with the Forest Supervisor. He told me many things about our National
Forests, things which are worth knowing and which every American, whose
playgrounds the forests are, should know.
In the first place, the Forestry Department welcomes the camper. He is
given his liberty, absolutely. He is allowed to hunt such game as is in
season, and but two restrictions are placed on him. He shall leave his
camp-ground clean, and he shall extinguish every spark of fire before he
leaves. Beyond that, it is the policy of the Government to let campers
alone. It is possible in a National Forest to secure a special permit to
put up buildings for permanent camps. An act passed on the 4th of March,
1915, gives the camper a permit for a definite period, although until
that time the Government could revoke the permit at will.
The rental is so small that it is practically negligible. All roads and
trails are open to the public; no admission can be charged to a National
Forest, and no concession will be sold. The whole idea of the National
Forest as a playground is to administer it in the public interest. Good
lots on Lake Chelan can be obtained for from five to twenty-five dollars
a year, depending on their locality. It is the intention of the
Government to pipe water to these allotments.
For the hunters, there is no protection for bear, cougar, coyotes,
bobcats, and lynx. No license is required to hunt them. And to the
persistent hunter who goes into the woods, not as we did, with an outfit
the size of a cavalry regiment, there is game to be had in abundance. We
saw goat-tracks in numbers at Cloudy Pass and the marks of Bruin
everywhere.
The Chelan National Forest is well protected against fires. A
fire-launch patrols the lake and lookouts are stationed all the time on
Strong Mountain and Crow's Hill. They live there on the summits, where
provisions and water must be carried up to them. These lookouts now have
telephones, but until last summer they used the heliograph instead.
So now we prepared, having made our decision to go on. That night, if
the trail was possible, we would camp at Doubtful Lake.
XIV
DOING THE IMPOSSIBLE
The first part of that adventurous day was quiet. We moved sedately
along on an overgrown trail, mountain walls so close on each side that
the valley lay in shadow. I rode next to Dan Devore that day, and on the
trail he stopped his horse and showed me the place where Hughie McKeever
was found.
Dan Devore and Hughie McKeever went out one November to go up to
Horseshoe Basin. Dan left before the heaviest snows came, leaving
McKeever alone. When McKeever had not appeared by February, Dan went in
for him. His cabin was empty.
He had kept a diary up to the 24th of December, when it stopped
abruptly. There were a few marten skins in the cabin, and his outfit.
That was all. In some cottonwoods, not far from the camp, they found his
hatchet and his bag hanging to a tree.
It looked for a time, as though the mystery of Hughie McKeever's
disappearance would be one of the unsolved tragedies of the mountains.
But a trapper, whose route took him along Thunder Creek that spring,
noticed that his dog made a side trip each time, away from the trail. At
last he investigated, and found the body of Hughie McKeever. He had
probably been caught in a snow-slide, for his leg was broken below the
knee. Unable to walk, he had put his snowshoes on his hands and,
dragging the broken leg, had crawled six miles through the snow and ice
of the mountain winter. When he was found, he was only a mile and a half
from his cabin and safety.
There are many other tragedies of that valley. There was a man who went
up Bridge Creek to see a claim he had located there. He was to be out
four days. But in ten days he had not appeared, which was not
surprising, for there was twenty-five feet of snow, and when the snow
had frozen so that rescuers could travel over the crust, they went up
after him. He was lying in one of the bunks of his cabin with a
mattress over him, frozen to death.
So, Dan said, they covered him in the snow with a mattress, and went
back in the spring to bury him.
Every winter, in those mountain valleys, men who cannot get their
outfits out before the snow shoot their horses or cut their throats
rather than let them freeze or starve to death. It is a grim country,
the Cascade country. One man shot nine in this very valley last winter.
Our naturalist had been caught the winter before in the first snowstorm
of the season. He was from daylight until eight o'clock at night making
two miles of trail. He had to break it, foot by foot, for the horses.
As we rode up the gorge toward the pass, it was evident, from the amount
of snow in the mountains, that stories had not been exaggerated. The
packers looked dubious. Even if we could make the climb to Doubtful
Lake, it seemed impossible that we could get farther. But the monotony
of the long ride was broken that afternoon by our first sight, as a
party, of a bear.
