Mountain events and news

...rolling of the warning drums, whose rattling echoes were heard issuing, on the damp morning air, out of every vista of the woods, just as day began to draw the shaggy outlines of some tall pines of the vicinity, on the opening brightness of a soft and cloudless eastern sky.

Long ago silent are European colonizers" drums which interrupted American Indians" natural course, but Iroquois shouts and Mohicans hooting, arrow whine and horse neighing were continuing heard in our ears, war paints and many-coloured feathers of Indians seemed from behind trees when our walking down a forest trail. May be, the trail was one of ancient Indian war paths known only to few pathfinders of that epoch, and perhaps just because of this, some indistinct war cries were heard to me. And to say the truth, sometimes it gives me the shivers. I was remembering THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS by James Fenimore Cooper - the story about North American Indians" struggle and their death under the contemporary civilization press. I pondered upon what in our time also each of us feels a similar pressure though in his own way - Cooper"s book is a narration of courage, severe and generous men - alas! Where are they now?

Our travel has been begun and finished at the Indian Peaks National Park, the Colorado state. It has resulted in ascents of the Lonely Eagle Peak on a variant of the classic way and on a new, first climbed by us route as well.