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THE ASCENT OF DENALI 
 
 (MOUNT MCKINLEY) 
 
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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 
 
 1914 
 
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 Aj 
 
 •/V?^Sf 
 
 C0P\T!TGHT, I914, BY 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 Published February, 1914 
 
 \ 
 
 -A 
 
 €^CIA3C908J 
 
^0 
 
 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 com- 
 plete 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 thou- 
 sand 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 Mc- 
 Kinley. 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 
 
 vii 
 
Preface 
 
 States army, upon a reconnoissance survey into 
 the land, passed around the companion peak, 
 and, ahke 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 Kusko- 
 kwim have always called these mountains "De- 
 nali" (Den-ah'li) and "Denali's Wife"— either 
 precisely as here written, or with a dialectical differ- 
 ence in pronunciation so sHght 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 an- 
 other name for it. They call it TraUika^ which, 
 in their wholly different language, has the same 
 signification. It is probably true of every great 
 
 viii 
 
Preface 
 
 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 Xanana 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 vio- 
 lence 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 Minchumina and see these moun- 
 tains 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 
 
 ix 
 
Preface 
 
 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 hun- 
 dred feet above the sea. The rough approxima- 
 tion 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 appar- 
 ently 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 na- 
 tives 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 moun- 
 tains 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 
 
 X 
 
Preface 
 
 old-time superciliousness of the city-bred, now 
 confined, one hopes, to such localities as White- 
 chapel and the Bowery. 
 
 There is, to the author's mind, a certain ruth- 
 less 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 soci- 
 eties 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 acknowledg- 
 ment 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 ren- 
 dered it possible — one more in a long list of kind- 
 nesses which have rendered happy an association 
 of nearly ten years. Nor can better place be 
 found for a tribute of gratitude to those who 
 
 xi 
 
Preface 
 
 were of the little party: to Mr. Harry P. Kar- 
 stens, 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 affec- 
 tion 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 re- 
 turned with the superfluous dogs, must be men- 
 tioned, with commendation for fidelity and thanks 
 for service. Acknowledgment is also made to 
 many friends and colleagues at the mission sta- 
 tions in the interior, who knew of the purpose 
 
 xii 
 
Preface 
 
 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 unneces- 
 sarily, yet lest any should mistake, a final personal 
 note. He is no professed explorer or climber or 
 "scientist," but a missionary, and of these mat- 
 ters 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. 
 
 Xlll 
 
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 Dis- 
 cussion 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 Moun- 
 tain 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 
 FACE 
 
 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 \y 
 
 Some heads of game killed at the base-camp .... 22 v^ 
 
 The Muldrow Glacier. Karstens in the foreground . . 26 ' 
 
 Ascension Day, 1913 30 1'' 
 
 Bridging a crevasse on the Muldrow Glacier .... 32 ' 
 
 Hard work for dogs as well as men on the Muldrow / 
 
 Glacier 34 
 
 xvii 
 
Illustrations 
 
 FACING 
 PAGE 
 
 The Northeast Ridge shattered by the earthquake in 
 
 July, 191 2 40 
 
 Cutting a staircase three miles long in the ice of the shat- ^' 
 
 tered 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 v'' 
 
 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 high- 
 est point in North America 104 
 
 xviii 
 
Illustrations 
 
 FACING 
 PAGE 
 
 The saying of the Te Deum io6 "^ 
 
 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 y 
 
 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 oj volume ^' 
 
 XIX 
 
THE ASCENT OF DENALI 
 
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 Arch- 
 deacon 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, writ- 
 ing in The Spirit of Missions of a view of the 
 mountain from the Pedro Dome, in the neighbor- 
 hood 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 
 
 3 
 
The Ascent of Denali 
 
 the country held for him that it contained an 
 uncHmbed 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 instru- 
 ments that were used in the ascent as well as 
 his personal climbing equipment. There was no 
 definite likelihood that the opportunit}^ would 
 come to him of attempting the ascent, but he 
 wished to be prepared with instruments of ade- 
 quate scale in case the opportunity should come; 
 and Hicks, of London, made them nine years ago. 
 
 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 at- 
 tempt. Mr. Karstens had gone to the Klondike 
 in his seventeenth 3'ear, 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 
 
 4 
 

 H 
 
Members of the Party 
 
 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 regu- 
 larly through. When the stampede to the Kan- 
 tishna took place, and the government was dila- 
 tory 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 Iditerod, had 
 run motor-boats on the Yukon and the Xanana. 
 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 
 DenaH. With the full vigor of maturity, with all 
 this accumulated experience and the resourceful- 
 ness and self-reHance 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 na- 
 tives and their dog teams, to two women mis- 
 
 5 
 
The Ascent of Denali 
 
 sionaries, a nurse and a teacher, at the Xanana 
 Crossing. The steamboat had cached the sup- 
 pHes at a point about one hundred miles below 
 the mission the previous summer, unable to pro- 
 ceed any farther. The upper Tanana is a danger- 
 ous and difficult river alike for navigation and for 
 ice travel, and Tatum's efforts were made des- 
 perate by the knowledge that the women were re- 
 duced 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 con- 
 siderateness made him a very pleasant comrade. 
 
 Of the half-breed boy, Walter Harper, the au- 
 thor'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 
 6 
 
Methods of Approach 
 
 in snow and ice, though not in high-mountain 
 work. But the nature of snow and ice is not 
 radically changed by Hfting 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 equip- 
 ment, 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 unHmited funds at his dis- 
 posal — and the financial aspect of the aflPair 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 'Ij^^^j ^t 
 
 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. 
 
 7 
 
 H H n-*j 
 
The Ascent of Denali 
 
 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 suppHes 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 as- 
 cent, 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 diffi- 
 culties of the southern slopes of the range. 
 
 It was proposed to use the mission launch 
 Pelican^ which has travelled close to twenty thou- 
 sand miles on the Yukon and its tributaries in the 
 six seasons she has been in commission, to trans- 
 port the supplies up the Kantishna and Bearpaw 
 Rivers to the head of navigation of the latter, 
 when her cruise of 191 2 was complete. But a 
 
 8 
 
Equipment 
 
 serious mishap to the launch, which it was im- 
 possible 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, push- 
 ing 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. 
 
 Unfortunately, the equipment and suppHes or- 
 dered from the outside did not arrive in time to 
 go in with the bulk of the stuff. Although or- 
 dered 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 fore- 
 sight may dictate. 
 
 The silk tents, which had not come, had to be 
 made in Fairbanks; the ice-axes sent were ridic- 
 ulous gold-painted toys with detachable heads 
 and broomstick handles — more like dwarf hal- 
 
 9 
 
The Ascent of Denali 
 
 herds than ice-axes; and at least two work- 
 manhke axes were Indispensahle. 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 hick- 
 ory 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. 
 Heav}^ regulation-nailed alpine boots were sent — 
 all too small to be worn with even a couple of 
 pairs of socks, and therefore quite useless. In- 
 deed, 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 assort- 
 ment of such things of standard pattern and 
 qualit}^ 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 accus- 
 tomed to the natural spread of the foot which a 
 moccasin permits, but we could not find boots to 
 
 10 
 
Supplies 
 
 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 dol- 
 lars; 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 Kar- 
 stens's direction, while the writer, only just arrived 
 in Fairbanks from Fort Yukon and Xanana, 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 re- 
 turned. A multitude of small details kept us sev- 
 eral 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. 
 
 Karstens having joined us, we went down to 
 the mission at Nenana (seventy-five miles) in a 
 
 II 
 
The Ascent of Denali 
 
 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 excel- 
 lent 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 
 mehing snow, used a number of yea.rs 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 
 
 12 
 
/ 
 
 * 
 
 u. 
 
 H 
 
Start 
 
 great wolf-robe, weighing twenty-five pounds, of 
 which we were glad enough later on. 
 
 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 elab- 
 orate saloons and gambhng-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 quan- 
 tities only. The "cities" are mere collections of 
 tumble-down huts amongst which the moose roam 
 at will. Interior Alaska has many such aban- 
 doned "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 
 
 13 
 
The Ascent of Denali 
 
 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 com- 
 fortable 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 riflfles and shallows and thus 
 deny passage under the ice to the water of foun- 
 tains and springs that never ceases flowing. So it 
 bursts forth and flows over the ice with a contin- 
 ually 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 
 
 14 
 
u 
 
 c 
 
 -T3 
 
 C 
 
 o 
 
The Faces of the Mountain 
 
 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. 
 
 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 photo- 
 graphs agreeing with all travellers as to its tame- 
 ness. There is only one face of the Denali group 
 that is completely satisfying, that is adequate to 
 the full picturesque potentiality of a twenty-thou- 
 sand-foot elevation. The writer has seen no other 
 view, no other aspect of it, comparable to that 
 of the northwest face from Lake Minchumina. 
 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 de- 
 tract from the uplift and from the dignity, but 
 the northwestern face is stark. 
 
 One more run, of much the same character as 
 15 
 
The Ascent of Denali 
 
 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 Gla- 
 cier City, and we lay there over the feast, gath- 
 ering three or four men who were operating a 
 prospecting-drill in that neighborhood for the 
 first public worship ever conducted in the Kan- 
 tishna 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 ac- 
 cess 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. 
 
 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 
 
 16 
 
Pi -s 
 
 
 c 
 
 ^4 
 
 Q i 
 
Timber-Line 
 
 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 
 
 17 
 
The Ascent of Denali 
 
 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 moun- 
 tain last summer. There has been no need to 
 make reconnoissance for routes since these pio- 
 neers blazed the way: there is no other practica- 
 ble route than the one they discovered. The two 
 subsequent climbing parties have followed pre- 
 cisely 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 to- 
 ward 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 loth 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. 
 
 i8 
 
u 
 
 u 
 
 >, 
 
 00 
 
 ^ 
 
 ff 
 
 
 (11 
 
 V 
 
 J2 
 
 tl} 
 
 1) 
 
 c 
 
 J= 
 
 C 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 
 ui 
 
 c 
 
 o; 
 
 i> 
 
 
 i; 
 
 C 
 
 ;;!, 
 
 W 
 
 ^ 
 
Game and Its Preparation 
 
 Caribou signs were plentiful everywhere, and we 
 were no more than settled in camp when a herd 
 appeared in sight. 
 
 Our prime concern at this camp was the gath- 
 ering 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 hap- 
 pened 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 pem- 
 mican hundreds of miles into the greatest game 
 country in the world.'* We made our own pem- 
 mican 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 base- 
 ball. We made a couple of hundred of such 
 balls and froze them, and they kept perfectly. 
 
 19 
 
The Ascent of Denali 
 
 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. 
 
 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 instru- 
 ment, 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 sat- 
 isfactorily used to determine the height of sum- 
 mits and passes upon the trails of the interior. 
 Aneroid B was a six-inch patent mountain ane- 
 
 20 
 
r ) u 
 
 
 o u 
 
 o -s 
 
 °„ 
 
 ■^ .5 
 
 I-' M 
 
 O ^ 
 
 H 
 
The Instruments 
 
 roid, 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 An- 
 des. 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, read- 
 ing 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 
 
 21 
 
The Ascent of Dcnali 
 
 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 Minchumina, per- 
 haps 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 "Minchumina John," hoping to meet 
 us in the Kantishna, and missing us, had followed 
 our trail thus far. It was interesting to specu- 
 late 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. 
 
 Meanwhile, the relaying of the supplies and the 
 wood to the base camp had gone on, and the ad- 
 vancing 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 
 
 22 
 
o 
 
McPhee Pass 
 
 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. 
 
 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 
 
The Ascent of Denali 
 
 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 tra- 
 verse all its lower stretch. 
 
 On the nth 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. 
 
 24 
 
CHAPTER II 
 THE MULDROW GLACIER 
 
 RIGHT opposite McPhee Pass, across the 
 glacier, perhaps at this point half a mile 
 wide, rises a bold pyramidal peak, twelve thou- 
 sand or thirteen thousand feet high, which we 
 would like to name Mount Farthing, in honor of 
 the memory of a very noble gentlewoman who 
 died at the mission at Nenana three years ago, 
 unless, unknown to us, it already bear some other 
 name.* Walter and our two Indian boys had 
 been under her instruction. 
 
 At the base of this peak two branches of the 
 glacier unite, coming down in the same general 
 direction and together draining the snows of the 
 whole eastern face of the mountain. The divid- 
 ing wall between them, almost up to their head 
 and termination, is one stupendous, well-nigh ver- 
 tical escarpment of ice-covered rock towering six 
 thousand or seven thousand feet above the glacier 
 
 * I have since learned that this mountain was named Mount 
 Brooks by Professor Parker, and so withdraw the suggested name. 
 
 25 
 
The Ascent of Denali 
 
 floor, the first of the very impressive features of 
 the mountain. The other wall of the glacier, 
 through a breach in which we reached its surface 
 — the right-hand wall as we journeyed up it — con- 
 sists of a series of inaccessible cliffs deeply seamed 
 with snow gullies and crusted here and there with 
 hanging glaciers, the rock formation changing sev- 
 eral times as one proceeds but maintaining an 
 unbroken rampart. 
 
 Now, it is important to remember that these 
 two ridges which make the walls of the Muldrow 
 Glacier rise ultimately to the two summits of the 
 mountain, the right-hand wall culminating in the 
 North Peak and the left-hand wall in the South 
 Peak. And the glacier lies between the walls all 
 the way up and separates the summits, with this 
 qualification — that midway in its course it is in- 
 tetiupted by a perpendicular ice-fall of about 
 four thousand feet by which its upper portion 
 discharges into its lower. It will help the reader 
 to a comprehension of the ascent if this rough 
 sketch be borne in mind. 
 
 The course of the glacier at the point at which 
 we reached it is nearly northeast and southwest 
 (magnetic); its surface is almost level and it is 
 free of crevasses save at its sides. For three or 
 four miles above the pass it pursues its course 
 
 26 
 
The Muldrow Glacier 
 
 without change of direction or much increase in 
 grade; then it takes a broad sweep toward the 
 south and grows steep and much crevassed. 
 Three miles farther up it takes another and more 
 decided southerly bend, receiving two steep but 
 short tributaries from the northwest at an ele- 
 vation of about ten thousand feet, and finishing 
 its lower course in another mile and a half, at 
 an elevation of about eleven thousand five hun- 
 dred feet, with an almost due north and south 
 direction (magnetic). 
 
 A week after our first sight of the glacier, or 
 on the 1 8th April, we were camped at about the 
 farthest point we had been able to see on that 
 occasion — just round the first bend. Our stuflF had 
 been freighted to the pass and cached there; then, 
 in the usual method of our advance, the camp had 
 been moved forward beyond the cache on to the 
 glacier, a full day's march. Then the team worked 
 backward, bringing up the stuff to the new camp. 
 Thus three could go ahead, prospecting and stak- 
 ing out a trail for further advance, while two 
 worked with the dog team at the freighting. 
 
 For the glacier difficulties now confronted us 
 in the fullest degree. Immediately above our 
 tent the ice rose steeply a couple of hundred feet, 
 and at that level began to be most intricately 
 
 27 
 
The Ascent of Denali 
 
 crevassed. It took several days to unravel the 
 tangle of fissures and discover and prepare a trail 
 that the dogs could haul the sleds along. Some- 
 times a bridge would be found over against one 
 wall of the glacier, and for the next we might 
 have to go clear across to the other wall. Some- 
 times a block of ice jammed in the jaws of a cre- 
 vasse would make a perfectly safe bridge; some- 
 times we had nothing upon which to cross save 
 hardened snow. Some of the gaps were narrow 
 and some wide, yawning chasms. Some of them 
 were mere surface cracks and some gave hun- 
 dreds of feet of deep blue ice with no bottom visi- 
 ble at all. Sometimes there was no natural bridge 
 over a crevasse, and then, choosing the narrowest 
 and shallowest place in it, we made a bridge, 
 excavating blocks of hard snow with the shovels 
 and building them up from a ledge below, or pro- 
 jecting them on the cantilever principle, one be- 
 yond the other from both sides. Many of these 
 crevasses could be jumped across by an unen- 
 cumbered man on his snow-shoes that could not 
 have been jumped with a pack and that the dogs 
 could not cross at all. As each section of trail 
 was determined it was staked out with willow 
 shoots, hundreds of which had been brought up 
 from below. And in all of this pioneering work, 
 
 28 
 
Crevasses 
 
 and, indeed, thenceforward invariably, the rope 
 was conscientiously used. Every step of the way 
 up the glacier was sounded by a long pole, the 
 man in the lead thrusting it deep into the snow 
 while the two behind kept the rope always taut. 
 More than one pole slipped into a hidden crevasse 
 and was lost when vigor of thrust was not matched 
 by tenacity of grip; more than once a man was 
 jerked back just as the snow gave way beneath 
 his feet. The open crevasses were not the danger- 
 ous ones; the whole glacier was crisscrossed by cre- 
 vasses completely covered with snow. In bright 
 weather it was often possible to detect them by a 
 slight depression in the surface or by a faint, 
 shadowy difference in tint, but in the half-light 
 of cloudy and misty weather these signs failed, 
 and there was no safety but in the ceaseless prod- 
 ding of the pole. The ice-axe will not serve — one 
 cannot reach far enough forward with it for 
 safety, and the incessant stooping is an unneces- 
 sary added fatigue. 
 
