The first rise of the divide from Crater Lake was across a small glacier.  Here was a well-defined trail.  But above the glacier, which was also above timber-line, was naught but a chaos of naked rock and enormous boulders.  There was no way of seeing the trail in the darkness, and he blundered on, paying thrice the ordinary exertion for all that he accomplished.  He won the summit in the thick of howling wind and driving snow, providentially stumbling upon a small, deserted tent, into which he crawled.  There he found and bolted some ancient fried potatoes and half a dozen raw eggs.

When the snow ceased and the wind eased down, he began the almost impossible descent.  There was no trail, and he stumbled and blundered, often finding himself, at the last moment, on the edge of rocky walls and steep slopes the depth of which he had no way of judging.  Part way down, the stars clouded over again, and in the consequent obscurity he slipped and rolled and slid for a hundred feet, landing bruised and bleeding on the bottom of a large shallow hole.  From all about him arose the stench of dead horses.  The hole was handy to the trail, and the packers had made a practice of tumbling into it their broken and dying animals.  The stench overpowered him, making him deadly sick, and as in a nightmare he scrambled out.  Half-way up, he recollected Bondell’s gripsack.  It had fallen into the hole with him; the pack-strap had evidently broken, and he had forgotten it.  Back he went into the pestilential charnel-pit, where he crawled around on hands and knees and groped for half an hour.  Altogether he encountered and counted seventeen dead horses (and one horse still alive that he shot with his revolver) before he found Bondell’s grip.  Looking back upon a life that had not been without valour and achievement, he unhesitatingly declared to himself that this return after the grip was the most heroic act he had ever performed.  So heroic was it that he was twice on the verge of fainting before he crawled out of the hole.

By the time he had descended to the Scales, the steep pitch of Chilcoot was past, and the way became easier.  Not that it was an easy way, however, in the best of places; but it became a really possible trail, along which he could have made good time if he had not been worn out, if he had had light with which to pick his steps, and if it had not been for Bondell’s gripsack.  To him, in his exhausted condition, it was the last straw.  Having barely strength to carry himself along, the additional weight of the grip was sufficient to throw him nearly every time he tripped or stumbled.  And when he escaped tripping, branches reached out in the darkness, hooked the grip between his shoulders, and held him back.