AN ICE RIVER
Early the next morning, while they were eating breakfast, Hugh said,
“Now, boys, let’s saddle and ride up this middle fork. I don’t think it
goes far, and I reckon we’ll not see much up there. We can come back and
maybe pack up and get to the head of the other fork to-night. You boys
go out right after breakfast and picket the pack horses and bring in the
saddle animals, while I’m washing up the dishes and rigging up a scare
over this meat, to keep off the birds.”
When the boys got in with the saddle horses, after tying the pack horses
so that they could not follow, they found that Hugh had put up a pole
which slanted over the meat on the scaffold, and to that pole he had
tied a cross-stick from which a long strip of cloth was waving merrily
in the breeze.
“There,” said Hugh, “as long as this wind blows, no bird or animal will
bother that meat. Now let’s start along.”
They rode fast up the valley of the middle fork, for in most places it
was fairly open; sometimes in pretty park-like meadows, where the tall
white-crowned flower stems of the soap grass waved in the wind,
sometimes in broad flat meadows of wet ground, which looked suspiciously
like beaver meadows, and sometimes in scattering pine timber growing
from low mounds. As they advanced, the valley grew narrower, and on
both sides the mountains rose high and steep, but here and there on the
heights above they could see the edges of snow fields, and when they
reached the head of the valley they found themselves under a tall
precipice, over which flowed two great water-falls, which had their
sources in the snow banks far above. It was a cold, gray place, grim and
grand, but not picturesque nor beautiful, and soon all three were glad
to turn about and gallop down the valley toward the sunlight, which was
flooding the lower country.
It was not yet noon when they reached the camp, and Hugh said they would
just stop for dinner and then move on.
The boys loosened the cinches of the saddle horses, tied them up,
brought in the pack horses and saddled them, and took down the tent and
packed up the meat, which by this time was quite dry. An hour later,
Hugh mounted his horse and they again set out up the trail.
Jack did not clearly see how they were going to get into the valley of
the other fork, as the way appeared blocked by the lake on their left,
which seemed to run to the very bases of the mountains which lay on
three sides of it. However, he followed Hugh and asked no questions.
Joe, however, said, “How do you suppose we’re going to get into that
valley, Jack? Are we going to swim this lake?”
“You can’t prove it by me,” said Jack. “But I reckon Hugh will find a
way.”
“That’s so,” said Joe, “White Bull knows how to travel in the mountains.
I guess we’ll get there.”
Hugh followed the trail that they had now passed over several times,
until he had reached the head of the lake, and then turning off into the
forest to the left, began to pick his way toward the mountains that lay
west of the lake. Before long they came to the stream along which they
had traveled in the morning. It was wide, but not deep, and the bottom
was hard. There was much pine timber and a good deal of marshy land
through which they passed slowly and with some difficulty, but at length
they came to higher ground where progress was better.
As they went on they could see sometimes through the trees the water of
the lake on the left; while to the right the mountainside rose above
them.
After a mile or two of this travel they came to more marshy meadow
ground and then entered a belt of forest, and passing through this,
found themselves in a wide willow-grown park, which evidently had once
been the bed of a shallow lake.
Mountains rose on either side, and to the left they could hear the
murmur of the stream. This stream they crossed and following it up,
before long found themselves on the border of another long, narrow lake,
hemmed in on both sides by mountains. The timber on this side grew
thickly, and Hugh, instead of trying to go through it, kept out a little
way in the lake, riding just beyond the overhanging branches of the
trees and in water which was from six inches to a foot deep. The bottom
was hard gravel--good going.
The country was absolutely wild and undisturbed, and Jack expected every
moment to see or hear game in the timber. He kept looking and listening
for this so intently that he neglected the bare sides of the mountains
across the lake, until Joe, who was just before him, driving the pack
horses that followed Hugh, turned and making a sign to attract his
attention, pointed to the mountainside. Then Jack saw, lying down on the
face of the cliff, far above the water and really at a great distance
from him, a monstrous white goat. He was greatly impressed by the beast,
which, as it lay there with its head lowered, its long beard nearly
reaching to the ground, the hump on its back and its low hind quarters,
reminded him very much of a buffalo.
