IT was ten below zero and half-past six on a February morning. Not a breath of breeze stirred. In the Glen it was broad daylight, though not yet sunrise. The atmosphere was sparkling clear, and the Great Range, that formed the western wall of the little mountain valley, stood sharply white against a sky of intensest blue. On the summits of Washing­ton, Adams, and Madison a pink blush stole across the snow. Sunrise had come to the upper world.

A dozen men and women emerged from the little inn, buckled on their snowshoes, shouldered their pack-bags, and by twos and threes clattered across the hard-packed door-yard snow toward the big mountain. The call of the summit was not to be denied on such a morning. Could they make it? Easily enough  —  provided. Legs and hearts and lungs could be relied on in that party. For four days they had been tried out in minor climbs. Equipment adapted to the conditions of the place and season was not lacking to insure a safe success. Only a change in the weather could spoil the day. Would the weather hold? Would the wind rise later in the day? These were the questions upper­most in their minds during the next two hours as they plugged stolidly up the first four miles of the old carriage road to the Half-Way House at timber-line.

It was a picturesque bunch of humanity, each member clad as his or her whimsy led. It is well that it is stated that both men and women were in the party, for at a trifling distance, and out of earshot of their voices, this might not have been apparent to an on­looker. Clothes, 't is said, do not make the man, but on a winter mountaineering trip they certainly make the woman  —  shall it be said  —  almost like the man. On that same morning Bostonians at home were muffling in furs to repel a cold that did not push the mercury down to the zero mark. In that. clear, crisp mountain air scarce an ear was covered, and mittened hands were likewise the exception. Once across the open flat and grinding upward in the sheltering timber, jackets and sweaters were opened one by one, then gradually peeled and consigned to the packs. Even at zero and below it can be a perspiry performance after the sun has risen above the Carter Range on such a windless morning.

Trudge, trudge, trudge, trudge. It would be a monotonous and wearying chore, dig­ging up those even grades, were it not for the little incidents of the way. Squirrels and rabbits, partridges and foxes, wild-cats even, have been that way before you and have left a record of their haste or leisure in the snow. The cheerful chickadees also are on hand, and, confident of your good-will, pause from their busy search for food long enough to throw you a contented "thee."

Rounding a shoulder a break in the forest opens a vista upward toward the summit, and with that glimpse the spell is on you more firmly than ever. Your legs reach out more eagerly. The sight lifts several pounds from off your back. Soon the timber begins to shorten. There is more spruce and balsam and mountain ash, and less maple. You do not need an aneroid to tell you that you are getting up. Suddenly your head comes out into the open. The trees sink down to mere shrubs. A broad view north into the valley of the Androscoggin is spread out, and look­ing ahead along the road there looms the black bulk of the old toll-house at the four-mile turn. Timber-line has been reached. Of the forty-seven hundred feet of rise to make from Glen to summit, twenty-four hundred are behind.

The mere thought of climbing Mount Washington in winter is a horror to some. Indeed, it is not a jaunt to be undertaken in any careless spirit, or without a good knowl­edge of the mountain and its moods, or with anything short of good equipment. But it is not a fool's errand, although it is well to be careful in whom you confide your fondness for such excursions lest your sanity be ques­tioned. Yet not a winter has passed these twenty-five years or more that has not seen more than one party on the summit of New England's highest mountain. Latterly it has become the Mecca of the Dartmouth (Col­lege) Outing Club boys for their annual win­ter trip, and some members of the Appala­chian Mountain Club, and people from the near-by towns of Gorham and Berlin as well, make the ascent nearly every year. Clearly the crazy ones are on the increase. And there would be more yet if such days as that which favored the party from the Glen could be guaranteed.

Winter ascents have been made on several occasions under conditions far from ideal, but no one who has ever experienced the summit in bad winter weather would will­ingly repeat it. Nothing is more completely calculated to take the joy out of life, judg­ing from the tales of those who have lived through one of Mount Washington's angry winter fits. So far all have lived through, though there were some narrow escapes among the United States Signal Service men in the days when the Government maintained an observation station on the summit. Not a few, even in recent years, have been unex­pectedly caught on the top by an on-rushing storm, and marooned there for a night or two, not an experience to be craved by any means.

