ve feeling that dominated the morning
before. The clouds broke up before nine o'clock, and the air, with
haze in it, seemed yellow. About 10.30, haze and, soon after, clouds
came in from the southeast (at this time I was high up on the
southerly slope of Mt. Richthofen), and by eleven o'clock the sky was
cloudy. Up to this time the air, when my snow-glasses were off, burned
and twitched my eyes in the same manner as on the previous morning.

Early in the afternoon I left Grand Ditch Camp and started down to
Chambers Lake. I had not gone far when drops of rain began to fall
from time to time, and shortly after this my muscles began to twitch
occasionally under electrical ticklings. At times slight muscular
rigidity was noticeable. Just before two o'clock the clouds began to
burst through between the trees. I was at an altitude of about eleven
thousand feet and a short distance from the head of Trap Creek. Rain,
hail, and snow fell in turn, and the lightning began frequently to
strike the rocks. With the beginning of the lightning my muscles
ceased to be troubled with either twitching or rigidity. For the two
hours between 2 and 4 P. M. the crash and roll of thunder was
incessant. I counted twenty-three times that the lightning struck the
rocks, but I did not see it strike a tree. The clouds were low, and
the wind came from the east and the northeast, then from the west.

[Illustration: A STORM ON THE ROCKIES]

About four o'clock, I broke through the snow, tumbled into Trap Creek,
and had to swim a little. This stream was really very swift, and ran
in a narrow gulch, but it was blocked by snow and by tree-limbs swept
down by the flood, and a pond had been formed. It was crowded with a
deep deposit of snow which rested on a shelf of ice. This covering was
shattered and uplifted by the swollen stream, and I had slipped on the
top of the gulch and tumbled in. Once in, the swift water tugged at
me to pull me under; the cakes of snow and ice hampered me, and my
snowshoes were entangled with brush and limbs. The combination seemed
determined to drown me. For a few seconds I put forth all my efforts
to get at my pocket-knife. This accomplished, the fastenings of my
snowshoes were cut, and unhampered by these, I escaped the waters.

* * * * *

Since I have felt no ill results, the effect of the entire experience
may have been beneficial. The clouds, glorious as they had been in
formation and co