an alternate route consisting of forty miles of flooded river flats. Although some problems were encountered in getting the horses off the glacier, where they had to slide down a narrow ramp of ice flanked by deep crevasses, the traverse went smoothly and Harmon put the event to good photographic use.
Despite the adventures, or misadventures, of the journey, the expedition was successful, right down to the calculated snow storm in Jonas Pass on the way home, and Harmon returned with 400 stills and some 7 ,ooo feet of film. It was somehow fitting that he had been forced to wait eight days for the light to reach Mount Columbia, the second highest peak in the Rockies, the monarch of the Icefield, and one of the last mountains he felt he needed in his collection. It wasn’t until the afternoon of the eighth day, after time, food, and patience were exhausted and the pack train had been sent on down the valley, that Harmon, lingering behind, caught his image. The light played on the summit for less than forty minutes. At the end of those few minutes, Freeman recalled, ‘The black rectangles of paper tom from Harmon’s film-packs were piled up behind his tripods like the brass shells around a hard -pumped machine gun at the end of a battle.’
Harmon did not abandon the mountains after his 1924 Icefield trip. Winter and summer he was out with dog team and pack horse, with skier and hiker, but the Icefield expedition was his last extensive exploratory journey. He found that his business required more and more time, as did his desire to see new places and experience new things. Nearly every year from the midtwenties on he managed a major trip outside the mountains, often travelling to the American Southwest, but often as not to more remote, exotic spots: Mexico, Guatemala, Hong Kong, Europe, and once, in 1930, around the world. No matter where he went, he always insisted upon his return that the Rockies were the best of all and, indeed, wherever he went he carried