 For the transportation of our wood and supplies 
 beyond the first glacier camp, the team of six dogs 
 was cut into two teams of three, each drawing a 
 little Yukon sled procured in the Kantishna, the 
 large basket sled having been abandoned. And 
 in the movement for%vard, when the trail to a 
 
 29 
 
The Ascent of Denali 
 
 convenient cache had been established, two men, 
 roped together, accompanied each sled, one ahead 
 of the dogs, the other just behind the dogs at 
 the gee-pole. This latter had also a hauling-line 
 looped about his breast, so that men and dogs 
 and sled made a unit. It took the combined 
 traction power of men and dogs to take the loads 
 up the steep glacial ascents, and it was very hard 
 work. Once, ** Snowball," the faithful team leader 
 of four years past, who has helped to haul my sled 
 nearly ten thousand miles, broke through a snow 
 bridge and, the belly-band parting, slipped out 
 of his collar and fell some twenty feet below to a 
 ledge in a crevasse. Walter was let down and 
 rescued the poor brute, trembling but uninjured. 
 Without the dogs we should have been much de- 
 layed and could hardly, one judges, have moved 
 the wood forward at all. The work on the glacier 
 was the beginning of the ceaseless grind which 
 the ascent of Denali demands. 
 
 How intolerably hot it was, on some of these 
 days, relaying the stuff up the glacier! I shall 
 never forget Ascension Day, which occurred this 
 year on the 1st May. Double feast as it was — 
 for SS. Philip and James falls on that day — it was 
 a day of toil and penance. With the mercurial 
 barometer and a heavy pack of instruments and 
 
 30 
 
Ascension Day, 1913. 
 
Heavy Hauling 
 
 cameras and films on my back and the rope over 
 my shoulder, bent double hauling at the sled, I 
 trudged along all day, panting and sweating, 
 through four or five inches of new-fallen snow, 
 while the glare of the sun was terrific. It seemed 
 impossible that, surrounded entirely by ice and 
 snow, with millions of tons of ice underfoot, it 
 could be so hot. But we took the loads right 
 through to the head of the glacier that day, rising 
 some four thousand feet in the course of five 
 miles, and cached them there. On other days a 
 smother of mist lay all over the glacier surface, 
 with never a breath of wind, and the air seemed 
 warm and humid as in an Atlantic coast city in 
 July. Yet again, starting early in the morning, 
 sometimes a zero temperature nipped toes and 
 fingers and a keen wind cut like a knife. Some- 
 times it was bitterly cold in the mornings, insuffer- 
 ably hot at noon, and again bitterly cold toward 
 night. It was a pity we had no black-bulb, sun- 
 maximum thermometer amongst our instruments, 
 for one is sure its readings would have been of 
 great interest. 
 
 It was a pity, also, that we had no means of 
 making an attempt at measuring the rate of 
 movement of this glacier — a subject we often dis- 
 cussed. The carriage of poles enough to set out 
 
 31 
 
The Ascent of Denali 
 
 rows of them across the glacier would have greatly 
 increased our loads and the time required to trans- 
 port them. But it is certain that its rate of move- 
 ment is very slow in general, though faster at cer- 
 tain spots than at others, and a reason for this 
 judgment will be given later. 
 
 The midway cache between our first and last 
 glacier camps was itself the scene of a camp we 
 had not designed, for on the day we were moving 
 finally forward we were too fatigued to press on 
 to the spot that had been selected at the head of 
 the glacier, and by common consent made a halt 
 at the cache and set up the tent there. This is 
 mentioned because it had consequences. If we 
 had gone through that day and had established 
 ourselves at the selected spot, a disaster that befell 
 us would, in all probability, not have happened; 
 for the next day, instead of moving our camp 
 forward, we relayed some stuff and cached it 
 where the camp would be made, covering the 
 cache with the three small silk tents. Then we 
 sat around awhile and ate our luncheon, and 
 presently went down for another load. Imagine 
 our surprise, upon returning some hours later, 
 to see a column of smoke rising from our cache. 
 All sorts of wild speculations flew through the 
 writer's mind as, in the lead that day, he first 
 
 32 
 
o 
 
 
 03 
 
The Fire on the Glacier 
 
 crested the serac that gave view of the cache. 
 Had some mysterious cHmber come over from 
 the other side of the mountain and built a fire 
 on the glacier? Had he discovered our wood and 
 our grub and, perhaps starving, kindled a fire 
 of the one to cook the other? Was there really, 
 then, some access to this face of the mountain 
 from the south? For it is fixed in the mind of 
 the traveller in the north beyond eradication that 
 smoke must mean man. But ere we had gone 
 much farther the truth dawned upon us that our 
 cache was on fire, and we left the dogs and the 
 sleds and hurried to the spot. Something we 
 were able to save, but not much, though we were 
 in time to prevent the fire from spreading to our 
 far-hauled wood. And the explanation was not 
 far to seek. After luncheon Karstens and the 
 writer had smoked their pipes, and one or the 
 other had thrown a careless match away that had 
 fallen unextinguished upon the silk tents that 
 covered the cache. Presently a little wind had 
 fanned the smouldering fabric into flame, which 
 had eaten down into the pile of stuff below, mostly 
 in wooden cases. All our sugar was gone, all our 
 powdered milk, all our baking-powder, our prunes, 
 raisins, and dried apples, most of our tobacco, a 
 case of pilot bread, a sack full of woollen socks and 
 
 33 
 
The Ascent of Denali 
 
 gloves, another sack full of photographic films — all 
 were burned. Most fortunately, the food provided 
 especially for the high-mountain work had not 
 yet been taken to the cache, and our pemmican, 
 erbswurst, chocolate, compressed tea, and figs 
 were safe. But it was a great blow to us and 
 involved considerable delay at a very unfortunate 
 time. We felt mortification at our carelessness as 
 keenly as we felt regret at our loss. The last thing 
 a newcomer would dream of would be danger from 
 fire on a glacier, but we were not newcomers, and 
 we all knew how ever-present that danger is, more 
 imminent in Alaska in winter than in summer. 
 Our carelessness had brought us nigh to the ruin- 
 ing of the whole expedition. The loss of the 
 films was especially unfortunate, for we were thus 
 reduced to Walter's small camera with a common 
 lens and the six or eight spools of film he had 
 for it. 
 
 The next day the final move of the main camp 
 was made, and we established ourselves in the 
 cirque at the head of the Muldrow Glacier, at an 
 elevation of about eleven thousand five hundred 
 feet, more than half-way up the mountain. After 
 digging a level place in the glacier and setting up 
 the tent, a wall of snow blocks was built all round 
 it, and a little house of snow blocks, a regular 
 
 34 
 
o 
 
 O 
 
 13 
 
 O 
 
Camping Comfort 
 
 Eskimo igloo, was built near by to serve as a 
 cache. Some details of our camping may be of 
 interest. The damp from the glacier ice had in- 
 commoded us at previous camps, coming up 
 through skins and bedding when the tent grew 
 warm. So at this camp we took further precau- 
 tion. The boxes in which our grub had been 
 hauled were broken up and laid over the whole 
 portion of the floor of the tent where our bed was; 
 over this wooden floor a canvas cover was laid, and 
 upon this the sun-dried hides of the caribou and 
 mountain-sheep we had killed were placed. There 
 was thus a dry bottom for our bedding, and we 
 were not much troubled thenceforward by the 
 rising moisture, although a camp upon the ice is 
 naturally always a more or less sloppy place. The 
 hides were invaluable; heavy as they were, we 
 carried them all the way up. 
 
 So soon as we were thus securely lodged, elated 
 when we thought of our advance, but downcast 
 when we recalled our losses, we set ourselves to 
 repair the damage of the fire so far as it was rep- 
 arable. Walter and Johnny must go all the way 
 down to the base camp and bring up sled-covers 
 out of which to construct tents, must hunt the 
 baggage through for old socks and mitts, and 
 must draw upon what grub had been left for 
 
 35 
 
The Ascent of Denali 
 
 the return journey to the extreme limit it was 
 safe to do so. 
 
 Karstens, accustomed to be clean-shaven, had 
 been troubled since our first glacier camp with an 
 affection of the face which he attributed to "in- 
 growing whiskers," but when many hairs had been 
 plucked out with the tweezers and he was nothing 
 bettered, but rather grew worse and the inflam- 
 mation spread to neck and temple, it was more 
 correctly attributed to an eczema, or tetter, caused 
 by the glare of the sun. So he was not loath to 
 seclude himself for a few days in the tent while we 
 set about the making of socks and mitts from the 
 camel's-hair Hning of the sleeping-bag. Walter's 
 face was also very sore from the sun, his lips in 
 particular being swollen and blistered. So pain- 
 ful did they become that I had to cut lip covers 
 of surgeon's plaster to protect them. Then the 
 boys returned with the sorry gleanings of the 
 base camp, and the business of making two 
 tents from the soiled and torn sled-covers and 
 darning worn-out socks and mittens, was put in 
 hand. Our camp looked like a sweat-shop those 
 days, with its cross-legged tailormen and its lit- 
 ter of snippets. In addition to the six-by-seven 
 tent, three feet six inches high, in which we were 
 to live when we left the glacier, we made a small, 
 
 36 
 
Amber Glasses 
 
 conical tent in which to read the instruments on 
 the summit. And all those days the sun shone 
 in a clear sky! 
 
 Here, since reference has just been made to the 
 effect of the sun's glare on the face of one member 
 of the party, it may be in place to speak of the 
 perfect eye protection which the amber snow- 
 glasses afforded us. Long experience with blue 
 and smoke-colored glasses upon the trail in spring 
 had led us to expect much irritation of the eyes 
 despite the use of snow-glasses, and we had plen- 
 tifully provided ourselves with boracic acid and 
 zinc sulphate for eye-washes. But the amber 
 glasses, with their yellow celluloid side-pieces, were 
 not a mere palliative, as all other glasses had been 
 in our experience, but a complete preventive of 
 snow-bHndness. No one of us had the slightest 
 trouble with the eyes, and the eye-washes were 
 never used. It is hard for any save men com- 
 pelled every spring to travel over the dazzhng 
 snows to realize what a great boon this newly dis- 
 covered amber glass is. There is no reason any- 
 where for any more snow-blindness, and there is 
 no use anywhere for any more blue or smoked 
 glasses. The invention of the amber snow-glass 
 is an even greater blessing to the traveller in the 
 north than the invention of the thermos bottle. 
 
 37 
 
The Ascent of Denali 
 
 No test could be more severe than that which we 
 put these glasses to. 
 
 We were now at the farthest point at which it 
 was possible to use the dogs, at our actual climb- 
 ing base, and the time had come for Johnny and 
 the dogs to go down to the base camp for good. 
 We should have liked to keep the boy, so good- 
 natured and amiable he was and so keen for 
 further climbing; but the dogs must be tended, 
 and the main food for them was yet to seek on 
 the foot-hills with the rifle. So on 9th May down 
 they went, Tatum and the writer escorting them 
 with the rope past the crevasses as far as the first 
 glacier camp, and then toiling slowly up the glacier 
 again, thankful that it was for the last time. That 
 was one of the sultriest and most sweltering days 
 either of us ever remembered, a moist heat of 
 sun beating down through vapor, with never a 
 breath of breeze — a stifling, stewing day that, with 
 the steep climb added, completely exhausted and 
 prostrated us. 
 
 It is important that the reader should be able 
 to see, in his mind's eye, the situation of our 
 camp at the head of the glacier, because to do 
 so is to grasp the simple orography of this face 
 of the mountain, and to understand the route of 
 its ascent, probably the only route by which it 
 
 38 
 
The Great Ice-Fall 
 
 can be ascended. Standing beside the tent, fac- 
 ing in the direction we have journeyed, the great 
 highway of the glacier comes to an abrupt end, 
 a cul-de-sac. On the right hand the wall of the 
 glacier towers up, with enormous precipitous cliffs 
 incrusted with hanging ice, to the North Peak 
 of the mountain, eight or nine thousand feet 
 above us. About at right angles to the end of 
 the glacier, and four thousand feet above it, is 
 another glacier, which discharges by an almost per- 
 pendicular ice-fall upon the floor of the glacier be- 
 low.* The left-hand wall of the glacier, described 
 some pages back as a stupendous escarpment of 
 ice-covered rock, breaks rapidly down into a 
 comparatively low ridge, which sweeps to the 
 right, encloses the head of the glacier, and then 
 rises rapidly to the glacier above, and still rises to 
 form the left-hand wall of that glacier, and finally 
 the southern or higher peak of the mountain. 
 
 So the upper glacier separates the two great 
 peaks of the mountain and discharges at right 
 angles into the lower glacier. And the walls of 
 the lower glacier sweep around and rise to form 
 the walls of the upper glacier, and ultimately the 
 summits of the mountain. To reach the peaks 
 one must first reach the upper glacier, and the 
 
 *See frontispiece. 
 
 39 
 
The Ascent of Denali 
 
 southern or left-hand wall of the lower glacier, 
 where it breaks down into the ridge that encloses 
 the head of the glacier, is the only possible means 
 by which the upper basin may be reached. This 
 ridge, then, called by Parker and Browne the 
 Northeast Ridge (and we have kept that designa- 
 tion, though with some doubt as to its correct- 
 ness), presented itself as the next stage in our 
 climb. 
 
 Now just before leaving Fairbanks we had re- 
 ceived a copy of a magazine containing the ac- 
 count of the Parker-Browne climb, and in that 
 narrative Mr. Browne speaks of this Northeast 
 Ridge as "a steep but practicable snow slope," 
 and prints a photograph which shows it as such. 
 To our surprise, when we first reached the head of 
 the glacier, the ridge offered no resemblance what- 
 ever to the description or the photograph. The 
 upper one-third of it was indeed as described, but 
 at that point there was a sudden sharp cleavage, 
 and all below was a jumbled mass of blocks of 
 ice and rock in all manner of positions, with here 
 a pinnacle and there a great gap. Moreover, the 
 floor of the glacier at its head was strewn with 
 enormous icebergs that we could not understand 
 at all. All at once the explanation came to us — 
 *'thc earthquake"! The Parker-Browne party 
 
 40 
 
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 fTN 
 
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 3 
 
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 W) 
 
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 -f-, 
 
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 WJ 
 
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 H 
 
Last Year's Earthquake 
 
 had reported an earthquake which shook the 
 whole base of the mountain on 6th July, 191 2, 
 two days after they had come down, and, as was 
 learned later, the seismographic instruments at 
 Washington recorded it as the most severe shock 
 since the San Francisco disturbance of 1906. 
 There could be no doubt that the earthquake had 
 disrupted this ridge. The huge bergs all around 
 us were not the normal discharge of hanging 
 glaciers as we had at first wonderingly supposed; 
 they were the Incrustation of ages, maybe, ripped 
 off the rocks and hurled down from the ridge by 
 this convulsion. It was as though, as soon as 
 the Parker-Browne party reached the foot of the 
 mountain, the ladder by which they had ascended 
 and descended was broken up. 
 
 What a wonderful providential escape these 
 three men, Parker, Browne, and LeVoy had! 
 They reached a spot within three or four hundred 
 feet of the top of the mountain, struggling gal- 
 lantly against a blizzard, but were compelled at 
 last to beat a retreat. Again from their seven- 
 teen-thousand-foot camp they essayed it, only 
 to be enshrouded and defeated by dense mist. 
 They would have waited in their camp for fair 
 weather had they been provided with food, 
 but their stomachs would, not retain the canned 
 
 41 
 
The Ascent of Denali 
 
 pemmican they had carried laboriously aloft, and 
 they were compelled to give up the attempt and 
 descend. So down to the foot of the mountain 
 they went, and immediately they reached their 
 base camp this awful earthquake shattered the 
 ridge and showered down bergs on both the 
 upper and lower glaciers. Had their food served 
 they had certainly remained above, and had they 
 remained above their bodies would be there now. 
 Even could they have escaped the avalanching 
 icebergs they could never have descended that 
 ridge after the earthquake. They would either 
 have been overwhelmed and crushed to death 
 instantly or have perished by starvation. One 
 cannot conceive grander burial than that which 
 lofty mountains bend and crack and shatter to 
 make, or a nobler tomb than the great upper 
 basin of Denali; but life is sweet and all men are 
 loath to leave it, and certainly never men who 
 cling to life had more cause to be thankful. 
 
