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THE ASCENT OF DENALI
(MOUNT McKINLEY)
A NARRATIVE OF THE FIRST COMPLETE ASCENT OF THE
HIGHEST PEAK IN NORTH AMERICA
BY
HUDSON STUCK, D.D.
ARCHDEACON OF THE YUKON
ILLUSTRATED
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1918
[Illustration: Ice Fall of nearly four thousand feet, by which the upper
or Harper Glacier discharges into the lower or Muldrow Glacier (page
39)]
COPYRIGHT, 1914, BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
Published February, 1914
BOOKS BY HUDSON STUCK, D.D., F.R.G.S.
PUBLISHED BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
VOYAGES ON THE YUKON AND ITS TRIBUTARIES
A Narrative of Summer Travel in the Interior of Alaska
Illustrated. 8vo _Net_ $4.50
"His book is a worthy contribution in a fascinating field of
natural and geographical science as well as an entertaining record
of highly expert and continually risky exploration."
--_Phila. North American._
THE ASCENT OF DENALI (MT. MCKINLEY)
Illustrated. 8vo _Net_ $1.75
"A wonderful record of indomitable pluck and endurance."
--_Bulletin of the American Geographical Society._
"Its pages make one wish that all mountain climbers might be
archdeacons if their accounts might thus gain, in the interest of
happenings by the way, emotional vision and intellectual outlook."
--_New York Times._
TEN THOUSAND MILES WITH A DOG SLED
A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska
Illustrated. 8vo _Net_ $1.75
"One of the most fascinating and altogether satisfactory books of
travel which we have seen this year, or, indeed, any year."
--_New York Tribune._
"This startlingly brilliant book."--_Literary Digest._
TO
SIR MARTIN CONWAY
ONE OF THE WORLD'S GREATEST TRAVELLERS AND CLIMBERS WHOSE FASCINATING
NARRATIVES HAVE KINDLED IN MANY BREASTS A LOVE OF THE GREAT HEIGHTS AND
A DESIRE TO ATTAIN UNTO THEM
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED WITH RESPECT AND ADMIRATION
PREFACE
Forefront in this book, because forefront in the author's heart and
desire, must stand a plea for the restoration to the greatest mountain
in North America of its immemorial native name. If there be any prestige
or authority in such matter from the accomplishment of a first complete
ascent, "if there be any virtue, if there be any praise," the author
values it chiefly as it may give weight to this plea.
It is now little more than seventeen years ago that a prospector
penetrated from the south into the neighborhood of this mountain,
guessed its height with remarkable accuracy at twenty thousand feet,
and, ignorant of any name that it already bore, placed upon it the name
of the Republican candidate for President of the United States at the
approaching election--William McKinley. No voice was raised in protest,
for the Alaskan Indian is inarticulate and such white men as knew the
old name were absorbed in the search for gold. Some years later an
officer of the United States army, upon a reconnoissance survey into the
land, passed around the companion peak, and, alike ignorant or careless
of any native name, put upon it the name of an Ohio politician, at that
time prominent in the councils of the nation, Joseph Foraker. So there
they stand upon the maps, side by side, the two greatest peaks of the
Alaskan range, "Mount McKinley" and "Mount Foraker." And there they
should stand no longer, since, if there be right and reason in these
matters, they should not have been placed there at all.
To the relatively large Indian population of those wide regions of the
interior of Alaska from which the mountains are visible they have always
borne Indian names. The natives of the middle Yukon, of the lower three
hundred miles of the Tanana and its tributaries, of the upper Kuskokwim
have always called these mountains "Denali" (Den-ah'li) and "Denali's
Wife"--either precisely as here written, or with a dialectical
difference in pronunciation so slight as to be negligible.
It is true that the little handful of natives on the Sushitna River, who
never approach nearer than a hundred miles to the mountain, have another
name for it. They call it _Traléika_, which, in their wholly different
language, has the same signification. It is probably true of every great
mountain that it bears diverse native names as one tribe or another, on
this side or on that of its mighty bulk, speaks of it. But the area in
which, and the people by whom, this mountain is known as Denali,
preponderate so greatly as to leave no question which native name it
should bear. The bold front of the mountain is so placed on the
returning curve of the Alaskan range that from the interior its snows
are visible far and wide, over many thousands of square miles; and the
Indians of the Tanana and of the Yukon, as well as of the Kuskokwim,
hunt the caribou well up on its foot-hills. Its southern slopes are
stern and forbidding through depth of snow and violence of glacial
stream, and are devoid of game; its slopes toward the interior of the
country are mild and amene, with light snowfall and game in abundance.