By the time the travelers had reached the head of the lake the sun had
disappeared and long shadows were creeping up the sides of the mountain
to the east of them.
Hugh stopped his horse, looked about a little, and said, “Now, boys, I
don’t know what there is beyond here, and it’s getting late in the day.
I reckon we may as well stop and camp here and then to-morrow morning
look out a trail up above. We’re not greatly rushed for time, and if we
travel in the dark we’re liable to run into some mud hole, or find a lot
of fallen timber, and perhaps get in trouble that will take us some
little time to get out of. Let’s camp here and do our exploring
to-morrow. We’ll have to pitch the tent in the timber and I reckon the
horses can get along in this little park at the head of the lake. There
isn’t very much for them to eat, and so we’ll have to tie them up.
Suppose we unload here, and I’ll begin to get supper while you boys make
some pins and picket the horses, and put up the tent.”
They did as he said, and when darkness fell the white tent gleamed among
the green timber, and a fire--perhaps the first ever kindled on the
borders of this lake--cast its cheerful gleam over the water.
Camp was astir very early the next morning, for this was to be a day of
real exploration; a trip up to the head of the narrow valley and then
perhaps a climb up the mountains beyond, for Hugh had said that the main
Divide was probably near at hand.
During the talk of the evening before, he had expressed the belief that
they could go only a little farther with horses, and that when they
reached the head of the valley the animals must be left behind, and the
mountains, stern and forbidding, the snow-covered peaks which had been
in sight ever since they had entered the valley, must be climbed afoot.
While breakfast was being cooked, Joe and Jack changed the pack horses
to fresh grass, and brought in and saddled the three riding animals. A
little later all three mounted, and Hugh taking the lead, they plunged
into the forest to try to find a trail to the foot of the mountains.
It was not easy riding. The timber was thick and stood close together.
Hugh made his way down to the stream in the hope that it would be
possible to ride up its bed and so avoid the obstacles in the forest,
but though they entered the creek, they were soon obliged to leave it,
for it was blocked by masses of drift timber, over which the horses
could not pass. They had traveled a little more than half a mile up the
valley, when they came to the edge of a snowslide, the path of an
enormous avalanche, which many years before had rushed down the
mountainside, making a path through the forest several hundred yards in
width.
From this open space a fine view was had of the mountains, and of a
great glacier that lay at the head of the valley--an enormous mass of
ice a mile or two wide and a half mile deep, lying in a great cup in the
mountainside. The glacier was covered for the most part with new fallen
snow, but here and there broken surfaces showed blue or green in the
light of the morning sun.
While the others looked at the ice, Joe borrowed the field glasses and
began to sweep the mountains for goats, and presently found one, and
then another, until at last he had made out no less than eleven of the
animals. Then after a time they went on and entered the forest on the
upper side of the snowslide, where the going was open and dry, and a
little farther on crossed a large stream coming out of a side canyon.
Not far beyond that the timber grew thinner, and presently they rode out
into a little grassy park.
Just as they passed out of the timber they heard a noise of stones
rattling in front of them, and a moment later the plunge of a heavy body
into water, and then the cracking of branches, growing fainter and
fainter.
“Ho,” said Hugh to Jack, “I reckon we started a moose or an elk here,
and he’s going up the mountain.”
They rode forward and in a very few moments reached the gravelly borders
of a lake which was hemmed in on three sides by mountains. Just opposite
them and seen against the great dark precipice, which partly hid the
glacier from their view, fell a white line of foam, the melting water of
the great ice mass which supplied the lake. At the head of the lake was
a narrow fringe of willows and then an open meadow of small extent,
broken on one side by a low, rocky, pine-grown knoll. Behind the little
meadow rose a thousand feet of black precipice, and above this was the
glacier. Behind the glacier stood a jagged wall of rock, but on either
side to the right and the left rose abruptly high mountains, which
seemed to terminate in knife edges of naked rock. The scene was perhaps
the grandest and most beautiful that Jack had ever beheld near at hand.
