the slope straight at him. Fortunately his reflexes were good. He ducked, and the boulder whined through the air where his head had been seconds before. Later Alex Cresswell was not so lucky. He was struck on the forehead by a forty-pound rock. Fortunately it was only a glancing blow—a solid impact would have felled an elephant.

Our last climb of the summer was in some ways the most interesting, although by no means the most difficult. The peak was Huascarán, which at 22,200 is the highest in Peru—and one of the highest in the Western Hemisphere. Among Peruvians there is great prestige for anyone who scales giant Huascarán. Two Peruvian parties, great rivals, set out to climb Huascarán more or less on our coattails or at least concurrently. The great mountain was almost congested, you might say. We lent a tent to one party, pulled their rivals out of a crevasse into which they had unluckily fallen, and chopped steps in the ice for both groups. Eventually all three parties reached a summit of Huascarán.

On Huascarán and several other summits, my feet became cold in the chill, oxygen-thin atmosphere. With the unpleasant memories of frostbite on K2 fresh in my mind, I had no desire for a repeat performance and proceeded with caution. I even had a pair of electrically heated socks along, and they proved helpful from time to time. In general, though, when threatened with frozen feet I would go no higher. This conservative policy paid off, for during the whole summer of seven peaks my feet improved and gave me no trouble. True, I personally got to the top of only two of the seven peaks—but my feet are now ready for more.

The idea of this trip to the Peruvian Andes was first presented to me when had been out of the hospital bed only a few weeks. At the time, I was just beginning to master the difficult art of walking up and down stairs and entertained few thoughts of mountain climbing. But in early November of 1953 I received a letter from John Oberlin, the secretary of the American Alpine Club, with whom I had climbed in Peru in 1962. John was interested in drumming up an expedition to climb in Peru during the summer. He had heard that my toes were recovering nicely and inquired if I might possibly be interested. In spite of not being able to get downstairs at that time without a stout grip on the handrail, I couldn't bring myself to say no. So I said maybe.

During the early winter months, I took short hikes to toughen the scar tissue and other weak parts of my feet, and I tried a little skiing to see how easily they became cold. Mighty easily, I found out. Meanwhile the expedition was jelling. John's letters of inquiry had fallen upon fruitful ground. Soon four other mountaineers who had climbed in Peru in 1952 and knew well the beauty and splendor of the Peruvian Andes were strongly interested in the trip. Several other experienced climbers had signified varying degrees of interest.

Yanganuco valley, surrounded by majestic Andes peaks, was the site of the expedition's base camp. Photo by George Bell.

Finally, by early March, 1954, most of the groundwork had been done. The time had come for people who really wanted in to pay a deposit, to give the expedition some solvency. By this time I felt reasonably confident that my feet would be tough enough to withstand the hiking and climbing of the trip, and I was hopeful that they would be bothered by the cold only above about 20,000 feet. The party promised to be big enough so that if one man didn't go to the summits he wouldn't necesarily be a handicap to the expedition. So I paid my deposit.

As it shaped up, then, we were an expedition of eight members. All were seasoned mountaineers with an average of something like ten summers of active climbing per man. Five of us had been in Peru in 1952, when we had joined with three French climbers to scale formidable Mt. Salcantay (21,000). The most experienced climber in this band of veterans was Dr. Fred Ayres. Fred, who, at a wiry forty-seven, is a professor of chemistry at Reed College, in Portland, Oregon, has been climbing the most difficult peaks in the United States and Canada for some twenty years now. His companion on many of these ascents was John Oberlin. Widely read and widely traveled, John is a successful patent lawyer in Cleveland.

Other veterans of the Salcantay trip were David Michael, Jr., Graham Matthews, and myself. David's nickname is "Georgia." He has Confederate flags sewn upon his pack and jacket. But any treasonable inclinations of which this may be symptomatic seem to have been lost in many seasons of climbing northern mountains—in Canada, Alaska and the Alps. Graham Matthews and I had been to Peru twice before, in 1952 and before that in 1950 as members of the Harvard Andean Expedition which managed to get two men to the top of Mt. Yerupaja—at 21.760 feet, one of the very greatest peaks of the Andes. Graham Matthews teaches history and geography at the Robert Louis Stevenson School for Boys in Pebble Beach, California. I am a physicist at Los Alamos, New Mexico.

The sixth member of the expedition, Leigh Ortenburger, was the spark plug. Leigh had been to Peru in 1952 with a group of scientists and climbers from Berkeley, California. Unfortunately this party was plagued by sickness, Leigh was under the weather most of the time and one of the men was tragically stricken with pneumonia at a high camp and died only hours later. At any rate, the area they had visited was the precise one where we planned to climb, and Leigh's knowledge was of the greatest value. During non-climbing months Leigh teaches and does graduate work in mathematics at the University of California, at Berkeley.

