A group of Boy Scouts was descending from snowy Mount Spokane when they were surprised to see two young women, Elizabeth Hante and Elise Hanst, making their way to the top on snowshoes.

These two “brave damsels,” as The Spokesman-Review called them, stayed at Cook’s Cabin and reached the summit the next morning.

“Sunrise from Mount Spokane was lovely,” Hanst said. “The clouds were a pale pink below us and the peaks of the other mountains were like islands rising out of the waves. There must be 30 feet of snow on top of the mountain.”

This was not an unusual outing for the two women. Every weekend they took long walks and were used to rigorous hikes. They carried a pack with blankets, bacon, chocolate, raisins, coffee and other provisions.

They saw tracks of deer, wolves and bobcats, but the only animals they actually met were squirrels.

“There was a pack rat in the cabin last night, too,” Hanst said with a laugh.

From the theater file: Fritz Leiber, a noted Shakespearean actor, was coming to Spokane to perform four Shakespeare plays in four performances at the Auditorium Theater.

He was booked to perform, in order, “Macbeth,” “Romeo and Juliet,” “The Taming of the Shrew” and “Hamlet.” Leiber had been hailed by New York critics as “the best exponent of the classical tradition of any actor now before the American public.”

On this day

(From onthisday.com)

1966: John Lennon says “We (the Beatles) are more popular than Jesus.”