We rested all the next day at Camp Romany--rested and fished, while
three of the more adventurous spirits climbed a near-by mountain. Late
in the afternoon they rode in, bringing in their midst Joe, who had, at
the risk of his life, slid a distance which varied in the reports from
one hundred yards to a mile and a half down a snow-field, and had hung
fastened on the brink of eternity until he was rescued.
Very white was Joe that evening, white and bruised. It was twenty-four
hours before he began to regret that the camera had not been turned on
him at the time.
Not until we left Camp Romany did we feel that we were really off for
the trip. And yet that first day out from Romany was not agreeable
going. The trail was poor, although there came a time when we looked
back on it as superlative. The sun was hot, and there was no shade.
Years ago, prospectors hunting for minerals had started forest-fires to
level the ridges. The result was the burning-over of perhaps a hundred
square miles of magnificent forest. The second growth which has come up
is scrubby, a wilderness of young trees and chaparral, through which
progress was difficult and uninteresting.
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