Should the reader ever be privileged, as the author was a few years ago,
to stand on the frozen surface of Lake Minchúmina and see these
mountains revealed as the clouds of a passing snow-storm swept away, he
would be overwhelmed by the majesty of the scene and at the same time
deeply moved with the appropriateness of the simple native names; for
simplicity is always a quality of true majesty. Perhaps nowhere else in
the world is so abrupt and great an uplift from so low a base. The
marshes and forests of the upper Kuskokwim, from which these mountains
rise, cannot be more than one thousand five hundred feet above the sea.
The rough approximation by the author's aneroid in the journey from the
Tanana to the Kuskokwim would indicate a still lower level--would make
this wide plain little more than one thousand feet high. And they rise
sheer, the tremendous cliffs of them apparently unbroken, soaring
superbly to more than twenty thousand and seventeen thousand feet
respectively: Denali, "the great one," and Denali's Wife. And the little
peaks in between the natives call the "children." It was on that
occasion, standing spellbound at the sublimity of the scene, that the
author resolved that if it were in his power he would restore these
ancient mountains to the ancient people among whom they rear their
heads. Savages they are, if the reader please, since "savage" means
simply a forest dweller, and the author is glad himself to be a savage a
great part of every year, but yet, as savages, entitled to name their
own rivers, their own lakes, their own mountains. After all, these
terms--"savage," "heathen," "pagan"--mean, alike, simply "country
people," and point to some old-time superciliousness of the city-bred,
now confined, one hopes, to such localities as Whitechapel and the
Bowery.
There is, to the author's mind, a certain ruthless arrogance that grows
more offensive to him as the years pass by, in the temper that comes to
a "new" land and contemptuously ignores the native names of conspicuous
natural objects, almost always appropriate and significant, and overlays
them with names that are, commonly, neither the one nor the other. The
learned societies of the world, the geographical societies, the
ethnological societies, have set their faces against this practice these
many years past, and to them the writer confidently appeals.
* * * * *
This preface must bear a grateful acknowledgment to the most
distinguished of Alaskans--the man who knows more of Alaska than any
other human being--Peter Trimble Rowe, seventeen years bishop of that
immense territory, for the "cordial assent" which he gave to the
proposed expedition and the leave of absence which rendered it
possible--one more in a long list of kindnesses which have rendered
happy an association of nearly ten years. Nor can better place be found
for a tribute of gratitude to those who were of the little party: to Mr.
Harry P. Karstens, strong, competent, and resourceful, the real leader
of the expedition in the face of difficulty and danger; to Mr. Robert G.
Tatum, who took his share, and more than his share, of all toil and
hardship and was a most valuable colleague; to Walter Harper,
Indian-bred until his sixteenth year, and up to that time trained in not
much else than Henry of Navarre's training, "to shoot straight, to speak
the truth; to do with little food and less sleep" (though equal to an
abundance of both on occasion), who joyed in the heights as a
mountain-sheep or a chamois, and whose sturdy limbs and broad shoulders
were never weary or unwilling--to all of these there is heartfelt
affection and deep obligation. Nor must Johnny be forgotten, the Indian
boy who faithfully kept the base camp during a long vigil, and killed
game to feed the dogs, and denied himself, unasked, that others might
have pleasure, as the story will tell. And the name of Esaias, the
Indian boy who accompanied us to the base camp, and then returned with
the superfluous dogs, must be mentioned, with commendation for fidelity
and thanks for service. Acknowledgment is also made to many friends and
colleagues at the mission stations in the interior, who knew of the
purpose and furthered it greatly and held their tongues so that no
premature screaming bruit of it got into the Alaskan newspapers: to the
Rev. C. E. Betticher, Jr., particularly and most warmly.
The author would add, perhaps quite unnecessarily, yet lest any should
mistake, a final personal note. He is no professed explorer or climber
or "scientist," but a missionary, and of these matters an amateur only.