[Illustration: _Mountain miles: The trail up Swiftcurrent Pass, Glacier
National Park_]
It came out on a ledge of the mountain, perhaps three hundred yards
away, and proceeded, with great deliberation, to walk across a
rock-slide. It paid no attention whatever to us and to the wild
excitement which followed its discovery. Instantly, the three junior
Rineharts were off their horses, and our artillery attack was being
prepared. At the first shot, the pack-ponies went crazy. They lunged and
jumped, and even Buddy showed signs of strain, leaping what I imagine to
be some eleven feet in the air and coming back on four rigid knees.
Followed such a peppering of that cliff as it had never had before.
Little clouds of rock-dust rose above the bear, in front of him, behind
him, and below him. He stopped, mildly astonished, and looked around.
More noise, more bucking on the trail, more dust. The bear walked on a
trifle faster.
It had been arranged that the first bear was to be left for the juniors.
So the packers and the rest of the party watched and advised.
But, as I have related elsewhere in this narrative, there were no
casualties. The bear, as far as I know, is living to-day, an honored
member of his community, and still telling how he survived the great
war. At last he disappeared into a cave, and we went on without so much
as a single skin to decorate a college room.
We went on.
What odds and ends of knowledge we picked up on those long days in the
saddle! That if lightning strikes a pine even lightly, it kills, but
that a fir will ordinarily survive; that mountain miles are measured
air-line, so that twenty-five miles may really be forty, and that, even
then, they are calculated on the level, so that one is credited with
only the base of the triangle while he is laboriously climbing up its
hypotenuse. I am personally acquainted with the hypotenuses of a good
many mountains, and there is no use trying to pretend that they are
bases. They are not.
Then we learned that the purpose of the National Forests is not to
preserve timber but to conserve it. The idea is to sell and reseed.
About twenty-five per cent of the timber we saw was yellow pine. But
most of the timber we saw on the east side of the Cascades will be safe
for some time. I wouldn't undertake to carry out, from most of that
region, enough pine-needles to make a sofa-cushion. It is quite enough
to get oneself out.
Up to now it had been hard going, but not impossible. Now we were to do
the impossible.
It is a curious thing about mountains, but they have a hideous tendency
to fall down. Whole cliff-faces, a mile or so high, are suddenly seized
with a wandering disposition. Leaving the old folks at home and sliding
down into the valleys, they come awful croppers and sustain about eleven
million compound comminuted fractures.
These family breaks are known as rock-slides.
Now to travel twenty feet over a rock-slide is to twist an ankle, bruise
a shin-bone, utterly discourage a horse, and sour the most amiable
disposition.
There is no flat side to these wandering rocks. With the diabolical
ingenuity that nature can show when she goes wrong, they lie edge up. Do
you remember the little mermaid who wished to lose her tail and gain
legs so she could follow the prince? And how her penalty was that every
step was like walking on the edges of swords? That is a mountain
rock-slide, but I do not recall that the little mermaid had to drag a
frightened and slipping horse, which stepped on her now and then. Or
wear riding-boots. Or stop every now and then to be photographed, and
try to persuade her horse to stop also. Or keep looking up to see if
another family jar threatened. Or look around to see if any of the party
or the pack was rolling down over the spareribs of that ghastly
skeleton. No; the little mermaid's problem was a simple and
uncomplicated one.
We were climbing, too. Only one thing kept us going. The narrow valley
twisted, and around each cliff-face we expected the end--either death or
solid ground. But not so, or, at least, not for some hours.
Riding-boots peeled like a sunburnt face; stones dislodged and rolled
down; the sun beat down in early September fury, and still we went on.
[Illustration: COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY A. J. BAKER, KALISPELL, MONT.
_Where the rock-slides start_ (_Glacier National Park_)]
Only three miles it was, but it was as bad a three miles as I have ever
covered. Then--the naturalist turned and smiled.
