. I made
frequent trips above timberline, sometimes to find arctic gales that
filled the air with icy pellets which penetrated like shot, cutting my
face; gales that drove the cold through the thickest, heaviest clothes
I could put on; gales that blew the snow about until it enveloped me in
a cloud-like veil, making vision impossible. On such days, retreat was
the only possible, if not valorous, course. To have remained would
have been foolhardy, for blinded and buffeted by the storm, I might
easily have stepped off a precipice with less fortunate consequences
than had attended my experience on my journey over the Divide.

But sometimes, the conditions on the heights were astonishing. Once I
left our valley chill and gloomy, all shut in by lowering clouds, and
climbed up toward the hidden summits of the peaks, to emerge above the
clouds into bright, warm sunshine. Another day, at an altitude of
twelve thousand feet, I found it only twelve below freezing, while, at
the same time, as I learned later, it was twenty-four degrees below
zero at Fort Collins, a town forty miles away on the plains. Strange
freak of weather! The explanation lay in the difference between the
winds that blew over the respective sections, a blizzardly north wind
was sweeping over the low, exposed plains, while up on the
peak-encircled heights a balmy "chinook" gently stirred from the west.
Mountaineers know that as long as the west wind blows no severe storm
is to be feared. It is the chill east wind that comes creeping up the
canyons from the bleak plains and prairies of the lowlands, which bring
the blizzards.

One rare, windless day upon the heights, my little hay-making friend,
the cony, greeted me with an enthusiastic "squee-ek." He was sunning
himself upon a rock and looked so sleek and plump I knew his harvest
had been bountiful. He lay gazing off into space, apparently
contemplating the Divide. But when, a few minutes later, a beady-eyed
weasel challenged my right of way, I wondered whether little
"Squee-ek's" thoughts were so remote as those distant peaks! In both
storm and sunshine, I saw weasels abroad on the heights. They were
bold, fearless little cutthroats, approaching within a few feet to
stare at me wickedly. I saw them below timberline pursuing snowshoe
rabbits many times their size.

Occasionally I came across fox tracks. These sly fellows seemed
indifferent to cold or wind. They stalked the ptarmigan above
ti