The vivid recollection of a back bent down with burdens and lungs at the
limit of their function makes him hesitate to describe this enterprise
as recreation. It was the most laborious undertaking with which he was
ever connected; yet it was done for the pleasure of doing it, and the
pleasure far outweighed the pain. But he is concerned much more with men
than mountains, and would say, since "out of the fullness of the heart
the mouth speaketh," that his especial and growing concern, these ten
years past, is with the native people of Alaska, a gentle and kindly
race, now threatened with a wanton and senseless extermination, and
sadly in need of generous champions if that threat is to be averted.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. PREPARATION AND APPROACH 3
II. THE MULDROW GLACIER 25
III. THE NORTHEAST RIDGE 53
IV. THE GRAND BASIN 80
V. THE ULTIMATE HEIGHT 92
VI. THE RETURN 117
VII. THE HEIGHT OF DENALI, WITH A DISCUSSION OF THE
READINGS ON THE SUMMIT AND DURING THE ASCENT 141
VIII. EXPLORATIONS OF THE DENALI REGION AND PREVIOUS
ATTEMPTS AT ITS ASCENT 157
IX. THE NAMES PLACED UPON THE MOUNTAIN BY THE AUTHOR 180
ILLUSTRATIONS
Ice fall of nearly four thousand feet by which the
upper or Harper Glacier discharges into the lower
or Muldrow Glacier (photogravure) _Frontispiece_
FACING
PAGE
The author and Mr. H. P. Karstens 4
Tatum, Esaias, Karstens, Johnny, and Walter, at the
Clearwater Camp 8
Striking across from the Tanana to the Kantishna 12
One of the abandoned mining towns in the Kantishna 14
Denali from the McKinley fork of the Kantishna River 16
Entering the range by Cache Creek 18
The base camp at about 4,000 feet on Cache Creek 20
Some heads of game killed at the base camp 22
The Muldrow Glacier. Karstens in the foreground 26
Ascension Day, 1913 30
Bridging a crevasse on the Muldrow Glacier 32
Hard work for dogs as well as men on the Muldrow Glacier 34
The Northeast Ridge shattered by the earthquake in July, 1912 48
Cutting a staircase three miles long in the ice of the
shattered ridge 52
The shattered Northeast Ridge 56
Camp at 13,000 feet on Northeast Ridge 60
A dangerous passage 64
The Upper Basin reached at last. Our camp at the
Parker Pass at 15,000 feet 72
Above all the range except Denali and Denali's Wife 76
Traverse under the cliffs of the Northeast Ridge to enter
the Grand Basin 82
First camp in the Grand Basin--16,000 feet, looking up 84
Second camp in the Grand Basin--looking down, 16,500
feet 86
Third camp in the Grand Basin--17,000 feet, showing the
shattering of the glacier walls by the earthquake 88
The North Peak, 20,000 feet high 90
The South Peak from about 18,000 feet 94
The climbing-irons 98
Denali's Wife from the summit of Denali (photogravure) 102
Robert Tatum raising the Stars and Stripes on the highest
point in North America 104
The saying of the Te Deum 106
Beginning the descent of the ridge; looking down 4,000
feet upon the Muldrow Glacier 122
Johnny Fred, who kept the base camp and fed the dogs
and would not touch the sugar 128
"Muk," the author's pet malamute 136
Approaching the range 164
Map showing route of the Stuck-Karstens expedition
to the summit of Mt. Denali (Mt. McKinley) _End of volume_
THE ASCENT OF DENALI
CHAPTER I
PREPARATION AND APPROACH
The enterprise which this volume describes was a cherished purpose
through a number of years. In the exercise of his duties as Archdeacon
of the Yukon, the author has travelled throughout the interior of
Alaska, both winter and summer, almost continuously since 1904. Again
and again, now from one distant elevation and now from another, the
splendid vision of the greatest mountain in North America has spread
before his eyes, and left him each time with a keener longing to enter
its mysterious fastnesses and scale its lofty peaks. Seven years ago,
writing in _The Spirit of Missions_ of a view of the mountain from the
Pedro Dome, in the neighborhood of Fairbanks, he said: "I would rather
climb that mountain than discover the richest gold-mine in Alaska."
Indeed, when first he went to Alaska it was part of the attraction which
the country held for him that it contained an unclimbed mountain of the
first class.
Scawfell and Skiddaw and Helvellyn had given him his first boyish
interest in climbing; the Colorado and Canadian Rockies had claimed one
holiday after another of maturer years, but the summit of Rainier had
been the greatest height he had ever reached. When he went to Alaska he
carried with him all the hypsometrical instruments that were used in the
ascent as well as his personal climbing equipment. There was no definite
likelihood that the opportunity would come to him of attempting the
ascent, but he wished to be prepared with instruments of adequate scale
in case the opportunity should come; and Hicks, of London, made them
nine years ago.
[Illustration: The author and Mr. H. P. Karstens.]
[Sidenote: Members of the Party]
Long ago, also, he had picked out Mr. Harry P. Karstens, of Fairbanks,
as the one colleague with whom he would be willing to make the attempt.
