k, formidable, repellant, uninviting.
The "Key Hole" was plainly visible, two miles distant, while the summit
of the peak towered far above, almost over them. Horses were lariated,
saddles taken off, and lunches stowed into pockets, the stout iron
pointed sticks were brought into service and the signal given, "Onward."
The way at first was over soft grassy spots interspersed between the
waves of rocks, here and there a scrawny runt of a pine tree, looking
more like roots growing needles than a tree, beneath the shelter of
which the famous ptarmigan, or mountain quail, kept lonely vigil.

The last vestige of verdure passed, the immensity of that vast area of
huge, desolate, dreary waste of rock appalls the mind. Step by step, up,
up, over those ever increasing boulders, it did not seem like mounting
higher and higher, but as though one was in a gigantic, fearful stone
tread mill and the earth gradually sinking away, down, down, into space
below. After the boulder bed, the snow, hard, crusty, firm enough to
bear a horse. The "Key Hole"--and as the party passed through to the
eastern slope, they found spread out beneath their feet the dry, dusty
plain, with its brown coat of grass and alkali, stretching away into
nothing. A venture to the edge of an immense great rock upon which one
could lie down and gaze into the depth below was like looking into
eternity, the contemplation of which baffles the mind for words to
describe the awesome, fearful grandeur of God's handiwork as viewed from
Long's Peak. No other peak so barren, no other peak so lonesome, no
other peak so supernaturally devoid of at least one redeeming feature as
Long's. From its barren crest one seems able to touch the sky, and one
bound into space would land him beyond the world. To the right could be
seen Denver, there the Platte River, Longmont in a maze of alfalfa beds
and wheat fields, but these were as a drop of water to the ocean, a
grain of sand to the plains. A hasty lunch, dry indeed, but for the
accommodating snow bank which leaked enough to furnish ice water that
coursed in a stream about the size of the lead in a pencil down a
boulder, which dwarfed Cheops' pyramid. The labor involved in the return
trip caused dejection and woe. Lameness was the rule and only after much
coaxing, and threatening, could every one understand the peril which
awaited them, once the night settled down before the boulder beds were
crossed.

Just below the "Key Hole" the