Thousand Foot Precipice
It was a hard job digging the camp out of the snow, and only the fact
that Tom had covered the wood and weighted down the canvas to hold it on
gave them dry fuel to cook with. They had no snow shovels, using
frying-pans and dippers to clear away the drifts from the fire pit and
their packs.
"Valley Forge is the right name," Mr. Crimmins laughed as he stamped his
feet and blew on his fingers, as Robert had done.
But the sun was now up, the air was rapidly warming, and while Joe got
the breakfast, Mills and Tom waded out through the snow in search of the
horses. They had to go a long way, too, for the wise beasts had simply
wandered down the trail into the woods, and kept on descending until
they had got below the snow line into rain, where the grass was not
covered and they could feed. It was almost two hours later that the
Ranger and Tom came driving them back, cross, hungry, and with boots
soaked by the snow and clothes soaked by the wet bushes.
So they got a late start that morning.
"We'll go up the Little Kootenai Canon," said Mills, "as far as the old
cabin of Death-on-the-trail Reynolds, and see how the land lies for a
try at the west wall of Cleveland the next day. If it isn't promising,
we can make an afternoon trip up to Waterton Lake, and then come back
the next day. If it does look like a try at the big mountain, we can
push up the side a way, and make a base camp."
So they mounted, and pushed up through the soft, rapidly melting snow to
the top of the ridge where the Divide crosses from the eastern to the
western range, and after a short trip through the snow-filled, open
meadows of Flat Top, with the little pines and balsams looking like
Christmas cards, they began to drop down a more than two-thousand foot
slope into the canyon of the Little Kootenai River, which flows due
north, with Cleveland on the right, and Kootenai and Citadel Peaks on
the left. Especially Citadel Peak was superb in its snow mantle, a
great, glistening white fortress towering thousands of feet up from the
canyon.
They reached the old cabin of Death-on-the-trail Reynolds at one
o'clock, and found there the ranger for that district.
"How about Cleveland?" Mills asked.
"Getting sort of tired of life?" the other ranger inquired.
"That's what I thought," Mills replied. "Any chance to-morrow?"
"Not much. She'll melt on the lower slopes to-day, but the peak'll not
begin cataracting snowslides till to-morrow morning, about ten A.M. Day
after you might make it."
"No use--we can't wait that long," said Mr. Crimmins. "I'm sorry, but
even the State Department can't control nature."
So, after lunch in the cabin, they left the packhorses behind, and free
to travel at a good gait, trotted down the trail to Waterton Lake, a
long, narrow, beautiful sheet of green water which stretched away north
ten miles, into Canada, and being warm with the ride the two scouts and
Robert had a swim--or, at least, they went into the water. They came out
before they had swum far, their bodies stung red as boiled lobsters by
the cold.
"This Park reminds me of the poem," Robert said,
"'Water, water everywhere, but not a place to swim.'"
Back at the Ranger's cabin, they had a big, leisurely supper, with the
Ranger as their guest, and after supper he told them tales of
Death-on-the-trail Reynolds, an old mining prospector, who had first
built the cabin, and when the Park became national property was made a
ranger, and true to his name died in the saddle on one of the trails he
had followed so long. This old trail from Waterton Lake south over Flat
Top and down Mineral Creek to McDonald Creek, and so to Lake McDonald,
was a regular smuggler's route in the old days, the Ranger said, and
many a horse had been driven down it in the dark, before the American
rangers on one end and the Canadian Northwestern mounted police on the
other put a stop to that sort of thing.
That night they slept in the cabin, and early the next day went back in
their tracks--the first time they had repeated a trail--reaching "Valley
Forge" camp at noon. The snow was about all melted here now, and when
Mills pointed up the cliffs to the east, and said Chaney Glacier lay
just on the other side, it was voted to camp here once more, and spend
the afternoon on the glacier, and the peak above.
"I've never been up that peak," Mills said, "but I have a hunch there'd
be some view up there."