 The difficulty of our task was very greatl)^ in- 
 creased; that was plain at a glance. This ridge, 
 that the pioneer climbers of 1910 went up at one 
 march with climbing-irons strapped beneath their 
 moccasins, carrying nothing but their flagpole, 
 that the Parker-Browne party surmounted in a 
 few days, relaying their camping stuflP and supplies, 
 
 42 
 
Glacier Movement 
 
 was to occupy us for three weeks while we hewed 
 a staircase three miles long in the shattered ice. 
 
 It was the realization of the earthquake and of 
 what it had done that convinced us that this 
 Muldrow Glacier has a very slow rate of move- 
 ment. The great blocks of ice hurled down from 
 above lay apparently just where they had fallen 
 almost a year before. At the points of sharp 
 descent, at the turns in its course, at the points 
 where tributary glaciers were received, the move- 
 ment is somewhat more rapid. We saw some 
 crevasses upon our descent that were not in exist- 
 ence when we went up. But for the whole stretch 
 of it we were satisfied that a very few feet a year 
 would cover its movement. No doubt all the 
 glaciers on this side of the range are much more 
 sluggish than on the other side, where the great 
 precipitation of snow takes place. 
 
 We told Johnny to look for us in two weeks. 
 It was thirty-one days ere we rejoined him. 
 For now began the period of suspense, of hope 
 blasted anew nearly every morning, the period of 
 weary waiting for decent weather. With the whole 
 mountain and glacier enveloped in thick mist it 
 was not possible to do anything up above, and 
 day after day this was the condition, varied by 
 high wind and heavy snow. From the inexhausti- 
 
 43 
 
The Ascent of Denali 
 
 ble cisterns of the Pacific Ocean that vapor was 
 distilled, and ever it rose to these mountains and 
 poured all over them until every valley, every 
 glacier, every hollow, was filled to overflowing. 
 There seemed sometimes to us no reason why the 
 process should not go on forever. The situation 
 was not without its ludicrous side, when one had 
 the grace to see it. Here were four men who had 
 already passed through the long Alaskan winter, 
 and now, when the rivers were breaking and the 
 trees bursting into leaf, the flowers spangling 
 every hillside, they were deliberately pushing 
 themselves up into the winter still, with the long- 
 expected summer but a day's march away. 
 
 The tedium of lying in that camp while snow- 
 storm or fierce, high wind forbade adventure upon 
 the splintered ridge was not so great to the 
 writer as to some of the other members of the 
 expedition, for there was always Walter's edu- 
 cation to be prosecuted, as it had been prosecuted 
 for three winters on the trail and three summers 
 on the launch, in a desultory but not altogether 
 unsuccessful manner. An hour or two spent in 
 writing from dictation, another hour or two in 
 reading aloud, a little geography and a little his- 
 tory and a little physics made the day pass busily. 
 A pupil is a great resource. Karstens was con- 
 
 44 
 
The Language of Commerce 
 
 tinually designing and redesigning a motor-boat 
 in which one engine should satisfactorily operate 
 twin screws; Tatum learned the thirty-nine articles 
 by heart; but naval architecture and even con- 
 troversial divinity palled after a while. The equip- 
 ment and the supplies for the higher region were 
 gone over again and again, to see that all was 
 properly packed and in due proportion. 
 
 As one handled the packages and read and re- 
 read the labels, one was struck by the meagre 
 English of merchandisers and the poor verbal re- 
 sources of commerce generally. A while ago bus- 
 iness dealt hardly with the word "proposition." 
 It was the universal noun. Everything that busi- 
 ness touched, however remotely, was a "proposi- 
 tion." When last he was "outside" the writer 
 heard the Nicene creed described as a "tough 
 proposition"; the Vice-President of the United 
 States as a "cold-blooded proposition," and mis- 
 sionaries in Alaska generally as "queer proposi- 
 tions." Now commerce has discovered and ap- 
 propriated the word "product" and is working it 
 for all it is worth. The coffee in the can calls 
 itself a product. The compressed medicines from 
 London direct you to "dissolve one product" in 
 so much water; the vacuum bottles inform you 
 that since they are a "glass product" they will not 
 
 45 
 
The Ascent of Denali 
 
 guarantee themselves against breakage; the tea 
 tablets and the condensed pea soup affirm the 
 purity of "these products"; the powdered milk is 
 a little more explicit and calls itself a "food prod- 
 uct." One feels disposed to agree with Humpty 
 Dumpty, in "Through the Looking-Glass," that 
 when a word is worked as hard as this it ought to 
 be paid extra. One feels that "product" ought 
 to be coming round on Saturday night to collect 
 its overtime. The zwieback amuses one; it is a 
 West-coast "product," and apparently "product" 
 has not yet reached the West coast — it does not so 
 dignify itself. But it urges one, in great letters on 
 every package, to "save the end seals; they are 
 valuable!" Walter finds that by gathering one 
 thousand two hundred of these seals he would be 
 entitled to a " rolled-gold " watch absolutely free! 
 This zwieback was the whole stock of a Yukon 
 grocer purchased when the supply we ordered did 
 not arrive. The writer was reminded of the time 
 when he bought several two-pound packages of 
 rolled oats at a little Yukon store and discovered 
 to his disgust that every package contained a china 
 cup and saucer that must have weighed at least 
 a pound. One can understand the poor Indian 
 being thus deluded into the belief that he is get- 
 ting his crockery for nothing, but it is hard to 
 
 46 
 
"Talcum and Glucose" 
 
 understand how the ** gift-enterprise" and ''pre- 
 mium-package" folly still survives amongst white 
 people — and Indians do not eat zwieback. What 
 sort of people are they who will feverishly purchase 
 and consume one thousand two hundred packages 
 of zwieback in order to get a "rolled-gold" watch 
 for nothing? A sack of corn-meal takes one's eye 
 mainly by the enumeration of the formidable proc- 
 esses which the "product" inside has survived. 
 It is announced proudly as "degerminated, gran- 
 ulated, double kiln-dried, steam-ground"! But 
 why, in the name even of an adulterous and adul- 
 terating generation, should rice be "coated with 
 talcum and glucose," as this sack unblushingly 
 confesses? It is all very well to add "remove by 
 washing"; that is precisely what we shall be un- 
 able to do. It will take all the time and fuel we 
 have to spare to melt snow for cooking, when 
 one little primus stove serves for all purposes. 
 When we leave this camp there will be no more 
 water for the toilet; we shall have to cleanse our 
 hands with snow and let our faces go. The rice 
 will enter the pot unwashed and will transfer its 
 talcum and glucose to our intestines. Nor is 
 this the case merely on exceptional mountain- 
 climbing expeditions; it is the general rule during 
 the winter throughout Alaska. It takes a long 
 
 47 
 
The Ascent of Denali 
 
 time and a great deal of snow and much wood 
 to produce a pot of water on the winter trail. 
 That "talcum-and-glucose" abomination should 
 be taken up by the Pure Food Law authorities. 
 All the rice that comes to Alaska is so labelled. 
 The stomachs and bowels of dogs and men in the 
 country are doubtless gradually becoming "coated 
 with talcum and glucose." 
 
 It was during this period of hope deferred that 
 we began to be entirely without sugar. Perhaps 
 by the ordinary man anywhere, certainly by the 
 ordinary man in Alaska, where it is the rule to 
 include as much sugar as flour in an outfit, dep- 
 rivation of sugar is felt more keenly than depri- 
 vation of any other article of food. We watched 
 the gradual dwindling of our little sack, replen- 
 ished from the base camp with the few pounds we 
 had reserved for our return journey, with sinking 
 hearts. It was kept solely for tea and coffee. 
 We put no more in the sour dough for hot cakes; 
 we ceased its use on our rice for breakfast; we gave 
 up all sweet messes. Tatum attempted a pudding 
 without sugar, putting vanilla and cinnamon and 
 one knows not what other flavorings in it, in the 
 hope of disguising the absence of sweetness, but 
 no one could eat it and there was much jeering at 
 the cook. Still it dwindled and dwindled. Two 
 
 48 
 
Sugar 
 
 spoonfuls to a cup were reduced by common con- 
 sent to one, and still it went, until at last the day 
 came when there was no more. Our cocoa be- 
 came useless — we could not drink it without sugar; 
 our consumption of tea and coffee diminished — 
 there was little demand for the second cup. And 
 we all began to long for sweet things. We tried 
 to make a palatable potation from some of our 
 milk chocolate, reserved for the higher work and 
 labelled, "For eating only." The label was ac- 
 curate; it made a miserable drink, the milk taste 
 entirely lacking, the sweetness almost gone. We 
 speculated how our ancestors got on without sugar 
 when it was a high-priced luxury brought pain- 
 fully in small quantities from the Orient, and as- 
 sured one another that it was not a necessary 
 article of diet. At last we all agreed to Karstens's 
 laconic advice, "Forget it!" and we spoke of sugar 
 no more. When we got on the ridge the chocolate 
 satisfied to some extent the craving for sweetness, 
 but we all missed the sugar sorely and continued 
 to miss it to the end, Karstens as much as any- 
 body else. 
 
 Our long detention here made us thankful for 
 the large tent and the plentiful wood supply. 
 That wood had been hauled twenty miles and 
 rais'ed nearly ten thousand feet, but it was worth 
 
 49 
 
The Ascent of Denali 
 
 while since it enabled us to "weather out the 
 weather" here in warmth and comparative com- 
 fort. The wood no more than served our need; 
 indeed, we had begun to economize closely before 
 we left this camp. 
 
 We were greatly interested and surprised at the 
 intrusion of animal life into these regions totally 
 devoid of any vegetation. A rabbit followed us 
 up the glacier to an elevation of ten thousand feet, 
 gnawing the bark from the willow shoots with 
 which the trail was staked, creeping round the 
 crevasses, and, in one place at least, leaping such a 
 gap. At ten thousand feet he turned back and 
 descended, leaving his tracks plain in the snow. 
 We speculated as to what possible object he could 
 have had, and decided that he was migrating 
 from the valley below, overstocked with rabbits 
 as it was, and had taken a wrong direction for his 
 purpose. Unless the ambition for first ascents 
 have reached the leporidae, this seems the only 
 explanation. 
 
 At this camp at the head of the glacier we saw 
 ptarmigan on several occasions, and heard their 
 unmistakable cry on several more, and once we 
 felt sure that a covey passed over the ridge above 
 us and descended to the other glacier. It was 
 always in thick weather that these birds were 
 
 50 
 
Avalanches 
 
 noticed at the glacier head, and we surmised that 
 perhaps they had lost their way in the cloud. 
 
 But even this was not the greatest height at 
 which bird life was encountered. In the Grand 
 Basin, at sixteen thousand five hundred feet, Wal- 
 ter was certain that he heard the twittering of 
 small birds familiar throughout the winter in 
 Alaska, and this also was in the mist. I have 
 never known the boy make a mistake in such 
 matters, and it is not essentially improbable. 
 Doctor Workman saw a pair of choughs at twenty- 
 one thousand feet, on Nun Kun in the Himalayas. 
 
 Our situation on the glacier floor, much of the 
 time enveloped in dense mist, was damp and cold 
 and gloomy. The cliffs around from time to time 
 discharged their unstable snows in avalanches 
 that threw clouds of snow almost across the wide 
 glacier. Often we could see nothing, and the noise 
 of the avalanches without the sight of them was 
 at times a little alarming. But the most notable 
 discharges were those from the great ice-fall, 
 and the more important of them were startling 
 and really very grand sights. A slight movement 
 would begin along the side of the ice, in one of 
 the gullies of the rock, a little trickling and 
 rattling. Gathering to itself volume as it de- 
 scended, it started ice in other gullies and pres- 
 
 51 
 
The Ascent of Denali 
 
 ently there was a roar from the whole face of the 
 enormous hanging glacier, and the floor upon 
 which the precipitation descended trembled and 
 shook with the impact of the discharge. Dense 
 volumes of snow and ice dust rose in clouds thou- 
 sands of feet high and slowly drifted down the 
 glacier. We had chosen our camping-place to be 
 out of harm's way and were really quite safe. We 
 never saw any large masses detached, and by the 
 time the ice reached the glacier floor it was all 
 reduced to dust and small fragments. One does 
 not recall in the reading of mountaineering books 
 any account of so lofty an ice-fall. 
 
 52 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE NORTHEAST RIDGE 
 
 SOME of the photographs we succeeded in get- 
 ting will show better than any words the 
 character of the ridge we had to climb to the 
 upper basin by. The lowest point of the ridge 
 was that nearest our camp. To reach its crest 
 at that point, some three hundred feet above the 
 glacier, was comparatively easy, but when it was 
 reached there stretched ahead of us miles and miles 
 of ice-blocks heaved in confusion, resting at in- 
 secure angles, poised, some on their points, some 
 on their edges, rising in this chaotic way some 
 3,000 feet. Here one would have to hew steps up 
 and over a pinnacle, there one must descend 
 again and cut around a great slab. Our wisest 
 course was to seek to reach the crest of the ridge 
 much further along, beyond as much of this ice 
 chaos as possible. But it was three days be- 
 fore we could find a way of approach to the crest 
 that did not take us under overhanging icebergs 
 that threatened continually to fall upon our heads, 
 as the overhanging hill threatened Christian in 
 
 53 
 
The Ascent of Denali 
 
 the "Pilgrim's Progress." At last we took straight 
 up a steep gully, half of it snow slope, the upper 
 half ice-incrusted rock, and hewed steps all the 
 five hundred feet to the top. Here we were about 
 half a mile beyond the point at which we first 
 attained the crest, with that half mile of ice- 
 blocks cut out, but beyond us the prospect loomed 
 just as difficult and as dangerous. We could cut 
 out no more of the ridge; we had tried place after 
 place and could reach it safely at no point further 
 along. The snow slopes broke off with the same 
 sharp cleavage the whole ridge displayed two 
 thousand five hundred feet above; there was no 
 other approach. 
 
 So our task lay plain and onerous, enormously 
 more dangerous and laborious than that which 
 our predecessors encountered. We must cut steps 
 in those ice-blocks, over them, around them, on 
 the sheer sides of them, under them — whatever 
 seemed to our judgment the best way of circum- 
 venting each individual block. Every ten yards 
 presented a separate problem. Here was a sharp 
 black rock standing up in a setting of ice as thin 
 and narrow and steep as the claws that hold the 
 ston« in a finger-ring. That ice must be chopped 
 down level, and then steps cut all round the rock. 
 It took a solid hour to pass that rock. Here was 
 
 54 
 
The Shattered Ridge 
 
 a great bluff of ice, with snow so loose and at 
 such a sharp angle about it that passage had to 
 be hewed up and over and down it again. On 
 either side the ridge fell precipitously to a glacier 
 floor, with yawning crevasses half-way down ea- 
 gerly swallowing ever}^ particle of ice and snow 
 that our axes dislodged: on the right hand to the 
 west fork of the Muldrow Glacier, by which we 
 had journeyed hither; on the left to the east fork 
 of the same, perhaps one thousand five hundred 
 feet, perhaps two thousand feet lower. At the gap 
 in the ridge, with the ice gable on the other 
 side of it, the difficulty and the danger were per- 
 haps at their greatest. It took the best part of 
 a day's cutting to make steps down the slope 
 and then straight up the face of the enormous ice 
 mass that confronted us. The steps had to be 
 made deep and wide; it was not merely one pas- 
 sage we were making; these steps would be 
 traversed again and again by men with heavy 
 packs as we relayed our food and camp equipage 
 along this ridge, and we were determined from 
 the first to take no unnecessary risks whatever. 
 We realized that the passage of this shattered 
 ridge was an exceedingly risky thing at best. 
 To go along it day after day seemed like tempting 
 Providence. We were resolved that nothing on 
 
 55 
 
The Ascent of Denali 
 
 our part should be lacking that could contribute 
 to safety. Day by day we advanced a little 
 further and returned to camp. 
 
