Page:A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains (1879).djvu/119

LETTER VII.

 

"Personality" of Long's Peak—"Mountain Jim"—Lake of the Lilies—A silent Forest—The Camping Ground—"Ring"—A Lady's Bower—Dawn and Sunrise—A glorious View—Links of Diamonds—The Ascent of the Peak—The Dog's Lift—Suffering from Thirst—The Descent—The Bivouac.

 

Estes Park, Colorado, October.

As this account of the ascent of Long's Peak could not be written at the time, I am much disinclined to write it, especially as no sort of description within my powers could enable another to realise the glorious sublimity, the majestic solitude, and the unspeakable awfulness and fascination of the scenes in which I spent Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday.

Long's Peak, 14,700 feet high, blocks up one end of Estes Park, and dwarfs all the surrounding mountains. From it on this side rise, snow-born, the bright St. Vrain, and the Big and Little Thompson. By sunlight or moonlight its splintered grey crest is the one object which, in spite of wapiti and bighorn, skunk and grizzly, unfailingly arrests the eye. From it come all storms of snow and wind, and the forked lightnings play round its head like a glory. It is