Mr. Karstens had gone to the Klondike in his seventeenth year, during
the wild stampede to those diggings, paying the expenses of the trip by
packing over the Chilkoot Pass, and had been engaged in pioneering and
in travel of an arduous and adventurous kind ever since. He had mined in
the Klondike and in the Seventy-Mile (hence his sobriquet of "The
Seventy-Mile Kid"). It was he and his partner, McGonogill, who broke the
first trail from Fairbanks to Valdez and for two years of difficulty and
danger--dogs and men alike starving sometimes--brought the mail
regularly through. When the stampede to the Kantishna took place, and
the government was dilatory about instituting a mail service for the
three thousand men in the camp, Karstens and his partner organized and
maintained a private mail service of their own. He had freighted with
dogs from the Yukon to the Iditarod, had run motor-boats on the Yukon
and the Tanana. For more than a year he had been guide to Mr. Charles
Sheldon, the well-known naturalist and hunter, in the region around the
foot-hills of Denali. With the full vigor of maturity, with all this
accumulated experience and the resourcefulness and self-reliance which
such experience brings, he had yet an almost juvenile keenness for
further adventure which made him admirably suited to this undertaking.
Mr. Robert G. Tatum of Tennessee, just twenty-one years old, a postulant
for holy orders, stationed at the mission at Nenana, had been employed
all the winter in a determined attempt to get supplies freighted over
the ice, by natives and their dog teams, to two women missionaries, a
nurse and a teacher, at the Tanana Crossing. The steamboat had cached
the supplies at a point about one hundred miles below the mission the
previous summer, unable to proceed any farther. The upper Tanana is a
dangerous and difficult river alike for navigation and for ice travel,
and Tatum's efforts were made desperate by the knowledge that the women
were reduced to a diet of straight rabbits without even salt. The famine
relieved, he had returned to Nenana. The summer before he had worked on
a survey party and had thus some knowledge of the use of instruments. By
undertaking the entire cooking for the expedition he was most useful and
helpful, and his consistent courtesy and considerateness made him a very
pleasant comrade.
Of the half-breed boy, Walter Harper, the author's attendant and
interpreter, dog driver in the winter and boat engineer in the summer
for three years previous, no more need be said than that he ran Karstens
close in strength, pluck, and endurance. Of the best that the mixed
blood can produce, twenty-one years old and six feet tall, he took
gleefully to high mountaineering, while his kindliness and invincible
amiability endeared him to every member of the party.
The men were thus all volunteers, experienced in snow and ice, though
not in high-mountain work. But the nature of snow and ice is not
radically changed by lifting them ten or fifteen or even twenty thousand
feet up in the air.
A volunteer expedition was the only one within the resources of the
writer, and even that strained them. The cost of the food supplies, the
equipment, and the incidental expenses was not far short of a thousand
dollars--a mere fraction of the cost of previous expeditions, it is
true, but a matter of long scraping together for a missionary. Yet if
there had been unlimited funds at his disposal--and the financial aspect
of the affair is alluded to only that this may be said--it would have
been impossible to assemble a more desirable party.
Mention of two Indian boys of fourteen or fifteen, who were of great
help to us, must not be omitted. They were picked out from the elder
boys of the school at Nenana, all of whom were most eager to go, and
were good specimens of mission-bred native youths. "Johnny" was with the
expedition from start to finish, keeping the base camp while the rest of
the party was above; Esaias was with us as far as the base camp and then
went back to Nenana with one of the dog teams.
[Sidenote: Methods of Approach]
The resolution to attempt the ascent of Denali was reached a year and a
half before it was put into execution: so much time was necessary for
preparation. Almost any Alaskan enterprise that calls for supplies or
equipment from the outside must be entered upon at least a year in
advance. The plan followed had been adopted long before as the only wise
one: that the supplies to be used upon the ascent be carried by water as
near to the base of the mountain as could be reached and cached there in
the summer, and that the climbing party go in with the dog teams as near
the 1st March as practicable. Strangely enough, of all the expeditions
that have essayed this ascent, the first, that of Judge Wickersham in
1903, and the last, ten years later, are the only ones that have
approached their task in this natural and easy way. The others have all
burdened themselves with the great and unnecessary difficulties of the
southern slopes of the range.
[Illustration: Tatum, Esaias, Karstens, Johnny and Walter, at the
Clearwater Camp.]
