Harvard Mountaineering Club

and fortunately were unimportant. The morning breakfast of
Fred's oatmeal, scraped off the snow after three weeks in the rain,
and boiled with a tablespoon of Klim, no salt, and no sugar-then
burned, was forgotten in the joy of having plenty of food.
July nineteenth produced some ominous looking clouds, but Bud
and I skied around behind the Paw to reconnoiter our proposed
route. Just as we turned the southeast end of the mountain the.
clouds settled down onto the glacier, completely obscuring the view.
Hopefully we continued, involved ourselves in an icefall somewhere
on the north face of the mountain, and finally decided that we did
not know exactly where we were. The expected rain appeared
while we returned to camp following the holes made by our skipoles
in the icy crust. At camp we found that Bill and Georgia had arrived
with the news that the Cutler needed sneakers to be climbed
safely. Now that the aerial drop had been made, we possessed
sneakers and could devote ourselves more seriously to climbing.
During more rain on the following day we were musing in our
tents when a more thoughtful member of the party came up with
the Michael Cycle. This natural law stated that the weather on the
Juneau Icefield consisted of a cycle of one and one-half days of clear
weather followed by two days of rain. To our amusement the
cycle worked fairly well during our stay of two weeks.
The morning of the twenty-first found us asleep in a heavy fog.
By afternoon we decided the Michael Cycle predicted good weather
to come and so we packed a small camp around to the north side of
the Paw; Here Bill, Georgia, and I passed the night while Fred
returned to our main camp.
At dawn we began the climb up the steep glacier to the westernmost
col. The route to the summit would have to be from the col
or up the steep northeast ridge which extended half way down to
camp. All morning we worked out a path to the col between numerous
crevasses. There were three delicate snow bridges without
which the climb might not have been possible. Skag, being unroped,
needed much moral encouragement to cross them. Higher up when
the glacier was about one hundred yards wide, there was a series of
large crevasses cutting completely across it. A fourteen foot overhanging
lip on one cost us an hour. Skag had to be hoisted up this
on a rope along with loud protestations but otherwise he climbed
under his own steam.
[ 10 J
COlwtesy of Appalach·ia Photo, rv. L. Ptttnam
SKIING ACROSS THE JUNEAU ICEFIELD, RESEARCH PEAK IN DISTANCE
COlwtesy of Appalachia
Photo,W. L. Ptttnam
MICH.AELS SWORD (LEFT) AND DEVILS PAW (RIGHT) FROM THE SOUTH