Professor Coello and Corporal Gamarra wore large, heavy boots.  I had woolen puttees and “Arctic” overshoes.  Tucker improvised what he regarded as highly satisfactory sandals out of felt slippers and pieces of a rubber poncho.  Since there seemed to be no rock-climbing ahead of us, we decided to depend on crampons rather than on the heavy hob-nailed climbing boots with which Alpinists are familiar.

The snow was very hard until about one o’clock.  By three o’clock it was so soft as to make further progress impossible.  We found that, loaded as we were, we could not climb a gentle rise faster than twenty steps at a time.  On the more level snow fields we took twenty-five or thirty steps before stopping to rest.  At the end of each stint it seemed as though they would be the last steps we should ever take.  Panting violently, fatigued beyond belief, and overcome with mountain-sickness, we would stop and lean on our ice axes until able to take twenty-five steps more.

It did not take very long to recover one’s wind.  Finally we reached a glacier marked by a network of crevasses, none very wide, and nearly all covered with snow-bridges.  We were roped together, and although there was an occasional fall no great strain was put on the rope.  Then came great snow fields with not a single crevasse.  For the most part our day was simply an unending succession of stints—­twenty-five steps and a rest, repeated four or five times and followed by thirty-five steps and a longer rest, taken lying down in the snow.  We pegged along until about half-past two, when the rapidly melting snow stopped all progress.  At an altitude of about 18,450 feet, the Tucker tent was pitched on a fairly level snow field.  We now noticed with dismay that the two big aneroids had begun to differ.  As the sun declined the temperature fell rapidly.  At half-past five the thermometer stood at 22 deg.  F. During the night the minimum thermometer registered 9 deg.  F. We noticed a considerable number of lightning flashes in the northeast.  They were not accompanied by any thunder, but alarmed us considerably.  We feared the expected November storms might be ahead of time.  We closed the tent door on account of a biting wind.  Owing to the ventilating device at the top of the tent, we managed to breathe fairly well.  Mountain climbers at high altitudes have occasionally observed that one of the symptoms of acute soroche is a very annoying, racking cough, as violent as whooping cough and frequently accompanied by nausoa.  We had not experienced this at 17,000 feet, but now it began to be painfully noticeable, and continued during the ensuing days and nights, particularly nights, until we got back to the Indians’ huts again.  We slept very poorly and continually awakened one another by coughing.