The party was rounded out by Alex Creswell, of Oregon, and Dick Irvin, of Phoenix, Arizona. "Cres" had climbed much with Fred and John, he grew the best beard in the party, and had a fine philosophical attitude. Dick was the niño of the party, but even if only twenty-three, he has an impressive record of climbs in the United States and Canada dating back six or more years.

Thus the party was complete—in fact, if anything it was too large for ease of organization. Later on in the spring we even had to turn down two of the best climbers in the United States who wanted to join us—the enterprise threatened to become unwieldy.

During the winter and spring we laid careful plans. An expedition to distant lands cannot be undertaken lightly. One has to plan every item of equipment and special food beforehand and check it out. If you find in the field that you are missing some item—a rope, dark glasses, a stove or virtually anything—you can only resign yourself to doing without. There are no mountaineering supply houses in the Andes

John Oberlin made up the lists of vital equipment. First, individual gear which every man supplied for himself: sleeping bags, air mattress, boots, ice ax and warm clothing. Then a five-page list of community equipment—some of which the members could furnish, the rest must be bought. There were ten tents, eight gasoline stoves, thirty-two boxes of matches, one butterfly net, 3460 feet of rope, two aluminum shovels, one roll of fluorescent tape, seventy pitons, and so on.

Leigh Ortenburger and Dick Irvin planned the food. They consulted us all as to our preferences, retired to endless calculations and emerged with an impressive list. They tried for the most concentrated and nourishing foods—hot cereals, fifty-six pounds; dried fruit, 113 pounds (too much); cheese, 100 pounds; dried whole milk, 100 pounds; dehydrated meat bars, thirty-six pounds; canned meat, dehydrated soup, hot chocolate mix, instantly prepared rice and potatoes, and so on. Undoubtedly the most popular item was canned concentrated orange juice.

At times something less than godlike impartiality was attributed to the planners. For example, Leigh liked cocoa and disliked coffee. Thus the items, "Hot Chocolate Mix 194 lbs," and "Instant Coffee 2 oz.," were cause for intemperate comments from time to time. As personal gear, community equipment and food began to accumlate, the thankless task of arranging it all for shipment to Peru by boat fell to Fred Ayres, who had also assumed the nettlesome task of treasurer. Around 3000 pounds of gear finally left Portland early in May.

On June seventh, Cress and Fred flew to Lima, capital of Peru, where they completed arrangements for getting the gear through customs and up to the base of the mountains. On June fourteenth, the rest of the party—with the exception of John Oberlin, who would join us a week later—made our rendezvous in Miami for the flight to Lima.

When one finally leaves on an expedition, it always seems to be with something like twice the amount of baggage that is allowed on the airplane. This trip was no exception. "Georgia" had arrived from Germany, where he had been studying art under a Fulbright fellowship, with a huge pile of mountaineering gear. However, we were equal to the occasion and, with artful guile born of long experience, we smuggled vast amounts on the aircraft and avoided charges for excess baggage.

Once in Lima, we found that Fred and Cress had done splendid work—we were able to leave for the mountains almost immediately. Indeed, by the eve of June sixteenth, we had driven 300 miles north—first along the coast, then inland over a 13,000-foot pass, and finally down the valley of the Santa River to the scenic town of Yungay. From here we could see many of the peaks we hoped to climb. The Santa valley lies between two great ranges of mountains—to the east, the Cordillera Blanca, with scores of summits above 20,000 feet; to the weet the Cordillera Negra, with peaks up to 18,000 feet. The river between those ranges has its headwaters at some 13,000 feet and thunders its way to 5000 feet before cutting west through the Cordillera Negra to the Pacific Ocean. The peaks of the Cordillera Blanca, or White Range, are glacier covered—ice and snow down to 15,000 feet. Immediately to their east lie the headwaters of the Amazon, and during the wet season, which is the summer in Peru and winter in the United States, great moist clouds boil up out of the Amazon basin to blanket the White Cordillera with snow. These clouds lose most of their moisture before they reach the Santa valley and Cordillera Negra. Hence the valley, or its lower portions, anyway, is arid, and the Negra is dark—without snow.

