THE ROOF OF CANADA

Shannon News, 15 January 1926, Page 3

THE ROOF OF CANADA

CONQUEST OF HIGHEST PEAK. AN HOUR ON THE TOP. BATTLE WITH THE SNOW. After a terrific struggle with, ice and snow and hurricanes of wind,. Mount Logan, the highest peak in Canada, which rises to an altitude of 19,539 ft. has been conquered by six members of the Canadian Alpine Club. Mount Logan is in the extreme west of Canada, in the Yukori Territory, close to the Alaskan border. Naturally, so far north, the line of perpetual snow is low, and the party actually travelled on ice for U days. The summit was reached on June 23 and the story of the final climb has just come through. The scene atl King Col. camp, from which the final dash was made, was "in the midst of monstrous ice-cliffs and blocks of fantastic shapes, with overhanging masses challenging the approach." The only way up proved to be under a vast arch of ice, below which was a crack with a direct drop of a thousand feet! For five days the climbers waited in a storm until the clouds lifted, only to camp for a night and a day ,in a renewed hurricane. At Windy Camp, 16,800 ft. up the temperature was 32 degrees below zero, and only one day's rations remained, so that five men had to go back to King Col for more. The- summit was still some miles away, and was only visible now and then. At 18,500 ft two men were compelled to give up, the other six managed to keep on to the end, though every one was frost-bitten. One Hour's Glorious Triumph.

On the morning of June 23 the climbers were still four miles from the two peaks of the mountain, when, suddenly there was glorious weather. They decided to make a dash, but it was not till five in the evening that they topped the nearer summit. And there they saw, two miles 1 farther on. the still higher peak, with a valley between, a thousand feet, below! | It must have needed great courage | to start off again at that hour. The final climb was up an ice slope, often of 40 or 50 degrees heart-breaking work indeed. Yet at eight o'clock the thing was done. In a rainbow crowning Logan was the shadow of each of the six men—Captain MacCarthy, Colonel Foster, Carpe, Lambert, Read and Taylor —as they stood at the top gazing at the amazing spectacle of seas of clouds. The party stayed on the summit for ah hour. Then the oncoming of another storm, increasing cold and failing light, drove them down. Jusl an hour, with>all that strenuous toil behind them and equally strenuous toil before —j U st an hour they stood in the sunsfrine on the summit of achievement; but it was one of those crowded hours of glorious life of which the poet sings. Then came the plunge downwards. Soon after midnight 500 ft. down, exhausted and numb with cold, they dug themselves Into the snow and went to sleep. Back to Civilisation. Storm followed storm, "as though Mount Logan still desired to punish its conquerors." To frostbite was added hunger, for two successful stores of food left for the downward trek were found to have been raided by bears! But the cache at Trail End, the beginning of the mountain trail, was intact and by July 7 the explorers were at Hubricks, the nearest outpost of civilisation. Their further adventures included a wild rush down the rapids of Chitina River on a makeshift raft. When at last they got to M'Carthy, 70 miles below the rapids they found a search party just setting out!