"Now we are all right," he said. "_We start to climb soon!_"
XV
DOUBTFUL LAKE
Of all the mountain-climbing I have ever done the switchback up to
Doubtful Lake is the worst. We were hours doing it. There were places
when it seemed no horse could possibly make the climb. Back and forth,
up and up, along that narrow rock-filled trail, which was lost here in a
snow-bank, there in a jungle of evergreen that hung out from the
mountain-side, we were obliged to go. There was no going back. We could
not have turned a horse around, nor could we have reversed the
pack-outfit without losing some of the horses.
As a matter of fact, we dropped two horses on that switchback. With
infinite labor the packers got them back to the trail, rolling,
tumbling, and roping them down to the ledge below, and there salvaging
them. It was heart-breaking, nerve-racking work. Near the top was an
ice-patch across a brawling waterfall. To slip on that ice-patch meant a
drop of incredible distance. From broken places in the crust it was
possible to see the stream below. Yet over the ice it was necessary to
take ourselves and the pack.
"Absolutely no riding here," was the order, given in strained tones. For
everybody's nerves were on edge.
Somehow or other, we got over. I can still see one little pack-pony
wandering away from the others and traveling across that tiny ice-field
on the very brink of death at the top of the precipice. The sun had
softened the snow so that I fell flat into it. And there was a dreadful
moment when I thought I was going to slide.
Even when I was safely over, my anxieties were just beginning. For the
Head and the Juniors were not yet over. And there was no space to stop
and see them come. It was necessary to move on up the switchback, that
the next horse behind might scramble up. Buddy went gallantly on,
leaping, slipping, his flanks heaving, his nostrils dilated. Then, at
last, the familiar call,--
"Are you all right, mother?"
And I knew it was all right with them--so far.
Three thousand feet that switchback went straight up in the air. How
many thousand feet we traveled back and forward, I do not know.
But these things have a way of getting over somehow. The last of the
pack-horses was three hours behind us in reaching Doubtful Lake. The
weary little beasts, cut, bruised, and by this time very hungry, looked
dejected and forlorn. It was bitterly cold. Doubtful Lake was full of
floating ice, and a chilling wind blew on us from the snow all about. A
bear came out on the cliff-face across the valley. But no one attempted
to shoot at him. We were too tired, too bruised and sore. We gave him no
more than a passing glance.
It had been a tremendous experience, but a most alarming one. From the
brink of that pocket on the mountain-top where we stood the earth fell
away to vast distances beneath. The little river which empties Doubtful
Lake slid greasily over a rock and disappeared without a sound into
the void.
[Illustration: COPYRIGHT BY FRED H. KISER, PORTLAND, OREGON
_Switchbacks on the trail_ (_Glacier National Park_)]
Until the pack-outfit arrived, we could have no food. We built a fire
and huddled round it, and now and then one of us would go to the edge of
the pit which lay below to listen. The summer evening was over and night
had fallen before we heard the horses coming near the top of the cliff.
We cheered them, as, one by one, they stumbled over the edge, dark
figures of horses and men, the animals with their bulging packs. They
had put up a gallant fight.
And we had no food for the horses. The few oats we had been able to
carry were gone, and there was no grass on the little plateau. There was
heather, deceptively green, but nothing else. And here, for the benefit
of those who may follow us along the trail, let me say that oats should
be carried, if two additional horses are required for the
purpose--carried, and kept in reserve for the last hard days of the
trip.
The two horses that had fallen were unpacked first. They were cut, and
on their cuts the Head poured iodine. But that was all we could do for
them. One little gray mare was trembling violently. She went over a
cliff again the next day, but I am glad to say that we took her out
finally, not much the worse except for a badly cut shoulder. The other
horse, a sorrel, had only a day or two before slid five hundred feet
down a snow-bank. He was still stiff from his previous accident, and if
ever I saw a horse whose nerve was gone, I saw one there--a poor,
tragic, shaken creature, trembling at a word.
That night, while we lay wrapped in blankets round the fire while the
cooks prepared supper at another fire near by, the Optimist produced a
bottle of claret. We drank it out of tin cups, the only wine of the
journey, and not until long afterward did we know its history--that a
very great man to whose faith the Northwest owes so much of its
development had purchased it, twenty-five years before, for the visit to
this country of Albert, King of the Belgians.