It was proposed to use the mission launch _Pelican_, which has travelled
close to twenty thousand miles on the Yukon and its tributaries in the
six seasons she has been in commission, to transport the supplies up the
Kantishna and Bearpaw Rivers to the head of navigation of the latter,
when her cruise of 1912 was complete. But a serious mishap to the
launch, which it was impossible to repair in Alaska, brought her
activities for that season to a sudden end. So Mr. Karstens came down
from Fairbanks with his launch, and a poling boat loaded with food
staples, and, pushing the poling boat ahead, successfully ascended the
rivers and carefully cached the stuff some fifty miles from the base of
the mountain. It was done in a week or less.
[Sidenote: Equipment]
Unfortunately, the equipment and supplies ordered from the outside did
not arrive in time to go in with the bulk of the stuff. Although ordered
in February, they arrived at Tanana only late in September, just in time
to catch the last boat up to Nenana. And only half that had been ordered
came at all--one of the two cases has not been traced to this day.
Moreover, it was not until late the next February, when actually about
to proceed on the expedition, that the writer was able to learn what
items had come and what had not. Such are the difficulties of any
undertaking in Alaska, despite all the precautions that foresight may
dictate.
The silk tents, which had not come, had to be made in Fairbanks; the
ice-axes sent were ridiculous gold-painted toys with detachable heads
and broomstick handles--more like dwarf halberds than ice-axes; and at
least two workmanlike axes were indispensable. So the head of an axe was
sawn to the pattern of the writer's out of a piece of tool steel and a
substantial hickory handle and an iron shank fitted to it at the
machine-shop in Fairbanks. It served excellently well, while the points
of the fancy axes from New York splintered the first time they were
used. "Climbing-irons," or "crampons," were also to make, no New York
dealer being able to supply them.
One great difficulty was the matter of footwear. Heavy regulation-nailed
alpine boots were sent--all too small to be worn with even a couple of
pairs of socks, and therefore quite useless. Indeed, at that time there
was no house in New York, or, so far as the writer knows, in the United
States, where the standard alpine equipment could be procured. As a
result of the dissatisfaction of this expedition with the material sent,
one house in New York now carries in stock a good assortment of such
things of standard pattern and quality. Fairbanks was ransacked for
boots of any kind in which three or four pairs of socks could be worn.
Alaska is a country of big men accustomed to the natural spread of the
foot which a moccasin permits, but we could not find boots to our need
save rubber snow-packs, and we bought half a dozen pairs of them (No.
12) and had leather soles fastened under them and nailed. Four pairs of
alpine boots at eleven dollars a pair equals forty-four dollars. Six
pairs of snow-packs at five dollars equals thirty dollars. Leather soles
for them at three dollars equals eighteen dollars; which totalled
ninety-two dollars--entirely wasted. We found that moccasins were the
only practicable foot-gear; and we had to put _five_ pairs of socks
within them before we were done. But we did not know that at the time
and had no means of discovering it.
All these matters were put in hand under Karstens's direction, while the
writer, only just arrived in Fairbanks from Fort Yukon and Tanana, made
a flying trip to the new mission at the Tanana Crossing, two hundred and
fifty miles above Fairbanks, with Walter and the dog team; and most of
them were finished by the time we returned. A multitude of small details
kept us several days more in Fairbanks, so that nearly the middle of
March had arrived before we were ready to make our start to the
mountain, two weeks later than we had planned.
[Sidenote: Supplies]
Karstens having joined us, we went down to the mission at Nenana
(seventy-five miles) in a couple of days, and there two more days were
spent overhauling and repacking the stuff that had come from the
outside. In the way of food, we had imported only erbswurst, seventy-two
four-ounce packages; milk chocolate, twenty pounds; compressed China tea
in tablets (a most excellent tea with a very low percentage of tannin),
five pounds; a specially selected grade of Smyrna figs, ten pounds; and
sugared almonds, ten pounds--about seventy pounds' weight, all
scrupulously reserved for the high-mountain work.
For trail equipment we had one eight-by-ten "silk" tent, used for two
previous winters; three small circular tents of the same material, made
in Fairbanks, for the high work; a Yukon stove and the usual complement
of pots and pans and dishes, including two admirable large aluminum pots
for melting snow, used a number of years with great satisfaction. A
"primus" stove, borrowed from the _Pelican's_ galley, was taken along
for the high work. The bedding was mainly of down quilts, which are
superseding fur robes and blankets for winter use because of their
lightness and warmth and the small compass into which they may be
compressed. Two pairs of camel's-hair blankets and one sleeping-bag
lined with down and camel's-hair cloth were taken, and Karstens brought
a great wolf-robe, weighing twenty-five pounds, of which we were glad
enough later on.
