The Ascent of Denali (Mount McKinley): A Narrative of the First Complete Ascent of the Highest; Peak in North AmericaStuck, Hudson
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The Ascent of Denali (Mount McKinley): A Narrative of the First Complete Ascent of the Highest; Peak in North America
Stuck, Hudson
McKinley, Mount (Alaska); Mountaineering -- Alaska -- McKinley, Mount; Stuck, Hudson, 1863-1920 -- Travel -- Alaska -- McKinley, Mount
The culminating day should not be allowed to pass without another
tribute to the efficiency of the amber glasses. Notwithstanding the
glare of the sun at twenty thousand feet and upward, no one had the
slightest irritation of the eyes. There has never been an April of
travel on the Yukon in eight years that the writer has not suffered from
inflammation of the eyes despite the darkest smoke-colored glasses that
could be procured. A naked candle at a road-house would give a stab of
pain every time the eyes encountered it, and reading would become almost
impossible. The amber glasses, however, while leaving vision almost as
bright as without them, filter out the rays that cause the irritation
and afford perfect protection against the consequences of sun and glare.
There is only one improvement to make in the amber glasses, and that is
some device of air-tight cells that shall prevent them from fogging when
the cold on the outside of the glass condenses the moisture of
perspiration on the inside of the glass. We use double-glazed sashes
with an air space between on all windows in our houses in Alaska and
find ourselves no longer incommoded by frost on the panes; some
adaptation of this principle should be within the skill of the optician
and would remove a very troublesome defect in all snow-glasses.
If some one would invent a preventive against shortness of breath as
efficient as amber glasses are against snow-blindness, climbing at great
altitudes would lose all its terrors for one mountaineer. So far as it
was possible to judge, no other member of the party was near his
altitude limit. There seemed no reason why Karstens and Walter in
particular should not go another ten thousand feet, were there a
mountain in the world ten thousand feet higher than Denali, but the
writer knows that he himself could not have gone much higher.
FOOTNOTE:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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