The people of the Santa valley have, for irrigation purposes, diverted many of the streams which flow from the glaciers of the Cordillera Blanca. The towns are generally near the confluences of these streams with the Santa River. But in recent years these locations have proved blessings mingled with the greatest peril. Because of climatic changes, the glaciers of the Cordillera Blanca have been shrinking for several decades, as have most of the glaciers of the world. But here, because of local conditions, as the glacier snouts retreat up the valleys they often leave lakes impounded by unstable ridges of rock and ice. From time to time a ridge gives way and the lake sweeps down the valley, leaving incredible havoc in its wake—with loss of life in the thousands. Naturally the Peruvians are worried by these devastating floods. With the help of foreign experts they have been studying what can be done.

From the town of Yungay, which we had reached, the view of Huascarán was magnificent. The peak was but eight miles away, rising nearly 15,000 feet above the town. The sight made us eager to establish our base camp and begin climbing. In Yungay we met four porters, who would carry many loads for us. Having served with previous expeditions, they had experience in glacier travel and were familiar with climbing techniques on snow and ice. This experience, plus seldom failing good spirits, and a wiry toughness which enabled them to carry heavy loads at great heights, made them real assets to the expedition.

From Yungay it was only a sixteen-mile walk to the proposed site for base camp. This accessibility of the Peruvian Andes as compared, say, with Himalayan or Alaskan mountains—where week-long approaches are necessary—constitutes one of their most attractive features. We made the trip from Yungay to base camp in one day. Twenty-five burros carried all the equipment. The base camp was located at 13,000 feet in the Yanganuco valley. This valley was surrounded by the peaks we hoped to climb—to the east, Yanapacha (18,100 to the northwest, Pisco (19,600) and Huandoy, (21,000) to the south, Huascarán (22,200) and Chopicalqui (21,000), while directly north lay perhaps the most impressive and difficult peak in the Andes, Chacraraju (20,300).

Our tents were pitched in a sunny grove of trees. But from the tents or nearby we could see the ice-sheathed flanks of all these giant peaks, and above the babble of the pleasant mountain streama we could hear the distant thunder of murderous ice avalanches.

Our first few climbs were supposed to be just warm-ups for the harder and higher ascents to follow. We wanted to allow about two weeks for acclimatization—to let our bodies adjust themselves to the altitude—before tackling anything really difficult. We also expected that two easy ascents would give us a good idea of the topography and help us in planning for the harder ones.

Therefore, our first objective was Yanapacha—smallest of the surrounding peaks, but nevertheless unclimbed. Six of us made the ascent. John Oberlin had not yet arrived, and I had a bad cold in base camp. The six climbers with the help of our four porters pitched a camp at around 16,000 feet at the base of a glacier flowing west from Yanapacha. From there they ascended easily until they approached a ridge shortly below the summit where the slope steepened beneath the dangerous overhanging ice cornices of the ridge proper. The summit itself was found to be a perilous and unstable crest of snow and ice, shaped much like a wave about to break.

One at a time, each climber inched his way up to the highest point of the crest, anchored all the while by a nylon rope to the rest of the team. Without a rope such a jaunt would have been folly. Even with it each man descended with a feeling of relief, and when finally the last climber was off the crest they hastened down Yanapacha with all the speed that safety would permit.

The day after the ascent, our porters reported that a huge cornice of this summit ridge had broken loose and totally annihilated the route of our ascent for several hundred feet. A brief look at the chaos left by this avalanche convinced me that no man would have had a chance of surviving its destructive sweep. We were lucky.

Such avalanches are not rare in the Peruvian Andes. The ice cornices of the White Cordillera are as huge and fearful as any found in the world. They are formed as great damp clouds from the Amazon basin sweep over the knife-edged ridges of the cordillera to sheath them with layer upon layer of ice and snow. Always the clouds come from the east to form the treacherous crests with the shape of breaking waves—breaking away from the wind. Month after month these cornices build up. The crest of a big one may be fifty or even 100 feet from the nearest sup porting rock, until finally something gives way and down the whole mass roars with devastating force. Unfortunately, the stability of these cornices is virtually impossible to predict. One can only try to avoid them.

After Yanapacha, we climbed a mountain by the name of Pisco, twice previously ascended. The mountain, named in honor of a popular Peruvian drink, was generally regarded as an easy climb. But, because it was well over 19,000 feet high, we had three camps above base camp before we were within reach of the top. Even Pisco had a surprise for us. As we approached the summit on a broad ridge, we were suddenly dismayed to find a huge crevasse barring our way.

The crevasse extended all the way across the ridge; it was exactly as if some malevolent god had hacked the ridge with a great cleaver. We could descend into the crevasse without much difficulty but any direct assault up the other side was ruled out by a twenty-foot overhanging ice wall. To the left the crevasse simply spilled out over a 1000-foot vertical cliff, while to the right the aspect was scarcely more encouraging. We were baffled.