 The weather doubled the time and the tedium 
 of the passage of this ridge. From Whitsunday 
 to Trinity Sunday, inclusive, there were only two 
 days that we could make progress on the ridge 
 at all, and on one of those days the clouds from 
 the coast poured over so densely and enveloped 
 us so completely that it was impossible to see 
 far enough ahead to lay out a course wisely. On 
 that day we toppled over into the abyss a mass of 
 ice, as big as a two-story house, that must have 
 weighed hundreds of tons. It was poised upon 
 two points of another ice mass and held upright 
 by a flying buttress of wind-hardened snow. 
 Three or four blows from Karstens's axe sent it 
 hurling downward. It passed out of our view 
 into the cloud-smother immediately, but we heard 
 it bound and rebound until it burst with a report 
 like a cannon, and some days later we saw its 
 fragments strewn all over the flat two thousand 
 feet below. What a sight it must have been last 
 July, when the whole ridge was heaving, shat- 
 tering, and showering down its bergs upon the 
 glacier floors! One day we were driven off the 
 ridge by a high wind that threatened to sweep 
 
 56 
 
The shattered Northeast Ridge. 
 
The Hall of the Mountain King 
 
 us from our footholds. On another, a fine morn- 
 ing gave place to a sudden dense snow-storm that 
 sent us quickly below again. Always all day long, 
 while we were on that ridge, the distant thunder 
 of avalanches resounded from the great basin far 
 above us, into which the two summits of Denali 
 were continually discharging their snows. It 
 sounded as though the King of Denmark were 
 drinking healths all day long to the salvoes of 
 his artillery — that custom "more honored in the 
 breach than in the observance." From such fancy 
 the mind passed easily enough to the memory of 
 that astonishing composition of Grieg's, "In the 
 Hall of the Mountain King," and, once recalled, 
 the stately yet staccato rhythm ran in one's ears 
 continually. For if we had many days of cloud 
 and smother of vapor that blotted out everything, 
 when a fine day came how brilliant beyond all 
 that lower levels know it was! From our perch 
 on that ridge the lofty peaks and massive ridges 
 rose on every side. As little by little we gained 
 higher and higher eminence the view broadened, 
 and ever new peaks and ridges thrust themselves 
 into view. We were within the hall of the moun- 
 tain kings indeed; kings nameless here, in this 
 multitude of lofty summits, but that elsewhere in 
 the world would have each one his name and story. 
 
 57 
 
The Ascent of Denali 
 
 And how eager and impatient we were to rise 
 high enough, to progress far enough on that 
 ridge that we might gaze into the great basin it- 
 self from which the thunderings came, the spacious 
 hall of the two lords paramount of all the moun- 
 tains of the continent — the north and south peaks 
 of Denali! Our hearts beat high with the antici- 
 pation not only of gazing upon it but of entering 
 it and pitching our tent in the midst of its august 
 solitudes. To come down again — for there was 
 as yet no spot reached on that splintered back- 
 bone where we might make a camp — to pass day 
 after day in our tent on the glacier floor waiting 
 for the bad weather to be done that we might 
 essay it again; to watch the tantalizing and, as it 
 seemed, meaningless fluctuations of the barom- 
 eter for encouragement; to listen to the driving 
 wind and the swirling snow, how tedious that 
 was! 
 
 At last when we had been camped for three 
 weeks at the head of the glacier, losing scarce an 
 hour of usable weather, but losing by far the 
 greater part of the time, when the advance party 
 the day before had reached a tiny flat on the ridge 
 where they thought camp could be made, we took 
 a sudden desperate resolve to move to the ridge 
 at any cost. All the camp contained that would 
 
 S8 
 
Camp on the Ridge 
 
 be needed above was made up quickly into four 
 packs, and we struck out, staggering under our 
 loads. Before we reached the first slope of the 
 ridge each man knew in his heart that we were 
 attempting altogether too much. Even Karstens, 
 who had packed his "hundred and a quarter" 
 day after day over the Chilkoot Pass in 1897, 
 admitted that he was "heavy." But we were 
 saved the chagrin of acknowledging that we had 
 undertaken more than we could accomplish, for 
 before we reached the steep slope of the ridge a 
 furious snow-storm had descended upon us and we 
 were compelled to return to camp. The next day 
 we proceeded more wisely. We took up half the 
 stuff and dug out a camping-place and pitched the 
 little tent. Every step had to be shovelled out, 
 for the previous day's snow had filled it, as had 
 happened so many times before, and it took five 
 and one-half hours to reach the new camping- 
 place. On Sunday, 25th May, the first Sunday 
 after Trinity, we took up the rest of the stuff, 
 and established ourselves at a new climbing base, 
 about thirteen thousand feet high and one thou- 
 sand five hundred feet above the glacier floor, 
 not to descend again until we descended for good. 
 We were now much nearer our work and it 
 progressed much faster, although as the ridge rose 
 
 59 
 
The Ascent of Denali 
 
 it became steeper and steeper and even more 
 rugged and chaotic, and the difficulty and danger 
 of its passage increased. Our situation up here 
 was decidedly pleasanter than below. We had in- 
 deed exchanged our large tent for a small one in 
 which we could sit upright but could not stand, 
 and so narrow that the four of us, lying side by 
 side, had to make mutual agreement to turn over; 
 our comfortable wood-stove for the little kerosene 
 stove; yet when the clouds cleared we had a noble, 
 wide prospect and there was not the sense of 
 damp immurement that the floor of the glacier 
 gave. The sun struck our tent at 4.30 a. m., 
 which is nearly two and one-half hours earlier 
 than we received his rays below, and lingered 
 with us long after our glacier camp was in the 
 shadow of the North Peak. Moreover, instead 
 of being colder, as we expected, it was warmer, 
 the minimum ranging around zero instead of 
 around 10° below. 
 
 The rapidity with which the weather changed 
 up here was a continual source of surprise to us. 
 At one moment the skies would be clear, the 
 peaks and the ridge standing out with brilliant 
 definition; literally five minutes later they would 
 be all blotted out by dense volumes of vapor that 
 poured over from the south. Perhaps ten minutes 
 
 60 
 
Camp at 13,000 feet on Northeast Ridge. 
 
Clouds and Climate 
 
 more and the cloud had swept down upon the 
 glacier and all above would be clear again; or it 
 might be the vapor deepened and thickened into 
 a heavy snow-storm. Sometimes everything be- 
 low was visible and nothing above, and a few 
 minutes later everything below would be obscured 
 and everything above revealed. 
 
 This great crescent range is, indeed, our rampart 
 against the hateful humidity of the coast and 
 gives to us in the interior the dry, windless, ex- 
 hilarating cold that is characteristic of our winters. 
 We owe it mainly to this range that our snowfall 
 averages about six feet instead of the thirty or 
 forty feet that falls on the coast. The winds that 
 sweep northward toward this mountain range are 
 saturated with moisture from the warm waters of 
 the Pacific Ocean; but contact with the lofty 
 colds condenses the moisture into clouds and pre- 
 cipitates most of it on the southern slopes as 
 snow. Still bearing all the moisture their less- 
 ened temperature will allow, the clouds pour 
 through every notch and gap in the range and 
 press resolutely onward and downward, stream- 
 ing along the glaciers toward the interior. But 
 all the time of their passage they are parting with 
 their moisture, for the snow is falling from them 
 continually in their course. They reach the in- 
 
 6i 
 
The Ascent of Denali 
 
 terior, indeed, and spread out triumphant over the 
 lowlands, but most of their burden has been de- 
 posited along the way. One is reminded of the 
 government train of mules from Fort Egbert that 
 used to supply the remote posts of the "strategic" 
 telegraph line before strategy yielded to economy 
 and the useless line was abandoned. When the 
 train reached the Tanana Crossing it had eaten up 
 nine-tenths of its original load, and only one-tenth 
 remained for the provisioning of the post. So 
 these clouds were being squeezed like a sponge; 
 every saddle they pushed through squeezed them; 
 every peak and ridge they surmounted squeezed 
 them; every glacier floor they crept down squeezed 
 them, and they reached the interior valleys at- 
 tenuated, depleted, and relatively harmless. 
 
 The aneroids had kept fairly well with the mer- 
 curial barometer and the boiling-point thermom- 
 eter until we moved to the ridge; from this time 
 they displayed a progressive discrepancy therewith 
 that put them out of serious consideration, and 
 one was as bad as the other. Eleven thousand 
 feet seemed the limit of their good behavior. To 
 set them back day by day, like Captain Cuttle's 
 watch, would be to depend wholly upon the other 
 instruments anyway, and this is just what we did, 
 not troubling to adjust them. They were read 
 
 62 
 
Aneroids 
 
 and recorded merely because that routine had 
 been established. Says Burns: 
 
 "There was a lad was born in Kyle, 
 But whatna' day o' whatna' style, 
 I doubt it's hardly worth the while 
 To be sae nice wi' Robin." 
 
 So they were just aneroids: aluminum cases, 
 jewelled movements, army-officer patented im- 
 provements, Kew certificates, import duty, and 
 all — just aneroids, and one was as bad as the 
 other. Within their limitations they are exceed- 
 ingly useful instruments, but it is folly to depend 
 on them for measuring great heights. 
 
 Perched up here, the constant struggle of the 
 clouds from the humid south to reach the interior 
 was interesting to watch, and one readily under- 
 stood that Denali and his lesser companions are 
 a prime factor in the climate of interior Alaska. 
 
 Day by day Karstens and Walter would go up 
 and resume the finding and making of a way, and 
 Tatum and the writer would relay the stuff from 
 the camp to a cache, some five hundred feet above, 
 and thence to another. The grand objective point 
 toward which the advance party was working 
 was the earthquake cleavage — a clean, sharp cut 
 in the ice and snow of fifty feet in height. Above 
 that point all was smooth, though fearfully steep; 
 
 63 
 
The Ascent of Denali 
 
 below was the confusion the earthquake had 
 wrought. Each day Karstens felt sure they 
 would reach the break, but each day as they ad- 
 vanced toward it the distance lengthened and 
 the intricate difficulties increased. More than 
 once a passage painfully hewn in the soHd ice had 
 to be abandoned, because it gave no safe exit, and 
 some other passage found. At last the cleavage 
 was reached, and it proved the most ticklish piece 
 of the whole ridge to get around. Just below it 
 was a loose snow slope at a dangerous angle, where 
 it seemed only the initial impulse was needed for 
 an avalanche to bear it all below. And just before 
 crossing that snow slope was a wall of overhang- 
 ing ice beneath which steps must be cut for one 
 hundred yards, every yard of which endangered 
 the climber by disputing the passage of the pack 
 upon his shoulders. 
 
 Late in the evening of the 27th May, looking 
 up the ridge upon our return from relaying a load 
 to the cache, we saw Karstens and Walter stand- 
 ing, clear-cut, against the sky, upon the surface of 
 the unbroken snow above the earthquake cleav- 
 age. Tatum and I gave a great shout of joy, and, 
 far above as they were, they heard us and waved 
 their response. We watched them advance upon 
 the steep slope of the ridge until the usual cloud 
 
 64 
 
The Primus Stove 
 
 descended and blotted them out. The way was 
 clear to the top of the ridge now, and that night 
 our spirits were high, and congratulations were 
 showered upon the victorious pioneers. The next 
 day, when they would have gone on to the pass, 
 the weather drove them back. On that smooth, 
 steep, exposed slope a wind too high for safety 
 beat upon them, accompanied by driving snow. 
 That day a little accident happened that threat- 
 ened our whole enterprise — on such small threads 
 do great undertakings hang. The primus stove 
 is an admirable device for heating and cooking — 
 superior, one thinks, to all the newfangled "alco- 
 hol utilities" — but it has a weak point. The fine 
 stream of kerosene — which, under pressure from 
 the air-pump, is impinged against the perforated 
 copper cup, heated to redness by burning alco- 
 hol, and is thus vaporized — first passes through 
 several convolutions of pipe within the burner, 
 and then issues from a hole so fine that some 
 people would not call it a hole at all but an orifice 
 or something like that. That little hole is the 
 weak spot of the primus stove. Sometimes it 
 gets clogged, and then a fine wire mounted upon 
 some sort of handle must be used to dislodge the 
 obstruction. Now, the worst thing that can hap- 
 pen to a primus stove is to get the wire pricker 
 
 65 
 
The Ascent of Denali 
 
 broken off in the burner hole, and that is what 
 happened to us. Without a special tool that we 
 did not possess, it is impossible to get at that 
 burner to unscrew it, and without unscrewing it 
 the broken wire cannot be removed. Tatum and 
 I turned the stove upside down and beat upon it 
 and tapped it, but nothing would dislodge that 
 wire. It looked remarkably like no supper; it 
 looked alarmingly like no more stove. How we 
 wished we had brought the other stove from the 
 launch, also! Every bow on an undertaking of 
 this kind should have two strings. But when 
 Karstens came back he went to work at once, and 
 this was one of the many occasions when his re- 
 sourcefulness was of the utmost service. With a 
 file, and his usual ingenuity, he constructed, out of 
 the spoon-bowl of a pipe cleaner the writer had in 
 his pocket, the special tool necessary to grip that 
 little burner, and soon the burner was unscrewed 
 and the broken wire taken out and the primus 
 was purring away merrily again, melting the water 
 for supper. We feel sure that we would have 
 pushed on even had we been without fire. The 
 pemmican was cooked already, and could be eaten 
 as it was, and one does not die of thirst in the 
 midst of snow; but calm reflection will hardly 
 allow that we could have reached the summit 
 
 66 
 
Germless Air 
 
 had we been deprived of all means of cooking and 
 heating. 
 
 On this ridge the dough refused to sour, and 
 since our baking-powder was consumed in the 
 fire we were henceforth without bread. A cold 
 night killed the germ in the sour dough, and we 
 were never again able to set up a fermentation in 
 it. Doubtless the air at this altitude is free from 
 the necessary spores or germs of ferment. Pas- 
 teur's and Tyndall's experiments on the Alps, 
 which resulted in the overthrow of the theory of 
 spontaneous generation, and the rehabilitation of 
 the old dogma that life comes only from Hfe, were 
 recalled with interest, but without much satisfac- 
 tion. We tried all sorts of ways of cooking the 
 flour, but none with any success. Next to the loss 
 of sugar we felt the loss of bread, and in the food 
 longings that overtook us bread played a large part. 
 
 On Friday, 30th May, the way had been pros- 
 pected right up to the pass which gives entrance 
 to the Grand Basin; a camping-place had been 
 dug out there and a first load of stuff carried 
 through and cached. So on that morning we 
 broke camp, and the four of us, roped together, 
 began the most important advance we had made 
 yet. With stiff packs on our backs we toiled up 
 the steps that had been cut with so much pains 
 
 ^1 
 
The Ascent of Denali 
 
 and stopped at the cache just below the cleavage 
 to add yet further burdens. All day nothing 
 was visible beyond our immediate environment. 
 Again and again one would have liked to photo- 
 graph the sensational-looking traverse of some 
 particularly difficult ice obstacle, but the mist 
 enveloped everything. 
 
 Just before we reached the smooth snow slope 
 above the range of the earthquake disturbance lay 
 one of the really dangerous passages of the climb. 
 
 It is easier to describe the difficulty and danger 
 of this particular portion of the ascent than to 
 give a clear impression to a reader of other places 
 almost as hazardous. Directly below the earth- 
 quake cleavage was an enormous mass of ice, de- 
 tached from the cleavage wall. From below, it 
 had seemed connected with that wall, and much 
 time and toil had been expended in cutting steps 
 up it and along its crest, only to find a great gulf 
 fixed; so it was necessary to pass along its base. 
 Now from its base there fell away at an exceed- 
 ingly sharp angle, scarcely exceeding the angle 
 of repose, a slope of soft, loose snow, and the 
 very top of that slope where it actually joined the 
 wall of ice offered the only possible passage. The 
 wall was in the main perpendicular, and turned 
 at a right angle midway. Just where it turned, 
 
 68 
 
A Perilous Passage 
 
 a great mass bulged out and overhung. This 
 traverse was so long that with both ropes joined 
 it was still necessary for three of the four members 
 of the party to be on the snow slope at once, two 
 men out of sight of the others. Any one familiar 
 with Alpine work will realize immediately the 
 great danger of such a traverse. There was, how- 
 ever, no avoiding it, or, at whatever cost, we should 
 have done so. Twice already the passage had 
 been made by Karstens and Walter, but not with 
 heavy packs, and one man was always on ice 
 while the other was on snow. This time all four 
 must pass, bearing all that men could bear. 
 Cautiously the first man ventured out, setting 
 foot exactly where foot had been set before, the 
 three others solidly anchored on the ice, paying 
 out the rope and keeping it taut. When all the 
 first section of rope was gone, the second man 
 started, and when, in turn, his rope was paid out, 
 the third man started, leaving the last man on the 
 ice holding to the rope. This, of course, was the 
 most dangerous part of this passage. If one of 
 the three had slipped it would have been almost 
 impossible for the others to hold him, and if he 
 had pulled the others down, it would have been 
 quite impossible for the solitary man on the ice 
 to have withstood the strain. When the first 
 
 69 
 
The Ascent of Denali 
 
 man reached solid ice again there was another 
 equally dangerous minute or two, for then all 
 three behind him were on the snow slope. The 
 beetling cliff, where the trail turned at right angles, 
 was the acutely dangerous spot. With heavy and 
 bulky packs it was exceedingly difficult to squeeze 
 past this projection. Ice gives no such entrance 
 to the point of the axe as hard snow does, yet the 
 only aid in steadying the climber, and in somewhat 
 relieving his weight on the loose snow, was afforded 
 by such purchase upon the ice-wall, shoulder high, 
 as that point could effect. Not a word was spoken 
 b}^ any one; all along the ice-wall rang in the 
 writer's ears that preposterous line from "The 
 Hunting of the Snark" — "Silence, not even a 
 shriek!" It was with a deep and thankful re- 
 lief that we found ourselves safely across, and 
 when a few minutes later we had climbed the 
 steep snow that lay against the cleavage wall and 
 were at last upon the smooth, unbroken crest of 
 the ridge, we realized that probably the worst 
 place in the entire climb was behind us. 
 