[Illustration: Striking across from the Tanana to the Kantishna.]
[Sidenote: Start]
Another team was obtained at the mission, and Mr. R. G. Tatum and the
two boys, Johnny and Esaias, joined the company, which, thus increased
to six persons, two sleds, and fourteen dogs, set out from Nenana across
country to the Kantishna on St. Patrick's day.
Travelling was over the beaten trail to the Kantishna gold camp, one of
the smallest of Alaskan camps, supporting about thirty men. In 1906
there was a wild stampede to this region, and two or three thousand
people went in, chiefly from the Fairbanks district. Town after town was
built--Diamond City, Glacier City, Bearpaw City, Roosevelt, McKinley
City--all with elaborate saloons and gambling-places, one, at least,
equipped with electric lights. But next summer the boom burst and all
the thousands streamed out. Gold there was and is yet, but in small
quantities only. The "cities" are mere collections of tumble-down huts
amongst which the moose roam at will. Interior Alaska has many such
abandoned "cities." The few men now in the district have placer claims
that yield a "grub-stake" as a sure thing every summer, and spend their
winters chiefly in prospecting for quartz. At Diamond City, on the
Bearpaw, lay our cache of grub, and that place, some ninety miles from
Nenana and fifty miles from the base of Denali, was our present
objective point. It was bright, clear weather and the trail was good.
For thirty miles our way lay across the wide flats of the Tanana Valley,
and this stage brought us to the banks of the Nenana River. Another day
of twenty-five miles of flats brought us to Knight's comfortable
road-house and ranch on the Toklat, a tributary of the Kantishna, the
only road-house this trail can now support. Several times during these
two days we had clear glimpses of the great mountain we were
approaching, and as we came out of the flat country, the "Sheephills," a
foot-hill range of Denali, much broken and deeply sculptured, rose
picturesquely before us. Our travel was now almost altogether on
"overflow" ice, upon the surface of swift streams that freeze solidly
over their riffles and shallows and thus deny passage under the ice to
the water of fountains and springs that never ceases flowing. So it
bursts forth and flows _over_ the ice with a continually renewing
surface of the smoothest texture. Carrying a mercurial barometer that
one dare not intrust to a sled on one's back over such footing is a
somewhat precarious proceeding, but there was no alternative, and many
miles were thus passed. Up the Toklat, then up its Clearwater Fork, then
up its tributary, Myrtle Creek, to its head, and so over a little divide
and down Willow Creek, we went, and from that divide and the upper
reaches of the last-named creek had fine, clear views not only of Denali
but of Denali's Wife as well, now come much nearer and looming much
larger.
[Illustration: One of the abandoned mining towns in the Kantishna.]
[Sidenote: The Faces of the Mountain]
But here it may be stated once for all that the view which this face of
the mountains presents is never a satisfying one. The same is true in
even greater degree of the southern face, all photographs agreeing with
all travellers as to its tameness. There is only one face of the Denali
group that is completely satisfying, that is adequate to the full
picturesque potentiality of a twenty-thousand-foot elevation. The writer
has seen no other view, no other aspect of it, comparable to that of the
northwest face from Lake Minchúmina. There the two mountains rise side
by side, sheer, precipitous, pointed rocks, utterly inaccessible,
savage, and superb. The rounded shoulders, the receding slopes and
ridges of the other faces detract from the uplift and from the dignity,
but the northwestern face is stark.
One more run, of much the same character as the previous day, and we
were at Eureka, in the heart of the Kantishna country, on Friday, 21st
March, being Good Friday.
We arrived there at noon and "called it a day," and spent the rest of it
in the devotions of that august anniversary. Easter eve took us to
Glacier City, and we lay there over the feast, gathering three or four
men who were operating a prospecting-drill in that neighborhood for the
first public worship ever conducted in the Kantishna camp. Ten miles
more brought us to Diamond City, on the Bearpaw, where we found our
cache of food in good condition save that the field-mice, despite all
precautions, had made access to the cereals and had eaten all the rolled
oats.
Amongst the Kantishna miners, who were most kindly and generous in their
assistance, we were able to pick up enough large-sized moccasins to
serve the members of the party, and we wore nothing else at all on the
mountain.
[Illustration: Denali from the McKinley fork of the Kantishna River.
Showing the two peaks of the mountain, the one in the rear and to the
left (the South Peak) is the higher.]
