do is to
sit his saddle limply and leave everything else to the horse. It is my
proud boast that I can climb any mountain, no matter how high and
difficult, up which my horse can carry me.

And so, at last and inevitably, we ascend into the mountains.

IV

The mountains within the park fall naturally in two groupings. The Front
Range cuts the southern boundary midway and runs north to Longs Peak,
where it swings westerly and carries the continental divide out of the
park at its northwestern corner. The Mummy Range occupies the park's
entire north end. The two are joined by a ridge 11,500 feet in altitude,
over which the Fall River Road is building to connect the east and the
west sides of the park.

The lesser of these two, the Mummy Range, is a mountain group of
distinguished beauty. Its climax is an arc of gray monsters, Ypsilon
Mountain, 13,507 feet, Mount Fairchild, 13,502 feet, Hagues Peak, 13,562
feet, and Mount Dunraven, 12,326 feet; these gather around Mummy
Mountain with its 13,413 feet. A noble company, indeed, herded in close
comradeship, the centre of many square miles of summits scarcely less.
Ypsilon's big Greek letter, outlined in perpetual snow, is one of the
famous landmarks of the northern end. Hagues Peak supports Hallett
Glacier, the most interesting in the park. Dunraven, aloof and of
slenderer outline, offers marked contrast to the enormous sprawling bulk
of Mummy, always portentous, often capped with clouds. The range is
split by many fine canyons and dotted with glacial lakes, an undeveloped
wilderness designed by kindly nature for summer exploration.

But it is the Front Range, the snowy pinnacled rampart, which commands
profoundest attention.

From Specimen Mountain in the far northwest, a spill of lava, now the
haunt of mountain sheep, the continental divide southward piles climax
upon climax. Following it at an elevation well exceeding twelve thousand
feet, the hardy, venturesome climber looks westward down a slope of bald
granite, thickly strewn with boulders; eastward he gazes into a
succession of gigantic gorges dropping upon the east, forest grown,
lake-set canyons deep in mid-foreground, the great plateau spreading to
its foothills far beyond the canyons, with now and then a sun glint from
some irrigation pond beyond the foothills on the misty plains of eastern
Colorado. Past the monolith of Terra Tomah Peak, with its fine glacial
gorge of many lakes, past the Sprague Glacier, l