It made him feel solemn, while Hugh’s look at these tremendous heights
was full of respect and admiration.
“Son,” said Hugh, “those mountains there seem to threaten one, rather
than to ask him to come on. It’s a job to get up there, and I don’t feel
sure that we can do it in one day. If we go, we’ve got to start right
away, and we’d better leave our animals here and take it afoot from this
on.”
“Yes,” said Jack, “we can’t get the horses any further; and we may as
well picket them here.”
Joe asked, “You are going to try to climb up there?”
“Why, yes, Joe,” replied Jack. “I want to get on to that ice up there if
I can, and maybe look over on to the other side of the mountains.”
“Well,” said Joe, “I don’t like those mountains much; they scare me. I’d
like to get back on the prairie where the sun shines warm and you can
ride wherever you want to.”
“Oh, come on,” said Jack; “if you get up there, you’ll be where no
Piegan has been before. Come along.”
“Come on, Joe,” said Hugh. “You may as well get used to the mountains
now as any other time.”
The three tied their horses to pine trees, and took off the bridles so
that they could feed. Then Hugh said, “Now, I reckon the best thing for
us to do is to try to work our way around this lake and climb up that
place where the water is tumbling down. It looks like a bad place, but
it’s liable to be a good deal easier than it looks. We don’t know
anything about these mountainsides, and if we try to go up them we’re
liable to take a whole lot of time, and not get anywhere to-night. Let’s
go right around this lake, crawl through the alder brush that grows at
its edge, and then try to get up that flume where the water comes down.
I think we can do it.”
They started off without delay, and as they reached the rough shingle at
the edge of the lake, Hugh pointed to some tracks where the stones and
sand were thrown up and said, “That’s what we heard a little while ago.”
On the large stones it was impossible to tell just what animal had made
the tracks, but before they had gone far they saw where it had come down
to the lake to drink, and in the grass and in the bare soil above they
found the tracks of a good-sized moose.
The work of making their way over the talus at the lake border and
through the willows and alders which grew among the fallen rocks was
slow and difficult. The stones were more or less covered with moss and
care was needed in stepping, lest a slip should send one of the men
sliding down the slope and into the cold waters below.
At last, however, they had passed through the alders and reached the
rocky promontory where the going was open, and passing over this, were
soon in the open meadow below the precipice, where they took a moment’s
breathing spell, then started on, breasting a steep shoulder which gave
an easy ascent for a couple of hundred feet to the lowest step of the
cliff they wished to climb. Soon they reached the ledge and walked along
it until they came to the very bed of the falls, and here began the
serious work of the day.
The icy torrent which for ages had been flowing over this precipice had
cut for itself a deep channel. On one side or the other of this channel
the rock had fallen away so as to furnish here a crevice, there a
projecting knob, which gave hand or foothold to the climber. At times,
to be sure, they found before them a smooth, naked cliff which could not
be climbed, and then search must be made along its face for a place up
which they could pass.
They climbed slowly and carefully, often crossing the stream from one
side to the other, clinging to little spruce trees that grew in the
crevices of the rock, thrusting their fingers into cracks and fitting
their feet on some knob or projecting splinter that would give them
support. Slowly they worked their way upward, inch by inch, foot by
foot.
Often the crossing of the stream was nervous work, for the boulders
which lay in it were worn smooth as glass, and the fine mist which rose
from the falling waters froze to the rocks, making them very slippery.
Sometimes long jumps had to be made from one to another of these rocks,
often in places where a slip might cause a bad fall on rough rocks
below.
About two-thirds of the way to the top of the precipice they came out on
a shelf perhaps a hundred feet wide, which was almost covered by high
heaped rocks and gravel--morainal drift brought down by the glacier
from above. This was composed of boulders and stones of all sizes, from
masses as large as a small house to grains no bigger than a pin’s head.