[Sidenote: Timber-Line]
Our immediate task now lay before us. A ton and a half of supplies had
to be hauled some fifty miles across country to the base of the
mountain. Here the relaying began, stuff being taken ahead and cached at
some midway point, then another load taken right through a day's march,
and then a return made to bring up the cache. In this way we moved
steadily though slowly across rolling country and upon the surface of a
large lake to the McKinley Fork of the Kantishna, which drains the
Muldrow Glacier, down that stream to its junction with the Clearwater
Fork of the same, and up that fork, through its canyon, to the last
spruce timber on its banks, and there we made a camp in an exceedingly
pretty spot. The creek ran open through a break in the ice in front of
our tent; the water-ousels darted in and out under the ice, singing most
sweetly; the willows, all in bud, perfumed the air; and Denali soared
clear and brilliant, far above the range, right in front of us. Here at
the timber-line, at an elevation of about two thousand feet, was the
pleasantest camp of the whole excursion. During the five days' stay here
the stuff was brought up and carried forward, and a quantity of dry wood
was cut and advanced to a cache at the mouth of the creek by which we
should reach the Muldrow Glacier.
It should be said that the short and easy route by which that glacier is
reached was discovered after much scouting and climbing by McGonogill
and Taylor in 1910, upon the occasion of the "pioneer" attempt upon the
mountain, of which more will be said by and by. The men in the Kantishna
camp who took part in that attempt gave us all the information they
possessed, as they had done to the party that attempted the mountain
last summer. There has been no need to make reconnoissance for routes
since these pioneers blazed the way: there is no other practicable route
than the one they discovered. The two subsequent climbing parties have
followed precisely in their footsteps up as far as the Grand Basin at
sixteen thousand feet, and it is the merest justice that such
acknowledgment be made.
At our camp the Clearwater ran parallel with the range, which rose like
a great wall before us. Our approach was not directly toward Denali but
toward an opening in the range six or eight miles to the east of the
great mountain. This opening is known as Cache Creek. Passing the willow
patch at its mouth, where previous camps had been made, we pushed up the
creek some three miles more to its forks, and there established our base
camp, on 10th April, at about four thousand feet elevation. A few
scrubby willows struggled to grow in the creek bed, but the hills that
rose from one thousand five hundred to two thousand feet around us were
bare of any vegetation save moss and were yet in the main covered with
snow. Caribou signs were plentiful everywhere, and we were no more than
settled in camp when a herd appeared in sight.
[Illustration: Entering the range by Cache Creek.
The Muldrow Glacier flows between the peak in the background (Mt.
Brooks) and the ridge just below it.]
[Sidenote: Game and Its Preparation]
Our prime concern at this camp was the gathering and preserving of a
sufficient meat supply for our subsistence on the mountain. It was an
easy task. First Karstens killed a caribou and then Walter a
mountain-sheep. Then Esaias happened into the midst of a herd of caribou
as he climbed over a ridge, and killed three. That was all we needed.
Then we went to work preparing the meat. Why should any one haul canned
pemmican hundreds of miles into the greatest game country in the world?
We made our own pemmican of the choice parts of this tender, juicy meat
and we never lost appetite for it or failed to enjoy and assimilate it.
A fifty-pound lard-can, three parts filled with water, was set on the
stove and kept supplied with joints of meat. As a batch was cooked we
took it out and put more into the same water, removed the flesh from the
bones, and minced it. Then we melted a can of butter, added pepper and
salt to it, and rolled a handful of the minced meat in the butter and
moulded it with the hands into a ball about as large as a baseball. We
made a couple of hundred of such balls and froze them, and they kept
perfectly. When all the boiling was done we put in the hocks of the
animals and boiled down the liquor into five pounds of the thickest,
richest meat-extract jelly, adding the marrow from the bones. With this
pemmican and this extract of caribou, a package of erbswurst and a
cupful of rice, we concocted every night the stew which was our main
food in the higher regions.
[Illustration: Some heads of game killed at the base camp.]
[Sidenote: The Instruments]
Here the instruments were overhauled. The mercurial barometer reading by
verniers to three places of decimals was set up and read, and the two
aneroids were adjusted to read with it. These two aneroids perhaps
deserve a word. Aneroid A was a three-inch, three-circle instrument, the
invention of Colonel Watkins, of the British army, of range-finder fame.