Lunch was eaten quickly, Tom got out his rope, and they started.
It was an easy climb, and could have been made without the rope,
probably, though the rope was a great help in making speed. After a long
grade up a shale slide, and across a snow-field, they reached the base
of a rough, jagged cliff, and by picking out upward slanting ledges on
this cliff, Tom led the way rapidly upward, Mills keeping the rear of
the rope anchored, while Tom anchored the upper end, thus making a rope
railing on the outer edge of each ledge. In less than an hour they
reached the spine of the Divide, at a col between two higher peaks. This
spine was a knife blade, not over ten feet wide, and directly on the
east side, with its upper edge so close you could step off on to it, lay
Chaney Glacier, a vast field of snow now, with little ice showing, a
mile in extent, and sloping downward till the lower end disappeared over
the rim of a precipice. Out beyond this precipice, they saw the Belly
River Canon, looking straight down it, over the green waters of Glenns
Lakes, to the spot where they had camped, and beyond that to the green
ocean of the prairies. From here, too, they got a superb view of
Cleveland, rearing up, still snow covered, a great pyramid of white.
"Want to go out on the glacier?" the Ranger asked Joe.
"Oh, I don't mind," Joe laughed. "The rope's strong."
Every one did want to go out on the glacier, so Mills roped them all,
keeping last place himself, and they ventured out over the apparently
unbroken field of snow. But this snow was light and rapidly melting, and
they had not gone far before Tom, in the lead, with a sounding staff he
had cut before they left camp, detected a frail snow bridge and sent it
crumbling down into the crevasse, disclosing the green ice walls. One
look down this well into the ice decided the party not to venture far
over the treacherous field, and they returned to the firm rocks of the
Divide, and climbed on up another eight hundred feet to the top of the
peak to the south.
The summit of this peak was only about the size of a big table, and to
the east it fell away absolutely sheer for three thousand feet to a tiny
lake far below, out of which, on the opposite side, shot up the cliff
wall of Merritt. The wind was strong up here, and the peak so small that
all six lay on their stomachs to peer over the precipice.
"Say, that's a hole in the earth!" Mr. Crimmins exclaimed.
[Illustration: Mt. Cleveland and Glenns Lakes]
Robert spit over the edge. "I never spit three thousand feet before," he
said. "Want to climb up that cliff with your rope, Tom?"
Tom shook his head. "It couldn't be done, not even by a goat," he said,
wisely.
"As a matter of fact, you're right," Mills laughed. "I never even knew
that cliff was here, either. This Park hasn't been more'n half explored
yet."
From almost the very top of this peak, a long, very steep shale slope
led to the "Valley Forge" meadow, and down this they descended, by the
aid of the rope, sending showers of stones ahead, so that the leader was
in constant danger, and wearing down the spikes and soles of their boots
rapidly. They camped that night in the old spot, using their former fire
pit, but there was no storm, and the next day they had an uneventful
passage back down Mineral Creek, up to Swift Current by the trail Joe
had first climbed in the rain, and so on back to Many Glacier--a long
trip of twenty-four miles, but to Joe, who by this was as hard as nails,
not very tiresome. At Many Glacier the boys bid the two men and Robert
good-bye, and as darkness was gathering, once more cooked their supper
in Camp Kent, which by now was like home to them.
"Well," said Tom, "that was some trip, old wifey--let's see, we were six
days out, and we didn't meet a soul after we left the road till we got
back to Granite Park, except the ranger up under Cleveland. The real
wilderness stuff, eh?"
"You bet!" said Joe. "And eighteen dollars more for me and ma."
"You're getting terribly practical," Tom laughed.
"I'm getting self-supporting," Joe replied. "No more grafting off you."
"You're getting _well_," Tom cried. "That's the real thing. Gee, you're
harder'n I am now! You never seem to get tired."
"Bet I can hit the little old cot, though," Joe laughed, as he began to
make up the beds in the tent.