Here they stopped to rest, and Hugh, with his back against a great rock,
smoked a comforting pipe.
Close at hand they could see the beauty of the white, quivering falls
rushing down the cliff, often by vertical plunges of a hundred feet or
more, or down steep inclines, and in one place they had worn a deep
fissure in the slate and shot down with a hissing sound thirty or forty
feet back from one who looked in on them from the narrow opening of the
crevice. Everywhere there was spray and dampness, and Jack was reminded
in some respects of the high mountain torrents which he had seen during
his famous canoe trip in British Columbia.
From here the going was much easier. The precipice was no longer
vertical, but ascended in a series of huge steps to the level of the
glacier.
There they began to see, at the lower border of the ice, vast quantities
of drift spread far and wide, and to the right high naked ridges lying
parallel to the course of the ice river. The crests of these ridges were
sometimes fifty or sixty feet above the surface of the ice which lay
against them and from a quarter to a half mile in length. At its lower
border, the glacier had melted and had been covered with stones, so that
it was hard to say just where the ice ended and the drift which it had
carried before it began.
The main body of the glacier lay in the cup-shaped depression already
spoken of, but high up on the rock wall behind it and to the left, was
another enormous mass of ice looking like a huge snowball thrown
against the wall. Its size was very great, but there was no means of
estimating it. Hugh thought that the lower ice was two miles across, and
nearly a mile deep.
At first the climbers had eyes only for the ice and the mountains which
lay in front of them, but presently Joe happened to look behind him down
the valley, and there, far, far away, was the yellow prairie shining in
the warm sunshine. Joe called the attention of the others to this,
saying, “Don’t it look nice down there?”
The climb had taken much less time than had been anticipated, not that
the height to which they had ascended had been less than they had
thought, but because the way had been very direct and they had wasted
little time in resting or loitering.
After their first view, Hugh led the way to a little grassy spot just
outside of one of the moraines and, sitting down in a sheltered spot,
said, “Let’s sit here and smoke a pipe, and then get up as high as we
can and see the whole show; and then we can turn around and go back.” As
they sat there they had a fine view of the valley below them.
“Isn’t it a fine thing, Hugh,” said Jack, “to get up here and see just
how this glacier is acting? Don’t you remember how Mr. Fannin explained
glaciers to us; how simple and easy he made it to understand how they
acted? I don’t think I shall ever forget the way he talked about them,
and I don’t think I shall ever see one without looking for the things
that he explained to us.”
“Yes,” said Hugh, “that’s so, he sure did make things plain, and I don’t
wonder that you remember what he said. I was thinking of him when we
got up here, but one of the things that seems queerest to me about this
ice is that it’s all made of snow. He said it was, and now we can see
for ourselves that it is. I was looking as we came along, and you can
see places just at the edges of the snow where it seems to be changing
to ice. I guess the snow just gets solider and solider, and then gets
water soaked and makes real ice.”
“Of course,” said Jack, “that must be it. When I was a small boy I used
to make snow forts and defend them with snowballs, and sometimes the
fellows would make the snowballs when the weather was warm and the snow
was melting, and if it froze that night, they would be just solid ice.
To get hit with one of those ice balls was a good deal like getting hit
with a stone.”
“Well,” said Hugh, “I expect if no more snow fell up here this piece of
ice would just melt away and leave nothing but the hole that it’s laying
in--just a sort of a basin in the side of the mountain.”
“Yes,” said Jack, “I guess that’s so. I think that’s what Mr. Fannin
told us; that a glacier was a glacier, because it was constantly being
added to at its upper end, and the weight of the snow and ice was
pushing it along over the mountainside. I take it that a snowbank might
be ice at the bottom, perhaps, but that if it doesn’t move it isn’t a
glacier.”
“Yes,” said Hugh, “I reckon that’s so. I took notice of another thing,”
he went on, “as we were coming along. Did you see how this ice seems to
be in layers? Some of ’em are half an inch thick and some of ’em an
inch, and there seems to be a thin crust of dirt that separates one
layer from another.”