 Steep to the very limit of climbability as that 
 ridge was, it was the easiest going we had had 
 since we left the glacier floor. The steps were 
 already cut; it was only necessary to lift one foot 
 after the other and set the toe well in the hole, 
 
 70 
 
The Cock's Comb 
 
 with the Ice-axe buried afresh in the snow above 
 at every step. But each step meant the lifting 
 not only of oneself but of one's load, and the in- 
 creasing altitude, perhaps aggravated by the dense 
 vapor with which the air was charged, made the 
 advance exceedingly fatiguing. From below, the 
 foreshortened ridge seemed only of short length 
 and of moderate grade, could we but reach it — 
 a tantalizingly easy passage to the upper glacier 
 it looked as we chopped our way, little by little, 
 nearer and nearer to it. But once upon It, it 
 lengthened out endlessly, the sky-line always just 
 a little above us, but never getting any closer. 
 
 Just before reaching the steepest pitch of the 
 ridge, where it sweeps up In a cock's comb,* we 
 came upon the vestiges of a camp made by our 
 predecessors of a year before, in a hollow dug in 
 the snow — an empty biscuit carton and a raisin 
 package, some trash and brown paper and dis- 
 colored snow — as fresh as though they had been 
 left yesterday instead of a year ago. Truly the 
 terrific storms of this region are like the storms 
 of Guy Wetmore Carryl's clever rhyme that "come 
 early and avoid the rush'' They will sweep a 
 man off his feet, as once threatened to our advance 
 party, but will pass harmlessly over a cigarette 
 
 *See illustration facing p. 40 
 71 
 
The Ascent of Denali 
 
 stump and a cardboard box; our tent in the 
 glacier basin, ramparted by a wall of ice-blocks 
 as high as itself, we found overwhelmed and pros- 
 trate upon our return, but the willow shoots with 
 which we had staked our trail upon the glacier 
 were all standing. 
 
 Long as it was, the slope was ended at last, and 
 we came straight to the great upstanding granite 
 slabs amongst which is the natural camping-place 
 in the pass that gives access to the Grand Basin. 
 We named that pass the Parker Pass, and the 
 rock tower of the ridge that rises immediately 
 above it, the most conspicuous feature of this re- 
 gion from below, we named the Browne Tower. 
 The Parker-Browne party was the first to camp at 
 this spot, for the astonishing "sourdough" pioneers 
 made no camp at all above the low saddle of the 
 ridge (as it then existed), but took all the way to 
 the summit of the North Peak in one gigantic 
 stride. The names of Parker and Browne should 
 surely be permanently associated with this moun- 
 tain they were so nearly successful in climbing, 
 and we found no better places to name for them. 
 
 There is only one difficulty about the naming of 
 this pass; strictly speaking, it is not a pass at all, 
 and the writer does not know of any mountain- 
 eering term that technically describes it. Yet it 
 
 72 
 
The Upper Basin reached at last. Our camp at the Parker 
 Pass at 15,000 feet. 
 
Karstens Ridge 
 
 should bear a name, for it is the doorway to the 
 upper glacier, through which all those who would 
 reach the summit must enter. On the one hand 
 rises the Browne Tower, with the Northeast Ridge 
 sweeping away beyond it toward the South Peak. 
 On the other hand, the ice of the upper glacier 
 plunges to its fall. The upstanding blocks of 
 granite on a little level shoulder of the ridge lead 
 around to the base of the cliffs of the Northeast 
 Ridge, and it is around the base of those cliffs that 
 the way lies to the midst of the Grand Basin. So 
 the Parker Pass we call it and desire that it should 
 be named. 
 
 And while names are before us, the writer would 
 ask permission to bestow another. Having noth- 
 ing to his credit in the matter at all, as the narra- 
 tive has already indicated, he feels free to say 
 that in his opinion the conquest of the difficulties 
 of the earthquake-shattered ridge was an exploit 
 that called for high qualities of judgment and cau- 
 tious daring, and would, he thinks, be considered 
 a brilliant piece of mountaineering anywhere in the 
 world. He would like to name that ridge Kar- 
 stens Ridge, in honor of the man who, with Wal- 
 ter's help, cut that staircase three miles long amid 
 the perilous complexities of its chaotic ice-blocks. 
 
 When we reached the Parker Pass all the world 
 73 
 
The Ascent of Denali 
 
 beneath us was shrouded in dense mist, but all 
 above us was bathed in bright sunshine. The 
 great slabs of granite were like a gateway through 
 which the Grand Basin opened to our view. 
 
 The ice of the upper glacier, which fills the 
 Grand Basin, came terracing down from some four 
 thousand feet above us and six miles beyond us, 
 with progressive leaps of jagged blue serac between 
 the two peaks of the mountain, and, almost at our 
 feet, fell away with cataract curve to its precipi- 
 tation four thousand feet below us. Across the 
 glacier were the sheer, dark cliffs of the North 
 Peak, soaring to an almost immediate summit 
 twenty thousand feet above the sea; on the left, 
 in the distance, was just visible the receding 
 snow dome of the South Peak, with its two horns 
 some five hundred feet higher. The mists were 
 passing from the distant summits, curtain after 
 curtain of gauze draping their heads for a mo- 
 ment and sweeping on. 
 
 We made our camp between the granite slabs 
 on the natural camping site that offered itself, 
 and a shovel and an empty alcohol-can proclaimed 
 that our predecessors of last year had done the 
 same. 
 
 The next morning the weather had almost com- 
 pletely cleared, and the view below us burst upon 
 
 74 
 
Parker Pass 
 
 our eyes as we came out of the tent into the still 
 air. 
 
 The Parker Pass is the most splendid coigne of 
 vantage on the whole mountain, except the sum- 
 mit itself. From an elevation of something more 
 than fifteen thousand feet one overlooks the whole 
 Alaskan range, and the scope of view to the east, 
 to the northeast, and to the southeast is uninter- 
 rupted. Mountain range rises beyond mountain 
 range, until only the snowy summits are visible in 
 the great distance, and one knows that beyond 
 the last of them lies the open sea. The near-by 
 peaks and ridges, red with granite or black with 
 shale and gullied from top to bottom with snow 
 and ice, the broad highways of the glaciers at their 
 feet carrying parallel moraines that look like giant 
 tram-Hnes, stand out with vivid distinction. A 
 lofty peak, that we suppose is Mount Hunter, 
 towers above the lesser summits. The two arms 
 of the Muldrow Glacier start right in the fore- 
 ground and reveal themselves from their heads to 
 their junction and then to the terminal snout, 
 receiving their groaning tributaries from every 
 evacuating height. The dim blue lowlands, now 
 devoid of snow, stretch away to the northeast, 
 with threads of stream and patches of lake that 
 still carry ice along their banks. 
 
 75 
 
The Ascent of Denali 
 
 And all this splendor and diversity yielded itself 
 up to us at once; that was the most sensational 
 and spectacular feature of it. We went to sleep 
 in a smother of mist; we had seen nothing as we 
 climbed; we rose to a clear, sparkling day. The 
 clouds were mysteriously rolling away from the 
 lowest depths; the last wisps of vapor were sweep- 
 ing over the ultimate heights. Here one would 
 like to camp through a whole week of fine weather 
 could such a week ever be counted upon. Higher 
 than any point in the United States, the top of 
 the Browne Tower probably on a level with the 
 top of Mount Blanc, it is yet not so high as to 
 induce the acute breathlessness from which the 
 writer suffered, later, upon any exertion. The 
 climbing of the tower, the traversing to the other 
 side of it, the climbing of the ridge, would afford 
 pleasant excursions, while the opportunity for 
 careful though difficult photography would be 
 unrivalled. Even in thick weather the clouds are 
 mostly below; and their rapid movement, the 
 kaleidoscopic changes which their coming and 
 going, their thickening and thinning, their rising 
 and falling produce, are a never-failing source of 
 interest and pleasure. The changes of light and 
 shade, the gradations of color, were sometimes 
 wonderfully delicate and charming. Seen through 
 
 1^ 
 
Q 
 
 > 
 o 
 
 < 
 
The Himalayas 
 
 rapidly attenuating mist, the bold crags of the icy 
 ridge between the glacier arms in the foreground 
 would give a soft French gray that became a 
 luminous mauve before it sprang into dazzling 
 black and white in the sunshine. In the sunshine, 
 indeed, the whole landscape was hard and brilliant, 
 and lacked half-tones, as in the main it lacked 
 color; but when the vapor drew the gauze of its 
 veil over it there came rich, soft, elusive tints that 
 were no more than hinted ere they were gone. 
 
 Here, with nothing but rock and ice and snow 
 around, nine thousand feet above any sort of 
 vegetation even in the summer, it was of interest 
 to remember that at the same altitude in the 
 Himalayas good crops of barley and millet are 
 raised and apples are grown, while at a thousand 
 feet or so lower the apricot is ripened on the 
 terrace-gardens. 
 
 Karstens and Walter had brought up a load 
 each on their reconnoissance trip; four heavy loads 
 had been brought the day before. There were yet 
 two loads to be carried up from the cache below 
 the cleavage, and Tatum and Walter, always ready 
 to take the brunt of it, volunteered to bring them. 
 So down that dreadful ridge once more the boys 
 went, while Karstens and the writer prospected 
 ahead for a route into the Grand Basin. 
 
 n 
 
The Ascent of Denali 
 
 The storms and snows of ten or a dozen winters 
 may make a "steep but practicable snow slope" 
 of the Northeast Ridge again. One winter only 
 had passed since the convulsion that disrupted it, 
 and already the snow was beginning to build up 
 its gaps and chasms. All the summer through, 
 for many hours on clear days, the sun will melt 
 those snows and the frost at night will glaze them 
 into ice. The more conformable ice-blocks will 
 gradually be cemented together, while the fierce 
 winds that beat upon the ridge will wear away 
 the supports of the more egregious and unstable 
 blocks, and one by one they will topple into the 
 abyss on this side or on that. It will probably 
 never again be the smooth, homogeneous slope it 
 has been; "the gable" will probably always pre- 
 sent a wide cleft, but the slopes beyond it, stripped 
 now of their accumulated ice so as to be unclimb- 
 able, may build up again and give access to the 
 ridge. 
 
 The point about one thousand five hundred feet 
 above the gable, where the earthquake cleavage 
 took place, will perhaps remain the crux of the 
 climb. The ice-wall rises forty or fifty feet sheer, 
 and the broken masses below it are especially 
 difficult and precipitous, but with care and time 
 and pains it can be surmounted even as we sur- 
 
 78 
 
The Denali Problem 
 
 mounted it. And wind and sun and storm may- 
 mollify the forbidding abruptness of even this 
 break in the course of time. 
 
 With the exception of this ridge, Denali is not 
 a mountain that presents special mountaineering 
 difficulties of a technical kind. Its difficulties lie 
 in its remoteness, its size, the great distances 
 of snow and ice its cHmbing must include the 
 passage of, the burdens that must be carried 
 over those distances. We estimated that it was 
 twenty miles of actual linear distance from the 
 pass by which we reached the Muldrow Glacier 
 to the summit. In the height of summer its snow- 
 Hne will not be higher than seven thousand feet, 
 while at the best season for climbing it, the spring, 
 the snow-line is much lower. Its climbing is, like 
 nearly all Alaskan problems, essentially one of 
 transportation. But the Northeast Ridge, in its 
 present condition, adds all the spice of sensation 
 and danger that any man could desire. 
 
 79 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 THE GRAND BASIN 
 
 THE reader will perhaps be able to sympa- 
 thize with the feeling of elation and confi- 
 dence which came to us when we had surmounted 
 the difficulties of the ridge and had arrived at the 
 entrance to the Grand Basin. We realized that 
 the greater and more arduous part of our task 
 was done and that the way now lay open before 
 us. For so long a time this point had been the 
 actual goal of our efforts, for so long a time we 
 had gazed upward at it with hope deferred, that 
 its final attainment was accompanied with no 
 small sense of triumph and gratification and with 
 a great accession of faith that we should reach 
 the top of the mountain. 
 
 The ice of the glacier that fills the basin was 
 hundreds of feet beneath us at the pass, but it 
 rises so rapidly that by a short traverse under the 
 cliffs of the ridge we were able to reach its sur- 
 face and select a camping site thereon at about 
 sixteen thousand feet. It was bitterly cold, with 
 
 80 
 
Heat and Cold 
 
 a keen wind that descended in gusts from the 
 heights, and the slow movement of step-cutting 
 gave the man in the rear no opportunity of warm- 
 ing up. Toes and fingers grew numb despite mul- 
 tiple socks within mammoth moccasins and thick 
 gloves within fur mittens. 
 
 From this time, during our stay in the Grand 
 Basin and until we had left it and descended again, 
 the weather progressively cleared and brightened 
 until all clouds were dispersed. From time to 
 time there were fresh descents of vapor, and even 
 short snow-storms, but there was no general en- 
 veloping of the mountain again. Cold it was, at 
 times even in the sunshine, with "a nipping and 
 an eager air," but when the wind ceased it would 
 grow intensely hot. On the 4th June, at 3 P. m., 
 the thermometer in the full sunshine rose to 
 50° F. — the highest temperature recorded on the 
 whole excursion — and the fatigue of packing in 
 that thin atmosphere with the sun's rays reflected 
 from ice and snow everywhere was most exhaust- 
 ing. We were burned as brown as Indians; lips 
 and noses split and peeled in spite of continual 
 applications of lanoline, but, thanks to those most 
 beneficent amber snow-glasses, no one of the party 
 had the slightest trouble with his eyes. At night 
 it was always cold, 10° below zero being the high- 
 
 81 
 
The Ascent of Denali 
 
 est minimum during our stay in the Grand Basin, 
 and 21° below zero the lowest. But we always 
 slept warm; with sheep-skins and caribou-skins 
 under us, and down quilts and camel's-hair blan- 
 kets and a wolf-robe for bedding, the four of us lay 
 in that six-by-seven tent, in one bed, snug and 
 comfortable. It was disgraceful overcrowding, 
 but it was warm. The fierce little primus stove, 
 pumped up to its limit and perfectly consuming its 
 kerosene fuel, shot out its corona of beautiful blue 
 flame and warmed the tight, tiny tent. The pri- 
 mus stove, burning seven hours on a quart of coal- 
 oil, is a little giant for heat generation. If we 
 had had two, so that one could have served for 
 cooking and one for heating, we should not have 
 suffered from the cold at all, but as it was, when- 
 ever the stew-pot went on the stove, or a pot full 
 of ice to melt, the heat was immediately absorbed 
 by the vessel and not distributed through the tent. 
 But another primus stove would have been an- 
 other five or six pounds to pack, and we were 
 "heavy" all the time as it was. 
 