That claret, taken so casually from tin cups near the summit of the
Cascades, had been a part of the store of that great dreamer and most
abstemious of men, James J. Hill, laid in for the use of that other
great dreamer and idealist, Albert, when he was his guest. While we ate,
Weaver said suddenly,--
"Listen!"
His keen ears had caught the sound of a bell. He got up.
"Either Johnny or Buck," he said, "starting back home!"
Then commenced again that heart-breaking task of rounding up the horses.
That is a part of such an expedition. And, even at that, one escaped and
was found the next morning high up the cliffside, in a basin.
It was too late to put up all the tents that night. Mrs. Fred and I
slept in our clothes but under canvas, and the men lay out with their
faces to the sky.
Toward dawn a thunder-storm came up. For we were on the crest of the
Cascades now, where the rain-clouds empty themselves before traveling
to the arid country to the east. Just over the mountain-wall above us
lay the Pacific Slope.
The rain came down, and around the peaks overhead lightning flashed and
flamed. No one moved except Joe, who sat up in his blankets, put his hat
on, said, "Let 'er rain," and lay down to sleep again. Peanuts, the
naturalist's horse, sought human companionship in the storm, and
wandered into camp, where one of the young bear-hunters wakened to find
him stepping across his prostrate and blanketed form.
Then all was still again, except for the solid beat of the rain on
canvas and blanket, horse and man.
It cleared toward morning, and at dawn Dan was up and climbed the wall
on foot. At breakfast, on his return, we held a conference. He reported
that it was possible to reach the top--possible but difficult, and that
what lay on the other side we should have to discover later on.
A night's sleep had made Joe all business again. On the previous day he
had been too busy saving his camera and his life--camera first, of
course--to try for pictures. But now he had a brilliant idea.
"Now see here," he said to me; "I've got a great idea. How's Buddy about
water?"
"He's partial to it," I admitted, "for drinking, or for lying down and
rolling in it, especially when I am on him. Why?"
"Well, it's like this," he observed: "I'm set up on the bank of the
lake. See? And you ride him into the water and get him to scramble up on
one of those ice-cakes. Do you get it? It'll be a whale of a picture."
"Joe," I said, in a stern voice, "did you ever try to make a horse go
into an icy lake and climb on to an ice-cake? Because if you have, you
can do it now. I can turn the camera all right. Anyhow," I added firmly,
"I've been photographed enough. This film is going to look as if I'd
crossed the Cascades alone. Some of you other people ought to have a
chance."
But a moving-picture man after a picture is as determined as a cook who
does not like the suburbs.
I rode Buddy to the brink of the lake, and there spoke to him in
friendly tones. I observed that this lake was like other lakes, only
colder, and that it ought to be mere play after the day before. I also
selected a large ice-cake, which looked fairly solid, and pointed Buddy
at it.
Then I kicked him. He took a step and began to shake. Then he leaped six
feet to one side and reared, still shaking. Then he turned round and
headed for the camp.
By that I was determined on the picture. There is nothing like two wills
set in opposite directions to determine a woman. Buddy and I again and
again approached the lake, mostly sideways. But at last he went in, took
twenty steps out, felt the cold on his poor empty belly, and--refused
the ice-cake. We went out much faster than we went in, making the bank
in a great bound and a very bad humor--two very bad humors.
XVI
OVER CASCADE PASS
To get out of the Doubtful Lake plateau to Cascade Pass it was necessary
to climb eight hundred feet up a steep and very slippery cliffside. On
the other side lay the pass, but on the level of the lake. It was here
that we "went up a hill one day and then went down again" with a
vengeance. And on this cliffside it was that the little gray mare went
over again, falling straight on to a snow-bank, which saved her, and
then rolling over and over shedding parts of our equipment, and landing
far below dazed and almost senseless.
It was on the top of that wall above Doubtful Lake that I had the
greatest fright of the trip.
That morning, as a special favor, the Little Boy had been allowed to go
ahead with Mr. Hilligoss, who was to clear trail and cut footholds where
they were necessary. When we were more than halfway to the top of the
wall above the lake, two alternative routes to the top offered
themselves, one to the right across a snow-field that hugged the edge of
a cliff which dropped sheer five hundred feet to the water, another to
the left over slippery heather which threatened a slide and a casualty
at every step. The Woodsman had left no blazes, there being no tree to
mark. Holding on by clutching to the heather with our hands, we debated.
