Having gratified this desire, as he supposed, there had meantime arisen another desire,--upon reading the narrative of the Parker-Browne expedition of the previous year, a copy of which we were fortunate enough to procure just as we were starting for the mountain. It was the feeling of our whole company that the names of Professor Parker and Mr. Belmore Browne should be associated with the mountain they so very nearly ascended. When the eyes are cast aloft from the head of the Muldrow Glacier the most conspicuous feature of the view is a rudely conical tower of granite, standing sentinel over the entrance to the Grand Basin, and at the base of that tower is the pass into the upper glacier which is, indeed, the key of the whole ascent of the mountain. (See illustration opposite p. 40.) [Sidenote: Tower, Pass, and Ridge] We found no better place to set these names; we called the tower the Browne Tower and the pass the Parker Pass. The "pass" may not, it is true, conform to any strict Alpine definition of that term, but it gives the only access to the glacier floor. From the ridge below to the glacier above this place gives passage; and any place that gives passage may broadly be termed a pass. It was when this pass had been reached, after three weeks' toil, that the author was moved to the bestowal of another name by his admiration for the skill and pluck and perseverance of his chief colleague in the ascent. Those who think that a long apprenticeship must be served under skilled instructors before command of the technique of snow mountaineering can be obtained would have been astonished at Karstens's work on the Northeast Ridge. But it must be kept in mind that, while he had no previous experience on the heights, he had many years of experience with ice and snow--which is true of all of us except Tatum, and _he_ had two winters' experience. In the course of winter travel in the interior of Alaska most of the problems of snow mountaineering present themselves at one time or another. [Sidenote: Glacier]