“Yes,” said Jack, “I noticed that, and I was wondering how it could
happen, or what it meant.”
“Well, I was figuring on that very thing,” said Hugh, “and it seemed to
me that these little layers of dirt must be the dust and dirt blown off
the mountainside by the wind after each fall of snow.”
“Well, Hugh,” said Jack, “that seems a natural explanation. We all know
how the wind is always blowing up here, and we all know that old snow is
always dusty. I guess you’re right.”
By this time Hugh’s pipe was smoked out, and he rose to his feet and
said, “Come on, we’ve got to stretch our legs some more and see if we
can go up to the ridge. There looks to be a low place up ahead of us,
and maybe if we can get up there we can see over the range. Look out for
yourselves when you are walking over this smooth ice. If a man slips on
one of these steep places, he’s liable to go a long way before
stopping.”
The caution was a wise one, and for some distance they walked along
carefully, keeping either on the moraine or on the very edge of the ice,
or choosing a path where the snow was old and hard and gave a firm
footing.
At one point, however, Joe tried to make a short cut by climbing over
some old snow which was quite steep. Before he had gone very far the
others saw him begin to dig his feet into the hard snow as if uncertain
of his footing, then he slipped, recovered himself, stood for an instant
as if doubtful whether to go backward or forward, took another step and
then his feet flew out from under him and he began to slide down the
slope. It looked very funny to see him flying over the snow, but Hugh
did not laugh, for he feared that possibly the boy might go on until he
brought up against rough rocks below. Luckily nothing of this kind
happened, and after going about a hundred yards at a high rate of speed,
Joe ran into some soft snow and his momentum was checked. He stopped,
rose to his feet, and making his way cautiously back to the edge of the
rocks, took the safe but longer road that his companions had followed.
Hugh and Jack waited until he had come up, and then Hugh, shaking his
head, said to him, “That wasn’t very smart, Joe. You’d better not try
any more experiments of that kind; it’s dangerous. A man may slip any
time on one of these smooth icy slopes, and if he does he never can tell
where he’ll stop. You might have slid down there and brought up against
the rocks, and broken some bones or killed yourself, and then we’d have
had a hard time packing you down this hill and taking you into the
agency. Then, besides that, sometimes these big pieces of ice are all
cracked and full of holes, and if anyone should slip into one of those
he might go down to the bottom and get killed by the fall on the rocks
below, or if he stuck somewhere half way down he’d freeze to death
before he could be hauled out. One thing we’ll have to do after this
when we’re climbing in bad places; that is, to bring along a couple of
sling ropes and tie ourselves together. It isn’t likely that all three
of us will slip and fall at the same time, and if only one slips, the
other two can haul him out.”
“That’s a mighty good idea,” said Jack; “I was scared when I saw Joe
sliding down that ice. I remember reading about people climbing the
mountains in Switzerland where they carry ice axes. They’re sort of
like adzes, with long straight handles and a spike in the end of the
handle, and are used for cutting steps in the ice or hard snow. The
people who are climbing tie themselves together with ropes and go mighty
slowly and carefully, so that there is no danger of more than one man
slipping at the same time. They go along one by one, and when one man is
moving--I mean, of course, in bad places--the others all stand still and
fasten their axes in the ice or hang on to the rope, so that if he does
slip, there’s no trouble about catching him. I remember reading that
most of the accidents happen where people have so much confidence in
themselves that they are not willing to be roped together, and some man
makes a blunder and falls and the others just have to stand and look at
him.”
“Well,” said Hugh, “if we’re going to do much climbing around here, we
ought to fix ourselves out in some such way as that. I tell you I’m too
old myself to try any of these experiments.
“Come on, now,” he continued, as he turned and started up the ridge,
“let’s get up here to a sheltered place and then we can sit down and eat
a bite. I put some bread and bacon in my pocket this morning when we
started, and we may as well eat and smoke a pipe before we go on.”