The wind had a mean edge on it as it curved to cross the crest of the Sierra Nevada and found us there, two thousand feet above the site of the Donner Party tragedy, trying to find out how to camp in deep snow. It was deep snow that caught the Donners' immigrants back in 1846. Thirty-six people died from cold and starvation, and more would have starved, probably, but for cannibalism.

Our exposed spot on the crest was not where you would expect to find a father pushing fifty, much less being pushed by his two teenage sons. But there we were anyway, and by plan.

We knew that California has come (or gone) quite a distance since the Donner Party's ordeal. Skiing technique has progressed quite a bit too since Snowshoe Thompson carried the trans-Sierra mails in the late 'fifties (the eighteen-fifties, that is) on his eleven-foot skis and since his contemporaries set 85-mile-per-hour speed records in the earliest American ski races on record.

More relevantly, we also knew that California has gone a fair distance in making a sport of the best of what the Donners and Thompson learned—how to survive in snow and how to ski safely through rugged, untracked terrain. The ice-edged wind found us looking at the very peaks upon which that new sport, ski mountaineering, had been adapted to California terrain by the Sierra Club and then exported to help the armed forces in World War II. I was exported too, and saw how our ski-mountaineering technique and equipment aided the troops, myself included, giving them combat mobility and esprit that should be recorded better than it has been before it is forgotten.

Now, after too long a lapse, I was back in old Sierra haunts. I brought my sons to this crest, not to expose them to danger but to try to show them how to avoid it. I wanted very much to see them feel at home on the snow, far back in the winter wilderness, all around the clock and all around the compass.

Moreover, I also had a suspicion that every generation needs to invent contests which it can be first to win. This certainly seems to be true of people who look to mountains for their contests. The two generations before mine won their contests—most of them—on the great peaks of the Alps and the major summits of the United States. My generation finished off the Himalayan giants. I mean, that's what climbers did who could afford such expeditions; the less affluent of us settled for little-known peaks or for switching seasons or routes on climbs of the well-known summits.

To pioneer, father never had it so rough; he had only to find a peak. I myself could still pioneer merely by finding hard ways up easy peaks—and going back down to spend the night in comfort. Today's mountaineers, however, must look for the hardest way up the hardest peaks, and be willing to spend several successive nights trying to sleep partly inside a sack partly suspended from a cliff. The suspense is tremendous! What next? As a parent of children who may momentarily join the ranks of today's mountaineers, I care. I dread their feeling they must outdo the Eiger and Yosemite men. I hope their pioneering can have more fun in it, no less challenge, and fewer of the spices of danger.

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