 Something has already been said about the 
 fatigue of packing, and one would not weary the 
 reader with continual reference thereto; yet it 
 is certain that those who have carried a pack only 
 on the lower levels cannot conceive how enor- 
 
 82 
 
CQ 
 
 13 
 
 C 
 
 O 
 
 
 Wr 
 
 o 
 
 h: 
 
 ^3 
 C 
 
 H 
 
The Labor of Packing 
 
 mously greater the labor is at these heights. As 
 one rises and the density of the air is diminished, 
 so, it would seem, the weight of the pack or the 
 effect of the weight of the pack is in the same 
 ratio increased. We probably moved from three 
 hundred to two hundred and fifty pounds, decreas- 
 ing somewhat as food and fuel were consumed, 
 each time camp was advanced in the Grand Basin. 
 We could have done with a good deal less as it fell 
 out, but this we did not know, and we were re- 
 solved not to be defeated in our purpose by lack 
 of supplies. But the packing of these loads, re- 
 laying them forward, and all the time steeply 
 rising, was labor of the most exhausting and fatigu- 
 ing kind, and there is no possible way in which it 
 may be avoided in the ascent of this mountain. 
 To roam over glaciers and scramble up peaks free 
 and untrammelled is mountaineering in the Alps. 
 Put a forty-pound pack on a man's back, with the 
 knowledge that to-morrow he must go down for 
 another, and you have mountaineering in Alaska. 
 In the ascent of this twenty-thousand-foot moun- 
 tain every member of the party climbed at least 
 sixty thousand feet. It is this going down and 
 doing it all over again that is the heart-breaking 
 part of climbing. 
 It was in the Grand Basin that the writer began 
 83 
 
The Ascent of Denali 
 
 to be seriously affected by the altitude, to be dis- 
 turbed by a shortness of breath that with each 
 advance grew more distressingly acute. While 
 at rest he was not troubled; mere existence im- 
 posed no unusual burden, but even a slight exer- 
 tion would be followed by a spell of panting, and 
 climbing with a pack was interrupted at every 
 dozen or score of steps by the necessity of stopping 
 to regain breath. There was no nausea or head- 
 ache or any other symptom of "mountain sick- 
 ness." Indeed, it is hard for us to understand that 
 affection as many climbers describe it. It has been 
 said again and again to resemble seasickness in 
 all its symptoms. Now the writer is of the un- 
 fortunate company that are seasick on the slight- 
 est provocation. Even rough water on the wide 
 stretches of the lower Yukon, when a wind is 
 blowing upstream and the launch is pitching 
 and tossing, will give him qualms. But no one 
 of the four of us had any such feeling on the 
 mountain at any time. Shortness of breath we 
 all suffered from, though none other so acutely 
 as myself. When it was evident that the progress 
 of the party was hindered by the constant stops 
 on my account, the contents of my pack were dis- 
 tributed amongst the others and my load reduced 
 to the mercurial barometer and the instruments, 
 
 84 
 
o 
 o 
 
 CQ 
 
 ^3 
 
 C 
 
 a 
 
Tobacco 
 
 and, later, to the mercurial barometer alone. It 
 was some mortification not to be able to do one's 
 share of the packing, but there was no help for 
 it, and the other shoulders were young and strong 
 and kindly. 
 
 With some hope of improving his wind, the 
 writer had reduced his smoking to two pipes a 
 day so soon as the head of the glacier had been 
 reached, and had abandoned tobacco altogether 
 when camp was first made on the ridge; but it is 
 questionable if smoking in moderation has much 
 or any effect. Karstens, who smoked continually, 
 and Walter, who had never smoked in his life, 
 had the best wind of the party. It is probably 
 much more a matter of age. Karstens was a 
 man of thirty-two years, and the two boys were 
 just twenty-one, while the writer approached fifty. 
 None of us slept as well as usual except Walter — 
 and nothing ever interferes with his sleep — but, 
 although our slumbers were short and broken, 
 they seemed to bring recuperation just as though 
 they had been sound. We arose fresh in the 
 morning though we had slept little and light. 
 
 On the 30th May we had made our camp at 
 the Parker Pass; on the 2d June, the finest and 
 brightest day in three weeks, we moved to our 
 first camp in the Grand Basin. On the 3d June 
 
 85 
 
The Ascent of Denali 
 
 we moved camp again, out into the middle of the 
 glacier, at about sixteen thousand five hundred 
 feet. 
 
 Here we were at the upper end of one of the 
 flats of the glacier that fills the Grand Basin, the 
 serac of another great rise just above us. The 
 walls of the North Peak grow still more striking 
 and picturesque here, where they attain their 
 highest elevation. These granite ramparts, falling 
 three thousand feet sheer, swell out into belly- 
 ing buttresses with snow slopes between them as 
 they descend to the glacier floor, while on top, 
 above the granite, each peak point and crest 
 ridge is tipped with black shale. How comes that 
 ugly black shale, with the fragments of which all 
 the lower glacier is strewn, to have such lofty 
 eminence and granite-guarded distinction, as 
 though it were the most beautiful or the most 
 valuable thing in the world ? The McKinley Fork 
 of the Kantishna, which drains the Muldrow, is 
 black as ink with it, and its presence can be de- 
 tected in the Tanana River itself as far as its 
 junction with the Yukon. It is largely soluble 
 in water, and where melting snow drips over it 
 on the glacier walls below were great splotches, 
 for all the world as though a gigantic ink-pot had 
 been upset. 
 
 86 
 
The Flagstaff 
 
 While we sat resting awhile on our way to this 
 camp, gazing at these pinnacles of the North 
 Peak, we fell to talking about the pioneer climbers 
 of this mountain who claimed to have set a flag- 
 staff near the summit of the North Peak — as to 
 which feat a great deal of incredulity existed in 
 Alaska for several reasons — and we renewed our 
 determination that, if the weather permitted when 
 we had reached our goal and ascended the South 
 Peak, we would climb the North Peak also to seek 
 for traces of this earliest exploit on Denali, which 
 is dealt with at length in another place in this 
 book. All at once Walter cried out: "I see the 
 flagstaff!" Eagerly pointing to the rocky prom- 
 inence nearest the summit — the summit itself is 
 covered with snow — he added: "I see it plainly!" 
 Karstens, looking where he pointed, saw it also, 
 and, whipping out the field-glasses, one by one 
 we all looked, and saw it distinctly standing out 
 against the sky. With the naked eye I was never 
 able to see it unmistakably, but through the glasses 
 it stood out, sturdy and strong, one side covered 
 with crusted snow. We were greatly rejoiced that 
 we could carry down positive confirmation of this 
 matter. It was no longer necessary for us to 
 ascend the North Peak. 
 
 The upper glacier also bore plain signs of the 
 87 
 
The Ascent of Denali 
 
 earthquake that had shattered the ridge. Huge 
 blocks of ice were strewn upon it, ripped off the 
 left-hand wall, but it was nowhere crevassed as 
 badly as the lower glacier, but much more broken 
 up into serac. Some of the bergs presented very 
 beautiful sights, wind-carved incrustations of 
 snow in cameo upon their blue surface giving a 
 suggestion of Wedgwood pottery. All tints seemed 
 more delicate and beautiful up here than on the 
 lower glacier. 
 
 On the 5th June we advanced to about seventeen 
 thousand five hundred feet right up the middle 
 of the glacier. As we rose that morning slowly 
 out of the flat in which our tent was pitched and 
 began to climb the steep serac, clouds that had 
 been gathering below swept rapidly up into the 
 Grand Basin, and others swept as rapidly over the 
 summits and down upon us. In a few moments 
 we were in a dense smother of vapor with nothing 
 visible a couple of hundred yards away. Then 
 the temperature dropped, and soon snow was fall- 
 ing which increased to a heavy snow-storm that 
 raged an hour. We made our camp and ate our 
 lunch, and by that time the smother of vapor 
 passed, the sun came out hot again, and we were 
 all simultaneously overtaken with a deep drowsi- 
 ness and slept. Then out into the glare again, to 
 
 88 
 
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 ^ 
 
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 T3 
 
 
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 H 
 
Last Camp 
 
 go down and bring up the remainder of the stuff, 
 we went, and that night we were established in 
 our last camp but one. We had decided to go 
 up at least five hundred feet farther that we 
 might have the less to climb when we made our 
 final attack upon the peak. So when we returned 
 with the loads from below we did not stop at 
 camp, but carried them forward and cached them 
 against to-morrow's final move. 
 
 On Friday, the 6th June, we made our last move 
 and pitched our tent in a flat near the base of the 
 ridge, just below the final rise in the glacier of the 
 Grand Basin, at about eighteen thousand feet, 
 and we were able to congratulate one another on 
 making the highest camp ever made in North 
 America. I set up and read the mercurial barom- 
 eter, and when corrected for its own temperature 
 it stood at 15.061. The boiling-point thermom- 
 eter registered 180.5, ^s the point at which water 
 boiled, with an air temperature of 35°. It toojc 
 one hour to boil the rice for supper. The aneroids 
 stood at 14.8 and 14.9, still steadily losing on the 
 mercurial barometer. I think that a rough alti- 
 tude gauge could be calculated from the time rice 
 takes to boil — at least as reliable as an aneroid 
 barometer. At the Parker Pass it took fifty 
 minutes; here it took sixty. This is about the 
 
 89 
 
The Ascent of Denali 
 
 height of perpetual snow on the great Himalayan 
 peaks; but we had been above the perpetual 
 snow-line for forty-eight days. 
 
 We were now within about two thousand five 
 hundred feet of the summit and had two weeks' 
 full supply of food and fuel, which, at a pinch, 
 could be stretched to three weeks. Certain things 
 were short: the chocolate and figs and raisins and 
 salt were low; of the zwieback there remained but 
 two and one-half packages, reserved against lunch 
 when we attacked the summit. But the meat- 
 balls, the erbswurst, the caribou jelly, the rice, 
 and the tea — our staples — were abundant for two 
 weeks, with four gallons of coal-oil and a gallon of 
 alcohol. The end of our painful transportation 
 hither was accompHshed; we were within one day's 
 climb of the summit with supplies to besiege. If 
 the weather should prove persistently bad we 
 could wait; we could advance our parallels; could 
 put another camp on the ridge itself at nineteen 
 thousand feet, and yet another half-way up the 
 dome. If we had to fight our way step by step 
 and could advance but a couple of hundred feet 
 a day, we were still confident that, barring un- 
 foreseeable misfortunes, we could reach the top. 
 But we wanted a clear day on top, that the ob- 
 servations we designed to make could be made; it 
 
 90 
 
^!ta 
 
 -«. 
 
 The North Peak, 20,000 feet high. 
 
 Our last camp in the Grand Basin, at 18,000 feet: the highest camp ever made in 
 North America. 
 
Brcathlcssncss 
 
 would be a poor success that did but set our feet 
 on the highest point. And we felt sure that, pre- 
 pared as we were to wait, the clear day would 
 come. 
 
 As so often happens when everything unpro- 
 pitious is guarded against, nothing unpropitious 
 occurs. It would have been a wonderful chance, 
 indeed, if, supplied only for one day, a fine, clear 
 day had come. But supplied against bad weather 
 for two or three weeks, it was no wonder at all 
 that the very first day should have presented itself 
 bright and clear. We had exhausted our bad 
 fortune below; here, at the juncture above all 
 others at which we should have chosen to enjoy 
 it, we were to encounter our good fortune. 
 
 But here, where all signs seemed to promise 
 success to the expedition, the author began to 
 have fears of personal failure. The story of Mr. 
 Fitzgerald's expedition to Aconcagua came to his 
 mind, and he recalled that, although every other 
 member of the party reached the summit, that 
 gentleman himself was unable to do so. In the 
 last stage the difficulty of breathing had increased 
 with fits of smothering, and the medicine chest 
 held no remedy for blind staggers. 
 
 91 
 
CHAPTER V 
 THE ULTIMATE HEIGHT 
 
 WE lay down for a few hours on the night 
 of the 6th June, resolved to rise at three 
 in the morning for our attempt upon the summit 
 of DenaH. At supper Walter had made a des- 
 perate effort to use some of our ten pounds of flour 
 in the manufacture of "noodles" with which to 
 thicken the stew. We had continued to pack that 
 flour and had made eff"ort after eff'ort to cook it 
 in some eatable way, but without success. The 
 sour dough would not ferment, and we had no 
 baking-powder. Is there any way to cook flour 
 under such circumstances.^ But he made the 
 noodles too large and did not cook them enough, 
 and they wrought internal havoc upon those who 
 partook of them. Three of the four of us were 
 unwell all night. The digestion is certainly more 
 delicate and more easily disturbed at great alti- 
 tudes than at the lower levels. While Karstens 
 and Tatum were tossing uneasily in the bed- 
 clothes, the writer sat up with a blanket round his 
 
 92 
 
Start to the Summit 
 
 shoulders, crouching over the primus stove, with 
 the thermometer at— 21° F. outdoors. Walter 
 alone was at ease, with digestive and somnolent 
 capabilities proof against any Invasion. It was, 
 of course, broad daylight all night. At three the 
 company was aroused, and, after partaking of a 
 very light breakfast indeed, we sallied forth into 
 the brilliant, clear morning with not a cloud in 
 the sky. The only packs we carried that day 
 were the instruments and the lunch. The sun 
 was shining, but a keen north wind was blowing 
 and the thermometer stood at — 4° F. We were 
 rather a sorry company. Karstens still had in- 
 ternal pains; Tatum and I had severe headaches. 
 Walter was the only one feeling entirely himself, 
 so Walter was put in the lead and in the lead he 
 remained all day. 
 
 We took a straight course up the great snow 
 ridge directly south of our camp and then around 
 the peak Into which It rises; quickly told but 
 slowly and most laboriously done. It was nec- 
 essary to make the traverse high up on this peak 
 instead of around Its base, so much had Its Ice 
 and snow been shattered by the earthquake on 
 the lower portions. Once around this peak, there 
 rose before us the horseshoe ridge which carries 
 the ultimate height of Denah, a horseshoe ridge 
 
 93 
 
The Ascent of Denali 
 
 of snow opening to the east with a low snow peak 
 at either end, the centre of the ridge soaring above 
 both peaks. Above us was nothing visible but 
 snow; the rocks were all beneath, the last rocks 
 standing at about 19,000 feet. Our progress was 
 exceedingly slow. It was bitterly cold; all the 
 morning toes and fingers were without sensation, 
 kick them and beat them as we would. We were 
 all clad in full winter hand and foot gear — more 
 gear than had sufficed at 50° below zero on the 
 Yukon trail. Within the writer's No. i6 moc- 
 casins were three pairs of heavy hand-knitted 
 woollen socks, two pairs of camel's-hair socks, and 
 a pair of thick felt socks; while underneath them, 
 between them and the iron "creepers," were the 
 soles cut from a pair of felt shoes. Upon his 
 hands were a pair of the thickest Scotch wool 
 gloves, thrust inside huge lynx-paw mitts lined 
 with Hudson Bay duffle. His moose-hide breeches 
 and shirt, worn all the winter on the trail, were 
 worn throughout this cHmb; over the shirt was 
 a thick sweater and over all the usual Alaskan 
 **parkee" amply furred around the hood; un- 
 derneath was a suit of the heaviest Jaeger under- 
 wear — yet until nigh noon feet were like lumps 
 of iron and fingers were constantly numb. That 
 north wind was cruelly cold, and there can be 
 
 94 
 
The South Peak from about 18,000 feet. 
 
 The ridge with two pealis in the background is shaped like a horseshoe, and the highest 
 
 point on the mountain is on another little ridge just beyond, parallel with the 
 
 ridge that shows, almost at the middle point between the two peaks. 
 
Cold 
 
 no possible question that cold is felt much more 
 keenly in the thin air of nineteen thousand feet 
 than it is below. But the north wind was really 
 our friend, for nothing but a north wind will drive 
 all vapor from this mountain. Karstens beat his 
 feet so violently and so continually against the 
 hard snow to restore the circulation that two of 
 his toe-nails sloughed off afterward. By eleven 
 o'clock we had been climbing for six hours and 
 were well around the peak, advancing toward the 
 horseshoe ridge, but even then there were grave 
 doubts if we should succeed in reaching it that 
 day, it was so cold. A hint from any member of the 
 party that his feet were actually freezing — a hint 
 expected all along — would have sent us all back. 
 When there is no sensation left in the feet at all 
 it IS, however, difficult to be quite sure if they be 
 actually freezing or not — and each one was willing 
 to give the attempt upon the summit the benefit 
 of the doubt. What should we have done with 
 the ordinary leather climbing boots? But once 
 entirely around the peak we were in a measure 
 sheltered from the north wind, and the sun full 
 upon us gave more warmth. It was hereabouts, 
 and not, surely, at the point indicated in the 
 photograph in Mr. Belmore Browne's book, that 
 the climbing party of last year was driven back 
 
 95 
 
The Ascent of Denali 
 
 by the blizzard that descended upon them when 
 close to their goal. Not until we had stopped 
 for lunch and had drunk the scalding tea from 
 the thermos bottles, did we all begin to have 
 confidence that this day would see the comple- 
 tion of the ascent. But the writer's shortness of 
 breath became more and more distressing as he 
 rose. The familiar fits of panting took a more 
 acute form; at such times everything would turn 
 black before his eyes and he would choke and 
 gasp and seem unable to get breath at all. Yet 
 a few moments' rest restored him completely, to 
 struggle on another twenty or thirty paces and 
 to sink gasping upon the snow again. All were 
 more affected in the breathing than they had 
 been at any time before — it was curious to see 
 every man's mouth open for breathing — but none 
 of the others in this distressing way. Before the 
 traverse around the peak just mentioned, Walter 
 had noticed the writer's growing discomfort and 
 had insisted upon assuming the mercurial barom- 
 eter. The boy's eager kindness was gladly ac- 
 cepted and the instrument was surrendered. So 
 it did not fall to the writer's credit to carry the 
 thing to the top as he had wished. 
 
