A Pedestrian On
These Mountain Roads, Especially So Late In The Year, Is Sure To
Excite Curiosity, And Many Were The Interrogations Concerning My
Ramble.
When I said that I was simply taking a walk, and that icy
Shasta was my mark, I was invariably admonished that I had come on a
dangerous quest.
The time was far too late, the snow was too loose
and deep to climb, and I should be lost in drifts and slides. When I
hinted that new snow was beautiful and storms not so bad as they were
called, my advisers shook their heads in token of superior knowledge
and declared the ascent of "Shasta Butte" through loose snow
impossible. Nevertheless, before noon of the second of November I was
in the frosty azure of the utmost summit.
When I arrived at Sisson's everything was quiet. The last of the
summer visitors had flitted long before, and the deer and bears also
were beginning to seek their winter homes. My barometer and the
sighing winds and filmy half-transparent clouds that dimmed the
sunshine gave notice of the approach of another storm, and I was in
haste to be off and get myself established somewhere in the midst of
it, whether the summit was to be attained or not. Sisson, who is a
mountaineer, speedily fitted my out for storm or calm as only a
mountaineer could, with warm blankets and a week's provisions so
generous in quantity and kind that they easily might have been made to
last a month in case of my being closely snowbound.
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