To our great satisfaction and relief, the weather continued fine and there was very little wind. On the preceding afternoon the snow had been so soft one frequently went in over one's knees, but now everything was frozen hard. We left camp at five o'clock. It was still dark. The great dome of Coropuna loomed up on our left, cut off from direct attack by gigantic ice falls. To reach it we must first surmount the saddle on the main ridge. From there an apparently unbroken slope extended to the top. Our progress was distressingly slow, even with the light loads. When we reached the saddle there came a painful surprise. To the north of us loomed a great snowy cone, the peak which we had at first noticed from the Chuquibamba Calvario. Now it actually looked higher than the dome we were about to climb! From the Sihuas Desert, eighty miles away, the dome had certainly seemed to be the highest point. So we stuck to our task, although constantly facing the possibility that our painful labors might be in vain and that eventually, this north peak would prove to be higher. We began to doubt whether we should have strength enough for both. Loss of sleep, soroche, and lack of appetite were rapidly undermining our endurance.
The last slope had an inclination of thirty degrees. We should have had to cut steps with our ice axes all the way up had it not been for our snow-creepers, which worked splendidly. As it was, not more than a dozen or fifteen steps actually had to be cut even in the steepest part. Tucker was first on the rope, I was second, Coello third, and Gamarra brought up the rear. We were not a very gay party. The high altitude was sapping all our ambition. I found that an occasional lump of sugar acted as the best rapid restorative to sagging spirits. It was astonishing how quickly the carbon in the sugar was absorbed by the system and came to the relief of smoldering bodily fires. A single cube gave new strength and vigor for several minutes. Of course, one could not eat sugar without limit, but it did help to tide over difficult places.
We zigzagged slowly up, hour after hour, alternately resting and climbing, until we were about to reach what seemed to be the top, obviously, alas, not as high as our enemy to the north. Just then Tucker gave a great shout. The rest of us were too much out of breath to ask him why he was wasting his strength shouting. When at last we painfully came to the edge of what looked like the summit we saw the cause of his joy. There, immediately ahead of us, lay another slope three hundred feet higher than where we were standing. It may seem strange that in our weakened condition we should have been glad to find that we had three hundred feet more to climb. Remember, however, that all the morning we had been gazing with dread at that aggravating north peak. Whenever we had had a moment to give to the consideration of anything but the immediate difficulties of our climb our hearts had sunk within us at the thought that possibly, after all, we might find the north peak higher. The fact that there lay before us another three hundred feet, which would undoubtedly take us above the highest point of that aggravating north peak, was so very much the less of two possible evils that we understood Tucker's shout. Yet none of us was lusty enough to echo it.