CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Sneffels is five thousand feet high. We walked behind our silent guide up the mountain. Although I still had many worries about our journey, I took an interest in the rocks and lava we walked through. I looked at the lava and rocks carefully as we walked further up the side of the mountain. Many parts of Iceland are covered in hardened lava, as the island has a great deal of dead volcanoes, from which hot liquid magma burst out many years ago, which dried into strange, smooth looking lava.

As we climbed higher, our journey became more difficult. The mountain became steeper and there were many more loose rocks, which made our walking quite dangerous. Hans moved calmly, as if he were on level ground. My uncle stayed close to me as much as possible. He was always watching to make sure I was nearby. His arm often gave me strong support.

After several hours of climbing up the mountain, my uncle saw that I was becoming rather weak and asked Hans to stop. He refused, telling my uncle there was a terrible storm coming. He pointed into the distance, and I saw the storm approaching. We kept walking up, now quite quickly. Soon enough, the mountain shook as the storm crashed into the mountain. Luckily, our clever guide had led us around to the other side of the mountain. If we had climbed the mountain on the opposite side, where we came from, we would all have been taken up by the storm and would certainly be dead. Finally, just before midnight, we reached the top of Sneffels.

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