According to A. D. Stutfield, monument supervisor, the remains washed out of the glacier after being locked in the ice since 1960. “They may have been lying out in the open for months,” he said. “It's not an area that gets much in the way of foot traffic."

A skeletal-identification expert has subsequently identified the bones as those of Fisk and James Pratt, both graduate students at the University of Washington, No trace of Miss Yount is believed to have been recovered.

Reached at his home in Seattle by telephone, the expedition director, Professor Melvin A. Tremaine of the University of Washington, said that he was “too overwhelmed with emotion by this new development to offer meaningful comment.” Tremaine himself was trapped in a glacial crevasse for 21 hours in the avalanche's aftermath.

The assistant director, Dr. Anna M. Henckel, was unavailable for comment.

Chapter 1

****

Glacier Bay Lodge, September 10, 1989

"I think it only fitting,” Professor Tremaine said, rising with a feline grace not often seen in a man of sixty-nine, “I think it only fitting that we conclude our first dinner together with a toast."

He inclined his handsome, scarred face downward while the waiter glided noiselessly around the table with a towel-wrapped magnum of Piper Heidsieck, the third of the evening. When each of the six fluted glasses had received its portion of champagne, Professor Tremaine lifted his head. With a tanned and graceful hand he casually brushed back the lock of thick, strikingly white hair that fell so often and so artlessly over his brow. His lean shoulders under the cashmere jacket were squared, his back straight. He raised his glass.