Finally, Fred Ayres conquered this formidable obstacle by carving a stair case up an unstable ice block poised dangerously over the sheer south face of Pisco. Then, above this, he had to demolish a rotten cornice. It was brilliant and delicate climbing, but Fred made it.

After this ascent the weather deteriorated. Several days of snow and wind forced us to retreat to base camp. There, on July fifth, we took stock of the situation. We were now approaching top form. Our two primary objectives, Huandoy and Chacraraju, were close at hand. We had been studying them from Yanapacha and Pisco, looking for the best routes. But our inspection had revealed no major flaws in the defenses of Huandoy and Chacraraju—we thought more reconnaissance was necessary. As a matter of fact, we were not sure we could climb them or that we even wanted to try. So, before buckling down to attempt these horrors, we elected to climb the exquisite snow peak of Chopicalqui, 21,000 feet. This turned out to be a delightful and splendid climb, one of the nicest I have ever had.

It was successful in all respects. The weather held perfect. Our plan of attack, which called for three additional camps above base and a complicated shuttle of porters and climbers, worked out in action just as well as on paper. The ascent to the high camp at about 18,500 was through a beautiful icefall bedecked with glittering curtains of icicles, walls and castles of snow. We climbed the final 2500 feet from high camp along a handsome ridge which was now and then steep enough to prove challenging and which offered magnificent views of the cordillera on every side. We all reached the summit in good form. Some ascents can he enjoyed only in anticipation or retropect—to endure them is a torment of body and soul. But Chopicalqui was a pleasure from start to finish.

By July thirteenth we were again back in base camp, faced once more with the horrors of Huandoy and Chacraraju. Huandoy is a great and complex peak. From a central plateau three summits, the south, west and north, rise to over 20,000 feet. The secret is to gain this plateau from the west or east, but both these approaches are guarded by appalling icefalls. Glaciers flow both east and west from the plateau, but only to topple over great cliffs, spreading havoc and death helow. In 1936, two intrepid Austrian climbers gained the plateau from the east by an avalanche-raked gully. They attempted it only after careful inspection of all other routes and believed it to be so dangerous that they climbed the gully by night to minimize the possibility of avalanche. With respect they dubbed their gully the "kanone röhr"—the cannon barrel.

Eighteen years of avalanches had turned the cannon barrel into a polished ice cliff, and we discarded this route as suicidal. There appeared to be some chance of scaling the cliffs to one side of the main east icefall. But this was evidently very hard, and we felt that we should fint have a look at the west icefall. This would involve a five-day reconnaissance from base camp. Chacraraju, a spectacular and terrible peak, posed difficulties far greater than Huandoy. Time and again groups of the most experienced climbers have passed beneath the hattlements of Chacraraju—have studiously scanned its shimmering twin summits and their fantastic series of defenses. We had seen the south side from many angles—sheer ice slope scoured by avalanches, so steep that the sunlight never touched it. Even if one climbed the face, it was not clear that one could follow the corniced ridges to either summit. On either side, the ridges bounding the face had huge overhanging sections. And so it went. Many climbers have looked at Chacraraju, but none has even attempted it. I have no doubt that it can be climbed, or that one day it will be climbed—but scarcely by men who love life.

On July fifteenth we split into two parties, the one to investigate the northeast side of Chacraraju, the other to reconnoiter an approach to Huandoy from the west. On both trips we had splendid views, took fine photos, discovered unmapped lakes and saw much. But both led to the conclusion: "Let's try something else!"

On July twentieth John Oberlin left for the United States, his vacation over. The next day we set out to attempt Huandoy from the east. It would be a hard climb; we were not optimistic about our chances of success. We swiftly reoccupied a camp which had been used for Piaco. At 15,500 feet it was located near the snout of the glacier which cascaded down the eastern slopes of Huandoy. The initial problem was to get a camp high up, an close as possible to the cliffs which interrupt the course of the glacier, but off to one side, so as not to be exposed to the avalanches.

The lower slopes of the glacier were broken into a twisted icefall. Now, a glacier is much like a frozen river, but being ice, it is deeper, wider and slower. The Huandoy glacier was about 500 feet deep, a mile wide, and it advanced maybe a foot each day. In a river channel, the great cliff which defended the plateau would have formed a waterfall higher than five Niagaras-and the icefall below it would have been a series of cataracts and small waterfalls. As the glacier slowly advanced, from time to time it thundered over the cliff in 1000-ton avalanches. The ice below was twisted and contorted by tremendous presures into a chaotic pile of house-size blocks and chasms.