Although shelter may be obtained by forc­ing an entrance to one of the buildings, fuel is not abundant at two thousand feet above timber-line, food is likely to be scanty, and bedding wholly wanting. To be forced to spend a night there under such conditions as the Signal Service men experienced on one or two occasions would hardly be salu­brious. Fifty-nine below zero was the coldest that they encountered, and once, even with a red-hot stove in a snugly sealed room, wa­ter froze a few feet from the fire. Nor does any one care to take rash chances in a place where the wind has been known to blow at a pace of one hundred and eighty miles an hour or more. Four of us, well-equipped men, are ready to testify that it is-.sufficient­ly rough to be caught there in a frost cloud when the temperature is as mild as twenty degrees above zero, and in a wind against which it is possible to stand and walk.

Suffice it to say that Mount Washington's summit weather in winter is most untrust­worthy, and he who treats it casually is but foolhardy. Conditions in the neighboring valleys, or on the minor mountains round­about, are no indication of those on top. All may be serene and smiling below, and yet a fearful battle of the elements be raging up above. Timber-line is the limit of safety. Before venturing beyond that the climber needs to take account of his stock of pru­dence, and the inexperienced one who ven­tures farther unguided will deserve what he gets.

Of the three usual winter routes to the summit probably that by the carriage road is the one most used, largely because it is the one most accessible, with a hotel at its lower end, and a sled-road open to it throughout the winter from Gorham on the north. Figured from base to summit it is, indeed, the longest route, and the one most exposed as well, with its four miles of ram­blings above the tree-line. Its miles do not count for fatigue, however, for the continuous panorama of the neighboring snowy peaks and black ravines make this anything but a tedious tramp. There can be no deny­ing that it is a perilous route in winter, and the climber needs to assign to one eye at least the constant duty of watching the weather, which has a way of changing its mind for the worse without much muttered warning. To escape to the timber, once the ascent of Chandler Ridge has been under­taken, is no easy matter.

Most old hands quit the carriage road half a mile or so above the Half-Way House to cut straight up the steep slopes along the telephone line. There are two advantages in this. It shortens the distance by about a mile by the elimination of a long detour which the road is forced to make for grade, a stretch that is always badly drifted, and sometimes dangerously iced. It also affords a shorter avenue of escape into the Gulf on the west by Chandler Brook or the Six Hus­bands' Trail in case of need. To attempt to retreat on the east and south through Hunt­ington and Tuckerman Ravines might be possible under some conditions, but would only be attempted probably as a last ex­tremity, as it is no mean alpine stunt to descend the steep walls, especially those of Huntington.

Undoubtedly the safest approach to the top is that which was used by the Signal Service men, up the cog railway from the west. It is also the shortest, being only three miles from Base Station to summit, and sheltered by the trees for more than half the distance. There is no need to take chances on the weather on this route. If it is unsuit­able on the summit the climber knows it the minute his head comes out of the trees, and he has but to duck and retrace. It is fur­thermore one of the recognized retreats to safety for those arriving on the summit by other routes, and caught there by sudden changes, since, whatever the quarter from which the wind may blow, the great cone of the mountain furnishes a fairly good lee in the shelter of which it is possible to beat around until the rails are reached. The out with this approach is the remoteness of the Base Station of the railroad from habita­tions, being between six and seven miles from Crawfords in one direction, and from Bretton Woods in the other, over unbroken roads. That taken into consideration makes this route longer than the carriage road by a mile or more, and it is far less interesting.

The sporty climb is through Tuckerman Ravine, and it is also a safe one relatively speaking. No prettier snowshoe tramp is to be had in all the mountains than that up to the floor of the ravine, whether the route be from the Glen by the Raymond Path, or the steeper way, from Pinkham Notch via Crystal Cascade. Moreover, Tuckerman Ra­vine is itself one of the great sights of the mountains at any season, but particularly in winter when its floor is packed deep in drifted snow, and its head wall, rising steeply for eight hundred feet, gleams with crust and ice. Even though turned back at this point by undesirable weather above, as the writer has been repeatedly, it is certain that no one will feel that the day was spent in vain.

To climb that Tuckerman wall to the Alpine Garden at the foot of the cone is work that attracts the alpinist. If it be icy, then ice-axe, creepers, and even the rope are essential. At other times the snow may be soft enough to admit of kicking toe-holds up the entire distance, but one needs to be care­ful even then, for a head-first coast, or a pin-wheel roll, down that forty-five-degree wall could result seriously. The roll was once accomplished without mishap, quite unintentionally, it may be remarked, but the gentleman never volunteered to show companions on subsequent trips how it was done. Above the wall comes the cone, affording a lee against the north and west winds in all but the most boisterous weather, a stiff push of half a mile.

