“We reached the great snowbanks.  The track and roadbed was buried deep.  The last straggling trees were far behind.  We stood on a great white waste of snow, thirty feet in depth, not a landmark to be seen.  If the station was ahead, it was buried; if it was behind, we had missed it.  With that realization our spirits fell, for to turn back now meant certain death.  Then, to add to our danger, it had begun to turn fearfully cold—­that kind of a clear, steady cold that comes only in the mountains, when the thermometer drops twenty-five degrees below zero and the air cuts like a knife, while your nostrils freeze together when you breathe.  At the fire we had tied handkerchiefs over our ears and tied strings around our trouser legs to keep the wind and snow out.

“Every little while we sat down and pounded our feet with our walking sticks to keep up the circulation.  At last we came to about two feet of a telephone pole sticking up through the snowbank.  We knew then that we were off the road and were high up on the mountain.  Luckily for us, the snowbanks were so heavily crusted that they held us up without breaking through.  John suggested a plan:  We would follow the post ends to the Summit House; in that way we could not get lost.  Two of us would stop at the tip of one post, while the other, usually John, would push on to find the next one.  When it was located he would call and we would go to him.  Just how long we traveled in that manner I do not know.  It seemed days, but, of course, it was only a brief time.  Often I was positive that the posts were at least a half a mile apart.  My shoes were so badly cracked at the seams that my feet grew very numb with the cold, and before long I knew I was freezing.

“Time and again we thought we heard something coming over the snow behind us.  The air was clear as a bell, and, as we pushed on, this sound frightened us more and more.  Our imaginations began to play strange pranks.  I remember that I was too frightened to even move, so sometimes I would just stand shivering and listening.  We hardly spoke a word.  By and by the time came when I was too cold to leave my post for the next one.  I just put my arms about it and begged the fellows not to wait for me, but to go on and save themselves; to dig a hole in the snow and leave me in it.  But John, dear old John, refused and, putting his arm about me, he dragged me on and on.  He tried to make me angry by striking me, and warned me not to go to sleep or I would freeze.  But I told him I must sleep, for my feet and legs were numb and my arms and shoulders ached with sharp pains; then I cried like a baby.  Soon Al began to play out also, and John plead with him not to give up.  Al took me by one arm and John the other, and together they fairly dragged me over the snow.