Around me towered the stupendous mountain masses which make up the backbone of the Rockies.

From my feet, as far as I could see, stretched a rugged and barren chaos of ridges and detached rock masses.
Behind me, far below, the stream wound like a silver ribbon, fringed with dark conifers and the changing, dying foliage of poplar and quaking aspen.

In front the bottoms of the valleys were filled with the sombre evergreen forest, dotted here and there with black, ice-skimmed tarns; and the dark spruces clustered also in the higher gorges, and were scattered thinly along the mountain sides.

The snow which had fallen lay in drifts and streaks, while, where the wind had scope it was blown off, and the ground left bare.
For two hours I walked onwards across the ridges and valleys.

Then among some scattered spruces, where the snow lay to the depth of half a foot, I suddenly came on the fresh, broad trail of a grisly.