Overcome with the terrors of this lonely place and the hopelessness of further attempt to reach the summit, where a snow-storm was now raging, we turned back. As we reached our camp we found Enoch just approaching, according to his promise, and though the afternoon was well advanced, we packed up and moved with all speed toward Laggan. We reached Lake Louise at 10.30 P.M., after almost nineteen hours of constant walking.
Now, however, at our camp in Paradise Valley, the conditions were somewhat different. We were at the very base of the mountain, and had learned much more about it, in the year that had elapsed since our first attempt.
The mountaineer has many discomforts mingled with the keen enjoyment of his rare experiences. None is more trying than the early hour at which he is compelled to rise from his couch of balsam boughs and set forth on his morning toil. At the chill hour before dawn, when all nature stagnates and animate creation is plunged in deepest sleep, the mountain climber must needs arouse himself from heavy slumber and, unwilling, compel his sluggish body into action.
This is the deadest hour of the twenty-four—the time just before dawn. The breezes of early night have died away into a cold and frosty calm; the thermometer sinks to its lowest point, and even the barometer, as though in sympathy, reaches one of its diurnal minima at this untimely hour. And if inanimate nature is thus greatly affected, much more are the creations of the vegetable and animal kingdoms. The plants are suffering from the cold and frost; the animals of daytime have not as yet aroused themselves from sleep, while the nocturnal prowlers have already ceased their quest of prey and returned to their dens. Even man is affected, for at this dead hour the ebb and pulse of life beat slow and feeble, and the lingering spark of life in those wasted by disease comes at this time most near going out.
At such an unseasonable hour, or more accurately at four A.M., were we up, on the 17th of August preparing for our ascent of Mount Temple. There was no trace of dawn, and the waning moon, now in her last quarter, was riding low in the southern sky, just above the sharp triangular peak at the end of our valley.