There are two other approaches to the summit of Mount Washington that have at times been followed by adventurous winter parties. One is up from Crawfords by the historic Bridle-Path over the Southern Peaks. Probably this is the most dangerous of all. The other is from Randolph by way of the Northern Peaks, not quite so hazardous, be­cause of the more frequent opportunities for retreat, but sufficiently bad to be approached with the utmost caution.

By the carriage road the Half-Way House is the head of snowshoe navigation and the beginning of creeper travel. Here, too, it is well to resume some of the clothing that the warming tramp up through the timber made superfluous. The last of the protecting scrub vanishes here, and a few rods more takes one around the Horn, and out to the open snow-fields of a distinctly alpine world. In truth these are the "Christall Hills" as an early explorer called them. Across the for­ested depths of the Great Gulf rise Madi­son, Adams, Jefferson, and Clay, the Great Northern Peaks, brilliant in their snowy caps, their spruce-draped flanks slashed down with ice-filled slides. Washington's head is hidden behind the crest of Chan­dler Ridge which mounts above one in steep terraces.

Should there be wind it will be encoun­tered at the Horn. That it does blow there at times is amply testified to by the densely packed snow and by its graceful surface sculpturings. This morning it was still, and not a wind cloud could be detected on any hand. The northern valleys lay veiled in such a soft gray haze as is often seen in summer and referred to as "heat." Along the length of the Carter and Baldface Ranges on the east this deepened to a smoky, pur­plish tone. Through the cols on either side of Clay white frost clouds gently rolled, pushed up from the west, only to dissipate on the edge of the Gulf under the bright glare of the morning sun.

Steadily the creepers crunched up the steep slope of the ridge. Slowly but surely Nelson Crag was reached and skirted, bring­ing to view the summit, now close at hand. By luncheon-time we were there, and it was all done as easily and as comfortably as would be possible on the finest summer day. More so in fact, for surely no one had suffered from heat, nor from the other extreme for that matter. Sitting in the sun to munch our lunch­eon, with backs against the hotel wall, it was with difficulty that we credited the thermometer's reading of four above zero just around the corner in the shade.

Mount Washington's summit was first as­cended in winter as long ago as 1858, when Ben Osgood, the old Glen House guide, pi­loted a deputy sheriff' up the carriage road for the purpose of making a legal attachment. Four years later three North Country men made the first winter trip in a sporting spirit, only to be imprisoned in the old Summit House for two days and nights by a violent storm. Their tale, coupled with that of the sheriff, who narrowly escaped from a frost cloud on his descent, doubtless served, for a time, to quiet any latent enthusiasm in others for such an excursion. And yet it is quite probable that men have more than once since then weathered equally bad conditions on the mountain without serious distress.

The modern garb of windproof outer cloth­ing over light woolens, with face masks and hoods, makes it possible for a healthy and vig­orous person to stand deeper frost and harder blows. This matter of clothing and equipment has received careful study by the Ap­palachian Mountain Club's committees for many years, and much that is best in ma­terials and patterns, be they in snowshoes and other appliances, or in raiment, that are on sale to-day, are the result of the exper­iments and severe testings of the Club's members.

After the Weather Bureau's station on the mountain was established in 1870 the observers not infrequently entertained winter callers, and it was during this period that the first snow ascent by women was made, two daughters of Ethan Allen Crawford ac­companying their brother and nephew up the cog railway. Thirty-two years later a Massachusetts woman made the top by the carriage road in February, escorted by a group of stalwart Appalachian men, and in recent years it has been no uncommon thing for women to be in the climbing parties.

Winter climbs to the summit have been made from every direction in the past twenty-five years, and there have been not a few trying experiences among those climbers, the details of which they have kept much to themselves. With the steadily increasing in­terest in winter sports, and the opening year by year of more and more hotels amid the mountains in response to this demand, it is altogether likely that the lure of the great white cone will reach hundreds where dozens have hitherto been tempted by it.

Then will come the danger, that perhaps it will be the duty of the Government, in its capacity as proprietor of the mountain, to avert, by forbidding the ascent of the main summit during the winter months except under the pilotage of licensed guides. To any one who has ever experienced those winter alpine scenes the fascination is perennially irresistible. With steam-heated hotels, and with clothing adapted to the conditions, no privation or hardship is any longer involved, and every beauty and every thrill may be en­joyed, short of a climb to the top of the big peak, without incurring the smallest peril.