To pick a route through such a wilderness of ice is no picnic. In this case we were finally forced to follow up an old avalanche track which had filled in some of the biggest crevasses. Sometimes, while crossing these crevasses, I would knock icicles off with my ice ax and listen to them tinkle and clatter downward into the dark and bottomless depths.

At 18,100 feet we found a protected location for our camp on a small, fat snow platform. It was below and to one side of the main cliffs, and we hoped to outflank them by ascending a series of steep ice and rock alopes. Four of us spent the first night at this camp. On July twenty-third we started to work on the difficult slopes above. For three days we hacked steps in the ice, drove pitons—iron spikes—into the ice or into cracks in the rock and tied ropes to the pitons, so that eventually we could carry loads on this hard route. Some fine bits of climbing were involved. One morning Leigh and I hewed 500 steps in ateep ice. Higher up, "Georgia" had to drive five pions in a crack for use as a ladder in ascending a sheer twenty-foot rock step.

All this time we were exposed to deadly rockfall from towering rotten cliffs of the south peak, overhanging our route. The heat of the sun would melt the rocks loose from their matrix of ice, and they would topple off to rake the slopes 1000 feet below with a deadly barrage. Each afternoon we returned to camp with a feeling that we had been closer to God.

Eventually the route to the plateau was completed, and on July twenty-seventh we carried up a light camp. Three men occupied the two windblown, cold and remote tents—Matthews, Irvin and Ortenburger. They found that the west peak—then the highest unclimbed summit in Peru—was a simple ascent from the plateau. Indeed, each man climbed it alone—this on three different days. On July twenty-ninth they walked up the north peak together with Michael, Ayres and Creswell, who came up from below for this occasion. This ended our ascenta on Huandoy—six climbers had reached the north peak, and three the west.

We regrouped in hase camp on August first. It was clear that neither time nor desire remained for an attempt on Chacraraju. We felt, though, that we did have time and energy for the ascent of Huascarán. This, although the highest peak in Peru, was technically a decided anticlimax. The climbing was, except for a few short stretches, straightforward, and the mountain had been climbed four times previously, so that no general problems of route finding or organization remained.

The trip was enlivened by the presence of two Peruvian climbing groups who were trying to get up Huascarán at the same time we were. One was a hand of seasoned hillmen, the brothers Yanac plus two friends, who had some climbing experience. They simulated great independence, but we noted that on the mountain they were usually careful to follow exactly in our footsteps on the steeper slopes. However, from their high camp they did climb the north, and lower, peak of Huascarán without any aid whatso ever from us.

The other party was composed of the Yanscs' archrivals, and they made no pretense of eschewing our aid. They pitched their high camp close to ours, at nearly 20,000 feet, between the south and north summits. One day we climbed the south peak—albeit we were burdened by overconfidence and chose a very bad route. The next day we wanted to descend from the moun tain, and our Peruvian friends were to try the north peak. But, just a we were breaking camp, their leader rushed in, saying that two of his com panions had fallen into a deep crevasse and needed to be rescued.

"Are they injured? Are they dead?" we asked. He thought not.

Quickly gathering first-aid supplies and ropes, we hastened upward. Soon the crevasse appeared, masked here and there by a sheet of wind-blown snow, but all too obvious and deadly to the trained mountaineer's eye. They had fallen in where the crevasse was thirty feet deep, but fortunately the bottom was soft snow. Conditions were such that with a little aid from our ropes they managed to climb out of the crevasse, shaken, but game to continue. We were much impressed by their determination, and Cress and Leigh stayed another day with two of our porters, to accompany them to the top of the north peak of Huascarán. The rest of us had run out of ambition by then.

Thus ended a summer of fine climbing. To me it was particularly satisfying. I found it clear that a few toes more or less are no handicap to a mountaineer. True, mine are more sensitive to cold than before, but they are continuing to improve.

Many Americans may find it diffcult to understand how I could consider such a summer of climbing enjoyable or satisfying. Of course, there were splendid scenes. The memory and photographs which I have of the peerless east spire of Chacraraju rising thousands of feet above with the clamic symmetry of a cathedral tower is one of such grandeur and beauty as almoet to justify the whole trip, to my mind. There were other scenes too.

But the mountaineer does not climb a peak to see the view from the top. He climbs it because it represents a challenge. It beckons to him mutely. The plunging slopes, the ice cornices bending over into endless space, towering cliffs, and even the dread roar of the ice avalanche challenge him, lure him onward. And if fortune smiles upon him and he wins through to the summit, he does so with the feeling which George Leigh-Mallory, who lies on Everest, so well expressed: "Have we vanquished an enemy? None but ourselves."

THE END