noon
In spots their twisted roots obscured the trail ; in others the persistent growth had thrust aside rocks and dirt . We had to make our way through tangles of underbrush which would have been nothing to a trailman , but which made our ground-accustomed bodies ache with the effort of getting over or through them ; and once the track was totally blocked by a barricade of tangled dead brushwood , borne down on floodwater after a sudden thaw or cloud-burst . We had to work painfully around it over a three-hundred-foot rockslide , which we could cross only one at a time , crab-fashion , leaning double to balance ourselves ; and no one complained now about the rope . Toward noon I had the first intimation that we were not alone on the slope . At first it was no more than a glimpse of motion out of the corner of my eyes , the shadow of a shadow . The fourth time I saw it , I called softly to Kyla : `` See anything ? '' `` I was beginning to think it was my eyes , or the altitude .