Finally, we chose the left-hand route as the one they had probably
taken. But when we reached the top, the Woodsman and the Little Boy were
not there. We hallooed, but there was no reply. And, suddenly, the
terrible silence of the mountains seemed ominous. Had they ventured
across the snow-bank and slipped?
I am not ashamed to say that, sitting on my horse on the top of that
mountain-wall, I proceeded to have a noiseless attack of hysterics.
There were too many chances of accident for any of the party to take the
matter lightly. There we gathered on that little mountain meadow, not
much bigger than a good-sized room, and waited. There was snow and ice
and silence everywhere. Below, Doubtful Lake lay like a sapphire set in
granite, and far beneath it lay the valley from which we had climbed the
day before. But no one cared for scenery.
Then it was that "Silent Lawrie" turned his horse around and went back.
Soon he hallooed, and, climbing back to us, reported that they had
crossed the ice-bank. He had found the marks of the axe making
footholds. And soon afterward there was another halloo from below, and
the missing ones rode into sight. They were blithe and gay. They had
crossed the ice-field and had seen a view which they urged we should not
miss. But I had had enough view. All I wanted was the level earth. There
could be nothing after that flat enough to suit me.
Sliding, stumbling, falling, leading our scrambling horses, we got down
the wall on the other side. It was easier going, but slippery with
heather and that green moss of the mountains, which looks so tempting
but which gives neither foothold nor nourishment. Then, at last, the
pass.
It was thirty-six hours since our horses had had anything to eat. We had
had food and sleep, but during the entire night the poor animals had
been searching those rocky mountain-sides for food and failing to find
it. They stood in a dejected group, heads down, feet well braced to
support their weary bodies.
But last summer was not a normal one. Unusually heavy snowfalls the
winter before had been followed by a late, cold spring. The snow was
only beginning to melt late in July, and by September, although almost
gone from the pass itself, it still covered deep the trail on the east
side.
So, some of those who read this may try the same great adventure
hereafter and find it unnecessary to make the Doubtful Lake detour. I
hope so. Because the pass is too wonderful not to be visited. Some day,
when this magnificent region becomes a National Park, and there is
something more than a dollar a mile to be spent on trails, a thousand
dollars or so invested in trail-work will put this roof of the world
within reach of any one who can sit a horse. And those who go there will
be the better for the going. Petty things slip away in the silent high
places. It is easy to believe in God there. And the stars and heaven
seem very close.
One thing died there forever for me--my confidence in the man who writes
the geography and who says that, representing the earth by an orange,
the highest mountains are merely as the corrugations on its skin.
On Cascade Pass is the dividing-line between the Chelan and the
Washington National Forests. For some reason we had confidently believed
that reaching the pass would see the end of our difficulties. The only
question that had ever arisen was whether we could get to the pass or
not. And now we were there.
We were all perceptibly cheered; even the horses seemed to feel that the
worst was over. Tame grouse scudded almost under our feet. They had
never seen human beings, and therefore had no terror of them.
And here occurred one of the small disappointments that the Middle Boy
will probably remember long after he has forgotten the altitude in feet
of that pass and other unimportant matters. For he scared up some
grouse, and this is the tragedy. The open season for grouse is September
1st in Chelan and September 15th across the line. And the birds would
not cross the line. They were wise birds, and must have had a calendar
about them, for, although we were vague as to the date, we knew it was
not yet the 15th. So they sat or fluttered about, and looked most
awfully good to eat. But they never went near the danger-zone or the
enemy's trenches.
We lay about and rested, and the grouse laughed at us, and a great
marmot, sentinel of his colony, sat on a near-by rock and whistled
reports of what we were doing. Joe unlimbered the moving-picture camera,
and the Head used the remainder of his small stock of iodine on the
injured horses. The sun shone on the flowers and the snow, on the pail
in which our cocoa was cooking, on the barrels of our unused guns and
the buckles of the saddles. We watched the pack-horses coming down, tiny
pin-point figures, oddly distorted by the great packs. And we rested for
the descent.