It seems strange that the advantage of the three-circle aneroid is so
little known in this country, for its three concentric circles give such
an open scale that, although this particular instrument reads to
twenty-five thousand feet, it is easy to read as small a difference as
twenty feet on it. It had been carried in the hind sack of the writer's
sled for the past eight winters and constantly and satisfactorily used
to determine the height of summits and passes upon the trails of the
interior. Aneroid B was a six-inch patent mountain aneroid, another
invention of the same military genius, prompted by Mr. Whymper's
experiments with the aneroid barometer after his return from his classic
climbs to the summits of the Bolivian Andes. Colonel Watkins devised an
instrument in which by a threaded post and a thumb-screw the spring may
be relaxed or brought into play at will, and the instrument is never in
commission save when a reading is taken. Then a few turns of the
thumb-screw bring the spring to bear upon the box, its walls expand
until the pressure of the spring equals the pressure of the atmosphere,
the reading is taken, and the instrument thrown out of operation
again--a most ingenious arrangement by which it was hoped to overcome
some of the persistent faults of elastic-chamber barometers. The writer
had owned this instrument for the past ten years, but had never
opportunity to test its usefulness until now. So, although it read no
lower than about fifteen inches, he took it with him to observe its
operation. Lastly, completing the hypsometrical equipment, was a
boiling-point thermometer, with its own lamp and case, reading to 165°
by tenths of a degree.
Then there were the ice-creepers or crampons to adjust to the
moccasins--terribly heavy, clumsy rat-trap affairs they looked, but they
served us well on the higher reaches of the mountain and are, if not
indispensable, at least most valuable where hard snow or ice is to be
climbed. The snow-shoes, also, had to be rough-locked by lashing a
wedge-shaped bar of hardwood underneath, just above the tread, and
screwing calks along the sides. Thus armed, they gave us sure footing on
soft snow slopes, and were particularly useful in ascending the glacier.
While thus occupied at the base camp, came an Indian, his wife and
child, all the way from Lake Minchúmina, perhaps one hundred miles'
journey, to have the child baptized. It was generally known amongst all
the natives of the region that the enterprise was on foot, and
"Minchúmina John," hoping to meet us in the Kantishna, and missing us,
had followed our trail thus far. It was interesting to speculate how
much further he would have penetrated: Walter thought as far as the
glacier, but I think he would have followed as far as the dogs could go
or until food was quite exhausted.
[Illustration: The base camp at about 4,000 feet on Cache Creek.
The Muldrow Glacier flows between the ridge in the background and the
peak just beyond it.]
Meanwhile, the relaying of the supplies and the wood to the base camp
had gone on, and the advancing of it to a cache at the pass by which we
should gain the Muldrow Glacier. On 15th April Esaias and one of the
teams were sent back to Nenana. Almost all the stuff we should move was
already at this cache, and the need for the two dog teams was over.
Moreover, the trails were rapidly breaking up, and it was necessary for
the boy to travel by night instead of by day on his return trip. Johnny
and the other dog team we kept, because we designed to use the dogs up
to the head of the glacier, and the boy to keep the base camp and tend
the dogs, when this was done, until our return. So we said good-by to
Esaias, and he took out the last word that was received from us in more
than two months.
[Sidenote: McPhee Pass]
The photograph of the base camp shows a mountainous ridge stretching
across much of the background. That ridge belongs to the outer wall of
the Muldrow Glacier and indicates its general direction. Just beyond the
picture, to the right, the ridge breaks down, and the little valley in
the middle distance sweeps around, becomes a steep, narrow gulch, and
ends at the breach in the glacier wall. This breach, thus reached, is
the pass which the Kantishna miners of the "pioneer" expedition
discovered and named "McPhee Pass," after a Fairbanks saloon-keeper. The
name should stand. There is no other pass by which the glacier can be
reached; certainly none at all above, and probably no convenient one
below. Unless this pass were used, it would be necessary to make the
long and difficult journey to the snout of the glacier, some twenty
miles farther to the east, cross its rough terminal moraine, and
traverse all its lower stretch.
On the 11th April Karstens and I wound our way up the narrow, steep
defile for about three miles from the base camp and came to our first
sight of the Muldrow Glacier, some two thousand five hundred feet above
camp and six thousand, three hundred feet above the sea. That day stands
out in recollection as one of the notable days of the whole ascent.
There the glacier stretched away, broad and level--the road to the heart
of the mountain, and as our eyes traced its course our spirits leaped up
that at last we were entered upon our real task. One of us, at least,
knew something of the dangers and difficulties its apparently smooth
surface concealed, yet to both of us it had an infinite attractiveness,
for it was the highway of desire.