We zigzagged slowly up, hour after hour, alternately resting and climbing, until we were about to reach what seemed to be the top, obviously, alas, not as high as our enemy to the north.  Just then Tucker gave a great shout.  The rest of us were too much out of breath to ask him why he was wasting his strength shouting.  When at last we painfully came to the edge of what looked like the summit we saw the cause of his joy.  There, immediately ahead of us, lay another slope three hundred feet higher than where we were standing.  It may seem strange that in our weakened condition we should have been glad to find that we had three hundred feet more to climb.  Remember, however, that all the morning we had been gazing with dread at that aggravating north peak.  Whenever we had had a moment to give to the consideration of anything but the immediate difficulties of our climb our hearts had sunk within us at the thought that possibly, after all, we might find the north peak higher.  The fact that there lay before us another three hundred feet, which would undoubtedly take us above the highest point of that aggravating north peak, was so very much the less of two possible evils that we understood Tucker’s shout.  Yet none of us was lusty enough to echo it.

With faint smiles and renewed courage we pegged along, resting on our ice axes, as usual, every twenty-five steps until at last, at half-past eleven, after six hours and a half of climbing from the 20,000-foot camp, we reached the culminating point of Coropuna.  As we approached it, Tucker, although naturally much elated at having successfully engineered the first ascent of this great mountain, stopped and with extraordinary courtesy and self-abnegation smilingly motioned me to go ahead in order that the director of the Expedition might be actually the first person to reach the culminating point.  In order to appreciate how great a sacrifice he was willing to make, it should be stated that his willingness to come on the Expedition was due chiefly to a fondness for mountain climbing and his desire to add Coropuna to his sheaf of victories.  Greatly as I appreciated his kindness in making way for me, I could only acquiesce in so far as to continue the climb by his side.  We reached the top together, and sank down to rest and look about.

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Figure

The Camp on the Summit of Coropuna Elevation, 21,703 Feet
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Figure

One of the Frequent Rests in the Ascent of Coropuna
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The truncated summit is an oval-shaped snow field, almost flat, having an area of nearly half an acre, about 100 feet north and south and 175 feet east and west.  If it once were, as we suppose, a volcanic crater, the pit had long since been filled up with snow and ice.  There were no rocks to be seen on the rim—­only the hard crust of the glistening white surface.  The view from the top was desolate in the extreme.  We were in the midst of a great