 The climbing grew steeper and steeper; the 
 slope that had looked easy from below now seemed 
 
 96 
 
Climbing-irons 
 
 to shoot straight up. For the most part the 
 cHmbing-irons gave us sufficient footing, but here 
 and there we came to softer snow, where they 
 would not take sufficient hold and we had to 
 cut steps. The calks in these climbing-irons were 
 about an inch and a quarter long; we wished they 
 had been two inches. The creepers are a great 
 advantage in the matter of speed, but they need 
 long points. They are not so safe as step-cutting, 
 and there is the ever-present danger that unless 
 one is exceedingly careful one will step upon the 
 rope with them and their sharp calks sever some 
 of the strands. They were, however, of great 
 assistance and saved a deal of laborious step- 
 cutting. 
 
 At last the crest of the ridge was reached and 
 we stood well above the two peaks that mark the 
 ends of the horseshoe.* 
 
 Also it was evident that we were well above 
 the great North Peak across the Grand Basin. 
 
 *The dotted line on the photograph opposite page 346 of Mr. 
 Belmore Browne's book, "The Conquest of Mt. McKinley," does not, 
 in the writer's opinion, represent the real course taken by Professor 
 Parker, Mr. Belmore Browne, and Merl Le Voy in their approach 
 to the summit, and it is easy to understand the confusion of direc- 
 tion in the fierce storm that descended upon the party. If, as the 
 dots show, the party went to the summit of the right-hand peak, 
 they went out of their way and had still a considerable distance to 
 travel. "Perhaps five minutes of easy walking would have taken 
 us to the highest point," says Mr. Browne. It is probably more than 
 
 97 
 
The Ascent of Denali 
 
 Its crest had been like an index on the snow be- 
 side us as we climbed, and we stopped for a few 
 moments when it seemed that we were level with 
 it. We judged it to be about five hundred feet 
 lower than the South Peak. 
 
 But still there stretched ahead of us, and per- 
 haps one hundred feet above us, another small 
 ridge with a north and south pair of little hay- 
 cock summits. This is the real top of Denali. 
 From below, this ultimate ridge merges indistin- 
 guishably with the crest of the horseshoe ridge, 
 but it is not a part of it but a culminating ridge 
 beyond it. With keen excitement we pushed on. 
 Walter, who had been in the lead all day, was the 
 first to scramble up; a native Alaskan, he is the 
 first human being to set foot upon the top of 
 Alaska's great mountain, and he had well earned 
 the lifelong distinction. Karstens and Tatum 
 were hard upon his heels, but the last man on the 
 
 a mile from the summit of the snow peak shown in the picture to the 
 actual summit of the mountain. One who took that course would 
 have to descend from the peak and then ascend the horseshoe ridge, 
 and the highest point of the horseshoe ridge is perhaps two hundred 
 feet above the summit of this snow peak. In the opinion that 
 Professor Parker expressed to the writer, the dotted lines should 
 bear much more to the left, making directly for the centre of the 
 horseshoe ridge, which is the obvious course. But it should again 
 be said that men in the circumstances and condition of this party 
 when forced to turn back, may be pardoned for mistaking the exact 
 direction in which they had been proceeding. 
 
 98 
 
The climbing-irons. 
 
The Instrument Readings 
 
 rope, in his enthusiasm and excitement somewhat 
 overpassing his narrow wind margin, had almost 
 to be hauled up the last few feet, and fell uncon- 
 scious for a moment upon the floor of the little 
 snow basin that occupies the top of the moun- 
 tain. This, then, is the actual summit, a little 
 crater-like snow basin, sixty or sixty-five feet long 
 and twenty to twenty-five feet wide, with a hay- 
 cock of snow at either end — the south one a little 
 higher than the north. On the southwest this 
 little basin is much corniced, and the whole thing 
 looked as though every severe storm might some- 
 what change its shape. 
 
 So soon as wind was recovered we shook hands 
 all round and a brief prayer of thanksgiving to 
 Almighty God was said, that He had granted us 
 our hearts' desire and brought us safely to the top 
 of His great mountain. 
 
 This prime duty done, we fell at once to our 
 scientific tasks. The instrument-tent was set up, 
 the mercurial barometer, taken out of its leather 
 case and then out of its wooden case, was swung 
 upon its tripod and a rough zero established, and 
 it was left awhile to adjust itself to conditions 
 before a reading was attempted. It was a great 
 gratification to get it to the top uninjured. The 
 boiling-point apparatus was put together and its 
 
 99 
 
The Ascent of Denali 
 
 candle lighted under the ice which filled its little 
 cistern. The three-inch, three-circle aneroid was 
 read at once at thirteen and two-tenths inches, 
 its mendacious altitude scale confidently pointing 
 at twenty-three thousand three hundred feet. 
 Half an hour later it had dropped to 13.175 inches 
 and had shot us up another one hundred feet into 
 the air. Soon the water was boiling in the little 
 tubes of the boiling-point thermometer and the 
 steam pouring out of the vent. The thread of 
 mercury rose to 174.9° and stayed there. There 
 is something definite and uncompromising about 
 the boiling-point hypsometer; no tapping will 
 make it rise or fall; it reaches its mark unmis- 
 takably and does not budge. The reading of 
 the mercurial barometer is a slower and more 
 delicate business. It takes a good light and a 
 good sight to tell when the ivory zero-point is 
 exactly touching the surface of the mercury in 
 the cistern; it takes care and precision to get 
 the vernier exactly level with the top of the col- 
 umn. It was read, some half-hour after it was 
 set up, at 13.617 inches. The alcohol minimum 
 thermometer stood at 7° F. all the while we were 
 on top. Meanwhile, Tatum had been reading a 
 round of angles with the prismatic compass. He 
 could not handle it with sufficient exactness with 
 
 100 
 
The View 
 
 his mitts on, and he froze his fingers doing it bare- 
 handed. 
 
 The scientific work accompHshed, then and not 
 till then did we indulge ourselves in the wonder- 
 ful prospect that stretched around us. It was a 
 perfectly clear day, the sun shining brightly in 
 the sky, and naught bounded our view save the 
 natural limitations of vision. Immediately before 
 us, in the direction in which we had climbed, lay 
 — nothing: a void, a sheer gulf many thousands 
 of feet deep, and one shrank back instinctively 
 from the little parapet of the snow basin when 
 one had glanced at the awful profundity. Across 
 the gulf, about three thousand feet beneath us 
 and fifteen or twenty miles away, sprang most 
 splendidly into view the great mass of Denali's 
 Wife, or Mount Foraker, as some white men mis- 
 name her, filling majestically all the middle dis- 
 tance. It was our first glimpse of her during the 
 whole ascent. Denali's Wife does not appear at 
 all save from the actual summit of Denali, for 
 she is completely hidden by his South Peak until 
 the moment when his South Peak is surmounted. 
 And never was nobler sight displayed to man than 
 that great, isolated mountain spread out com- 
 pletely, with all its spurs and ridges, its cliffs and 
 its glaciers, lofty and mighty and yet far beneath 
 
 lOI 
 
The Ascent of Denali 
 
 us. On that spot one understood why the view 
 of Denali from Lake Minchumina is the grand 
 view, for the west face drops abruptly down with 
 nothing but that vast void from the top to nigh 
 the bottom of the mountain. Beyond stretched, 
 blue and vague to the southwest, the wide valley 
 of the Kuskokwim, with an end of all mountains. 
 To the north we looked right over the North Peak 
 to the foot-hills below, patched with lakes and 
 lingering snow, glittering with streams. We had 
 hoped to see the junction of the Yukon and 
 Tanana Rivers, one hundred and fifty miles away 
 to the northwest, as we had often and often seen 
 the summit of Denali from that point in the 
 winter, but the haze that almost always qualifies 
 a fine summer day inhibited that stretch of vision. 
 Perhaps the forest-fires we found raging on the 
 Tanana River were already beginning to foul the 
 northern sky. 
 
 It was, however, to the south and the east that 
 the most marvellous prospect opened before us. 
 What infinite tangle of mountain ranges filled the 
 whole scene, until gray sky, gray mountain, and 
 gray sea merged in the ultimate distance! The 
 near-by peaks and ridges stood out with dazzling 
 distinction, the glaciation, the drainage, the rela- 
 tion of each part to the others all revealed. The 
 
 102 
 

 5i 
 
The Dark Sky 
 
 snow-covered tops of the remoter peaks, dwin- 
 dling and fading, rose to our view as though float- 
 ing in thin air when their bases were hidden by 
 the haze, and the beautiful crescent curve of the 
 whole Alaskan range exhibited itself from Denali 
 to the sea. To the right hand the glittering, tiny 
 threads of streams draining the mountain range 
 into the Chuhtna and Sushitna Rivers, and so to 
 Cook's Inlet and the Pacific Ocean, spread them- 
 selves out; to the left the affluents of the Kan- 
 tishna and the Nenana drained the range into 
 the Yukon and Bering Sea. 
 
 Yet the chief impression was not of our connec- 
 tion with the earth so far below, its rivers and 
 its seas, but rather of detachment from it. We 
 seemed alone upon a dead world, as dead as the 
 mountains on the moon. Only once before can 
 the writer remember a similar feeling of being 
 neither in the world or of the world, and that was 
 at the bottom of the Grand Canon of the Colo- 
 rado, in Arizona, its savage granite walls as dead 
 as this savage peak of ice. 
 
 Above us the sky took a blue so deep that none 
 of us had ever gazed upon a midday sky like it 
 before. It was a deep, rich, lustrous, transparent 
 blue, as dark as a Prussian blue, but intensely 
 blue; a hue so strange, so increasingly impressive, 
 
 103 
 
The Ascent of Denali 
 
 that to one at least it "seemed like special news 
 of God," as a new poet sings. We first noticed 
 the darkening tint of the upper sky in the Grand 
 Basin, and it deepened as we rose, Tyndall ob- 
 served and discussed this phenomenon in the Alps, 
 but it seems scarcely to have been mentioned 
 since. 
 
 It is difficult to describe at all the scene which 
 the top of the mountain presented, and impossible 
 to describe it adequately. One was not occupied 
 with the thought of description but wholly pos- 
 sessed with the breadth and glory of it, with its 
 sheer, amazing immensity and scope. Only 
 once, perhaps, in any Hfetime is such vision 
 granted, certainly never before had been vouch- 
 safed to any of us. Not often in the summer- 
 time does Denali completely unveil himself and 
 dismiss the clouds from all the earth beneath. 
 Yet we could not linger, unique though the occa- 
 sion, dearly bought our privilege; the miserable 
 limitations of the flesh gave us continual warning 
 to depart; we grew colder and still more wretch- 
 edly cold. The thermometer stood at 7° in the 
 full sunshine, and the north wind was keener than 
 ever. My fingers were so cold that I would not 
 venture to withdraw them from the mittens to 
 change the film in the camera, and the other men 
 
 104 
 
Robert Tatum raising the Stars and Stripes on the highest point 
 in North America. 
 
 This photograph was exposed upon a previous exposure. 
 
The Stars and Stripes 
 
 were in like case; indeed, our hands were by this 
 time so numb as to make it almost impossible to 
 operate a camera at all. A number of photo- 
 graphs had been taken, though not half we should 
 have liked to take, but it is probable that, how- 
 ever many more exposures had been made, they 
 would have been little better than those we got. 
 Our top-of-the-mountain photography was a great 
 disappointment. One thing we learned: expo- 
 sures at such altitude should be longer than those 
 below, perhaps owing to the darkness of the sky. 
 When the mercurial barometer had been read 
 the tent was thrown down and abandoned, the 
 first of the series of abandonments that marked 
 our descent from the mountain. The tent-pole 
 was used for a moment as a flagstaff while Tatum 
 hoisted a Httle United States flag he had patiently 
 and skilfully constructed in our camps below out 
 of two silk handkerchiefs and the cover of a sew- 
 ing-bag. Then the pole was put to its permanent 
 use. It had already been carved with a suitable 
 inscription, and now a transverse piece, already 
 prepared and fitted, was lashed securely to it and 
 it was planted on one of the little snow turrets of 
 the summit — the sign of our redemption, high 
 above North America. Only some peaks in the 
 Andes and some peaks in the Himalayas rise above 
 
The Ascent of Denali 
 
 it in all the world. It was of light, dry birch and, 
 though six feet in length, so slender that we think 
 it may weather many a gale. And Walter thrust 
 it into the snow so firmly at a blow that it could 
 not be withdrawn again. Then we gathered about 
 it and said the Te Deum. 
 
 It was 1.30 p. M. when we reached the summit 
 and two minutes past three when we left; yet 
 so quickly had the time flown that we could not 
 beHeve we had been an hour and a half on top. 
 The journey down was a long, weary grind, the 
 longer and the wearier that we made a detour and 
 went out of our way to seek for Professor Parker's 
 thermometer, which he had left "in a crack on 
 the west side of the last boulder of the north- 
 east ridge." That sounds definite enough, yet in 
 fact it is equivocal. "Which is the last boulder?" 
 we disputed as we went down the slope. A long 
 series of rocks almost in line came to an end, with 
 one rock a little below the others, a little out of 
 the line. This egregious boulder would, it seemed 
 to me, naturally be called the last; Karstens 
 thought not — thought the "last boulder" was the 
 last on the ridge. As we learned later, Karstens 
 was right, and since he yielded to me we did not 
 find the thermometer, for, having descended to 
 this isolated rock, we would not climb up again 
 
 106 
 
Possible Temperatures 
 
 for fifty thermometers. One's disappointment is 
 qualified by the knowledge that the thermometer 
 is probably not of adequate scale, Professor Par- 
 ker's recollection being that it read only to 60*' 
 below zero, F. A lower temperature than this is 
 recorded every winter on the Yukon River. 
 
 A thermometer reading to 100° below zero, left 
 at this spot, would, in my judgment, perhaps 
 yield a lower minimum than has ever yet been 
 authentically recorded on earth, and it is most 
 unfortunate that the opportunity was lost. Yet I 
 did not leave my own alcohol minimum — scaled 
 to 95° below zero, and yielding, by estimation, per- 
 haps ten degrees below the scaling — there, because 
 of the difficulty of giving explicit directions that 
 should lead to its ready recovery, and at the close 
 of such a day of toil as is involved in reaching 
 the summit, men have no stomach for prolonged 
 search. As will be told, it is cached lower down, 
 but at a spot where it cannot be missed. 
 
 However, for one, the writer was largely uncon- 
 scious of weariness in that descent. All the way 
 down, my thoughts were occupied with the glori- 
 ous scene my eyes had gazed upon and should 
 gaze upon never again. In all human probabil- 
 ity I would never climb that mountain again; 
 yet if I climbed it a score more times I would 
 
 107 
 
The Ascent of Denali 
 
 never be likely to repeat such vision. Commonly, 
 only for a few hours at a time, never for more than 
 a few days at a time, save in the dead of winter 
 when climbing is out of the question, does Denali 
 completely unveil himself and dismiss the clouds 
 from all the earth beneath him. Not for long, with 
 these lofty colds contiguous, will the vapors of 
 Cook's Inlet and Prince William Sound and the 
 whole North Pacijfic Ocean refrain from sweeping 
 upward; their natural trend is hitherward. As the 
 needle turns to the magnet so the clouds find an 
 irresistible attraction in this great mountain mass, 
 and though the inner side of the range be rid of 
 them the sea side is commonly filled to overflowing. 
 Only those who have for long years cherished 
 a great and almost inordinate desire, and have had 
 that desire gratified to the limit of their expec- 
 tation, can enter into the deep thankfulness and 
 content that filled the heart upon the descent of 
 this mountain. There was no pride of conquest, 
 no trace of that exultation of victory some enjoy 
 upon the first ascent of a lofty peak, no gloat- 
 ing over good fortune that had hoisted us a few 
 hundred feet higher than others who had strug- 
 gled and been discomfited. Rather was the feel- 
 ing that a privileged communion with the high 
 places of the earth had been granted; that not 
 
 io8 
 
The Te Deum 
 
 only had we been permitted to lift up eager eyes 
 to these summits, secret and solitary since the 
 world began, but to enter boldly upon them, to 
 take place, as it were, domestically in their hitherto 
 sealed chambers, to inhabit them, and to cast our 
 eyes down from them, seeing all things as they 
 spread out from the windows of heaven itself. 
 
 Into this strong yet serene emotion, into this 
 reverent elevation of spirit, came with a shock a 
 recollection of some recent reading. 
 
 Oh, wisdom of man and the apparatus of the 
 sciences, the little columns of mercury that sling 
 up and down, the vacuum boxes that expand 
 and contract, the hammer that chips the highest 
 rocks, the compass that takes the bearings of gla- 
 cier and ridge — all the equipage of hypsometry 
 and geology and geodesy — how pitifully feeble 
 and childish it seems to cope with the majesty of 
 the mountains! Take them all together, haul 
 them up the steep, and as they He there, read, 
 recorded, and done for, which shall be more ade- 
 quate to the whole scene — their records.'' — or that 
 simple, ancient hymn, "We praise Thee, O God! 
 — Heaven and earth are full of the majesty of 
 Thy Glory!" What an astonishing thing that, 
 standing where we stood and seeing what we saw, 
 there are men who should be able to deduce this 
 
 109 
 
The Ascent of Denali 
 
 law or that from their observation of its working 
 and yet be unable to see the Lawgiver! — who 
 should be able to push back effect to immediate 
 cause and yet be blind to the Supreme Cause of 
 All Causes; who can say, "This is the glacier's 
 doing and it is marvellous in our eyes," and not 
 see Him *'Who in His Strength setteth fast the 
 mountains and is girded with power," Whose ser- 
 vants the glaciers, the snow, and the ice are, "wind 
 and storm fulfiUing His Word"; who exult in the 
 exercise of their own intelligences and the play- 
 things those inteUigences have constructed and yet 
 deny the Omniscience that endowed them with 
 some minute fragment of Itself! It was not always 
 so; it was not so with the really great men who 
 have advanced our knowledge of nature. But of 
 late years hordes of small men have given them- 
 selves up to the study of the physical sciences 
 without any study preliminary. It would almost 
 seem nowadays that whoever can sit in the seat 
 of the scornful may sit in the seat of learning. 
 
 A good many years ago, on an occasion already 
 referred to, the writer roamed through the depths 
 of the Grand Canon with a chance acquaintance 
 who described himself as "Herpetologist to the 
 Academy of Sciences" in some Western or Mid- 
 Western State, and as this gentleman found the 
 
 no 
 
The Scientists 
 
 curious little reptiles he was in search of under a 
 root or in a cranny of rock he repeated their many- 
 syllabled names. Curious to know what these 
 names literally meant and whence derived, the 
 writer made inquiry, sometimes hazarding a con- 
 jectural etymology. To his astonishment and 
 dismay he found this "scientist," whom he had 
 looked up to, entirely ignorant of the meaning of 
 the terms he employed. They were just arbi- 
 trary terms to him. The little hopping and crawl- 
 ing creatures might as well have been numbered, 
 or called x, y, z, for any significance their formi- 
 dable nomenclature held for him. Yet this man 
 had been keenly sarcastic about the Noachian 
 deluge and had jeered from the height of his su- 
 periority at hoary records which he knew only 
 at second-hand reference, and had laid it down 
 that if the human race became extinct the birds 
 would stand the best chance of "evolving a pri- 
 mate"! Since that time other "scientists" have 
 been encountered, with no better equipment, with 
 no history, no poetry, no philosophy in any broad 
 sense, men with no letters — illiterate, strictly 
 speaking — yet with all the dogmatism in the world. 
 Can any one be more dogmatic than your modern 
 scientist .f' The reproach has passed altogether to 
 him from the theologian. 
 
 Ill 
 
The Ascent of Denali 
 
 The thing grows, and its menace and scandal 
 grow with it. Since coming "outside" the writer 
 has encountered a professor at a college, a Ph.D. 
 of a great university, who confessed that he had 
 never heard of certain immortal characters of 
 Dickens whose names are household words. We 
 shall have to open Night-Schools for Scientists, 
 where men who have been deprived of all early 
 advantages may learn the rudiments of English 
 literature. One wishes that Dickens himself might 
 have dealt with their pretensions, but they are since 
 his day. And surely it is time some one started 
 a movement for suppressing illiterate Ph.D.'s. 
 
 Of this class, one feels sure, are the scientific 
 heroes of the sensational articles in the monthly 
 magazines of the baser sort, of which we picked 
 up a number in the Kantishna on our way to 
 the mountain. Here, in a picture that seems to 
 have obtruded itself bodily into a page of letter- 
 press, or else to have suffered the accidental ir- 
 ruption of a page of letter-press all around it, you 
 shall see a grave scientist looking anxiously down 
 a very large microscope, and shall read that he 
 has transferred a kidney from a cat to a dog, and 
 therefore we can no longer believe in the immor- 
 tality of the soul; or else that he has succeeded in 
 artificially fertilizing the ova of a starfish — or was 
 
 112 
 
The Psalmist and Dr. Johnson 
 
 it a jellyfish? — and therefore there is no God; 
 not just in so many bald words, of course, but in 
 unmistakable import. Or it may be — so com- 
 monly does the crassest credulity go hand in 
 hand with the blankest scepticism — he has dis- 
 covered the germ of old age and is hot upon the 
 track of another germ that shall destroy it, so 
 that we may all live virtually as long as we like; 
 which, of course, disposes once for all of a world 
 to come. The Psalmist was not always complai- 
 sant or even temperate in his language, but he 
 lived a long time ago and must be pardoned; his 
 curt summary stands: "Dixit insipiens!" But 
 the writer vows that if he were addicted to the 
 pursuit of any branch of physical knowledge he 
 would insist upon being called by the name of 
 that branch. He would be a physiologist or a 
 biologist or an anatomist or even a herpetolo- 
 gist, but none should call him "scientist." As 
 Doll Tearsheet says in the second part of "King 
 Henry IV": "These villains will make the word 
 as odious as the word 'occupy'; which was an ex- 
 cellent good word before it was ill-sorted." If 
 Doctor Johnson were compiling an English dic- 
 tionary to-day he would define "scientist" some- 
 thing thus: "A cant name for an experimenter 
 in some department of physical knowledge, com- 
 
 113 
 
The Ascent of Denali 
 
 monly furnished with arrogance and dogmatism, 
 but devoid of real learning." 
 
 Here is no gibe at the physical sciences. To 
 sneer at them were just as foolish as to sneer at 
 religion. What we could do on this expedition in 
 a "scientific" way we did laboriously and zeal- 
 ously. We would never have thought of attempt- 
 ing the ascent of the mountain without bringing 
 back whatever little addition to human knowledge 
 was within the scope of our powers and opportu- 
 nities. Tatum took rounds of angles, in practice 
 against the good fortune of a clear day on top, 
 on every possible occasion. The sole personal 
 credit the present writer takes concerning the 
 whole enterprise is the packing of that mercurial 
 barometer on his back, from the Tanana River 
 nearly to the top of the mountain, a point at 
 which he was compelled to relinquish it to another. 
 He has always had his opinion about mountain 
 climbers who put an aneroid in their pocket and 
 go to the top of a great, new peak and come down 
 confidently announcing its height. But when all 
 this business is done as closely and carefull}^ as 
 possible, and every observation taken that there 
 are instruments devised to record, surely the 
 soul is dead that feels no more and sees no further 
 than the instruments do, that stirs with no other 
 
 114 
 
The Amber Glasses Again 
 
 emotion than the mercury in the tube or the dial 
 at its point of suspension, that is incapable of awe, 
 of reverence, of worshipful uplift, and does not 
 feel that "the Lord even the most mighty God 
 hath spoken, and called the world from the rising 
 of the sun even to the going down of the same," 
 in the wonders displayed before his eyes. 
 
 We reached our eighteen-thousand-foot camp 
 about five o'clock, a weary but happy crew. It 
 was written in the diary that night: "I remember 
 no day in my Hfe so full of toil, distress, and ex- 
 haustion, and yet so full of happiness and keen 
 gratification." 
 
 The culminating day should not be allowed to 
 pass without another tribute to the efficiency of 
 the amber glasses. Notwithstanding the glare of 
 the sun at twenty thousand feet and upward, no 
 one had the slightest irritation of the eyes. There 
 has never been an April of travel on the Yukon in 
 eight years that the writer has not suffered from 
 inflammation of the eyes despite the darkest 
 smoke-colored glasses that could be procured. A 
 naked candle at a road-house would give a stab 
 of pain every time the eyes encountered it, and 
 reading would become almost impossible. The 
 amber glasses, however, while leaving vision al- 
 
 "5 
 
The Ascent of Denali 
 
 most as bright as without them, filter out the 
 rays that cause the irritation and afford perfect 
 protection against the consequences of sun and 
 glare. There is only one improvement to make 
 in the amber glasses, and that is some device of 
 air-tight cells that shall prevent them from fog- 
 ging when the cold on the outside of the glass con- 
 denses the moisture of perspiration on the inside 
 of the glass. We use double-glazed sashes with 
 an air space between on all windows in our houses 
 in Alaska and find ourselves no longer incommoded 
 by frost on the panes; some adaptation of this 
 principle should be within the skill of the optician 
 and would remove a very troublesome defect in 
 all snow-glasses. 
 
 If some one would invent a preventive against 
 shortness of breath as efficient as amber glasses 
 are against snow-blindness, climbing at great alti- 
 tudes would lose all its terrors for one mountaineer. 
 So far as it was possible to judge, no other member 
 of the party was near his altitude Hmit. There 
 seemed no reason why Karstens and Walter in 
 particular should not go another ten thousand feet, 
 were there a mountain in the world ten thousand 
 feet higher than Denali, but the writer knows that 
 he himself could not have gone much higher. 
 
 ii6 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 THE RETURN 
 
 THE next day was another bright, cloudless 
 day, the second and last of them. Perhaps 
 never did men abandon as cheerfully stuff that 
 had been freighted as laboriously as we abandoned 
 our surplus baggage at the eighteen-thousand-foot 
 camp. We made a great pile of it in the lee of 
 one of the ice-blocks of the glacier — food, coal- 
 oil, clothing, and bedding — covering all with the 
 wolf-robe and setting up a shovel as a mark; 
 though just why we cached it so carefully, or for 
 whom, no one of us would be able to say. It will 
 probably be a long time ere any others camp in 
 that Grand Basin. While yet such a peak is un- 
 climbed, there is constant goading of mountain- 
 eering minds to its conquest; once its top has been 
 reached, the incentive declines. Much exploring 
 work is yet to do on Denali; the day will doubt- 
 less come when all its peaks and ridges and gla- 
 ciers will be duly mapped, but our view from 
 the summit agreed with our study of its con- 
 
 117 
 
The Ascent of Denali 
 
 formation during the ascent, that no other route 
 will be found to the top. When first we were 
 cutting and climbing on the ridge, and had 
 glimpses, as the mists cleared, of the glacier on 
 the other side and the ridges that arose from it, 
 we thought that perhaps they might afford a pas- 
 sage, but from above the appearance changed and 
 seemed to forbid it altogether. At times, almost 
 in despair at the task which the Northeast Ridge 
 presented, we would look across at the ice-covered 
 rocks of the North Peak and dream that they 
 might be climbed, but they are really quite im- 
 possible. The south side has been tried again and 
 again and no approach discovered, nor did it ap- 
 pear from the top that such approach exists; the 
 west side is sheer precipice; the north side is 
 covered with a great hanging glacier and is devoid 
 of practicable slopes; it has been twice attempted. 
 Only on the northeast has the glacier cut so 
 deeply into the mountain as to give access to the 
 heights. 
 
 June 8th was Sunday, but we had to take ad- 
 vantage of the clear, bright day to get as far 
 down the mountain as possible. The stuff it was 
 still necessary to pack made good, heavy loads, 
 and we knew not what had happened to our stair- 
 case in our absence. 
 
 ii8 
 
The Record 
 
 Having said Morning Prayer, we left at 9. 30 a. m., 
 after a night in which all of us slept soundly — the 
 first sound sleep some had enjoyed for a long time. 
 Contentment and satisfaction are great somnifa- 
 cients. The Grand Basin was glorious in sun- 
 shine, the peaks crystal-clear against a cloudless 
 sky, the huge blocks of ice thrown down by the 
 earthquake and scattered all over the glacier 
 gleamed white in the sunshine, deep-blue in the 
 shadow. We wound our way downward, pass- 
 ing camp site after camp site, until at the first 
 place we camped in the Grand Basin we stopped 
 for lunch. Then we made the traverse under the 
 cliffs to the Parker Pass, which we reached at 
 1.30 p. M. The sun was hot; there was not a 
 breath of wind; we were exceedingly thirsty and 
 we decided to light the primus stove and make 
 a big pot of tea and replenish the thermos bot- 
 tles before attempting the descent of the ridge. 
 While this was doing a place was found to cache 
 the minimum thermometer and a tin can that 
 had held a photographic film, in which we had 
 placed a record of our ascent. Above, we had 
 not found any distinctive place in which a record 
 could be deposited with the assurance that it 
 would be found by any one seeking it. One feels 
 sure that in the depth of winter very great cold 
 
 119 
 
The Ascent of Denali 
 
 must occur even at this elevation. Yet we should 
 have Hked to leave it much higher. Without 
 some means, which we did not possess, of mark- 
 ing a position, there would, however, have been 
 little use in leaving it amid the boulders where 
 we hunted unsuccessfully for Professor Parker's 
 instrument. We had hoped to be able to grave 
 some sign upon the rocks with the geological ham- 
 mer, but the first time it was brought down upon 
 the granite its point splintered in the same ex- 
 asperating way that the New York dealer's fancy 
 ice-axes behaved when It was attempted to put 
 them to practical use. "Warranted cast steel" 
 upon an implement ought to be a warning not to 
 purchase it for mountain work. Tool-steel alone 
 will serve. 
 
 Our little record cache at the Parker Pass, 
 placed at the foot of the west or upward-facing 
 side of the great slab which marks the natural 
 camping site, should stand there for many years. 
 It is not a place where snow lies deep or long, and 
 it will surely be found by any who seek it. We 
 took our last looks up into the Grand Basin, still 
 brilliant in the sunshine, our last looks at the 
 summit, still cloudless and clear. There was a 
 melancholy even in the midst of triumph in look- 
 ing for the last time at these scenes where we had 
 
 120 
 
Harper Glacier 
 
 so greatly hoped and endeavored — and had been 
 so amply rewarded. We recalled the eager ex- 
 pectation with which we first gazed up between 
 these granite slabs into the long-hidden basin, a 
 week before, and there was sadness in the feel- 
 ing that in all probability we should never have 
 this noble view again. 
 
 Before the reader turns his back upon the 
 Grand Basin once for all, I should like to put a 
 name upon the glacier it contains — since it is the 
 fashion to name glaciers. I should Hke to call it 
 the Harper Glacier, after my half-breed compan- 
 ion of three years, who was the first human being 
 to reach the summit of the mountain. This rea- 
 son might suffice, but there is another and most 
 interesting reason for associating the name Harper 
 with this mountain. Arthur Harper, Walter's 
 father, the pioneer of all Alaskan miners, "the 
 first man who thought of trying the Yukon as a 
 mining field so far as we know," as William Ogil- 
 vie tells us in his "Early Days on the Yukon" * 
 (and none had better opportunity of knowing 
 than Ogilvie), was also the first man to make writ- 
 ten reference to this mountain, since Vancouver, 
 the great navigator, saw it from the head of Cook's 
 Inlet in 1794. 
 
 * Ottawa: Thorburn & Abbott, 1913, p. 87. 
 121 
 
The Ascent of Denali 
 
 Arthur Harper, in company with Al. Mayo, 
 made the earhest exploration of the Xanana River, 
 ascending that stream in the summer of 1878 to 
 about the present site of Fairbanks; and in a let- 
 ter to E. W. Nelson, of the United States Biolog- 
 ical Survey, then on the Alaskan coast. Harper 
 wrote the following winter of the ''great ice moun- 
 tain to the south" as one of the most wonderful 
 sights of the trip.* It is pleasant to think that a 
 son of his, yet unborn, was to be the first to set 
 foot on its top; pleasantly also the office of set- 
 ting his name upon the lofty glacier, the gleam 
 from which caught his eye and roused his won- 
 der thirty years ago, falls upon one who has been 
 glad and proud to take, in some measure, his place. 
 
 Then began the difficulty and the danger, the 
 toil and the anxiety, of the descent of the ridge. 
 Karstens led, then followed Tatum, then the 
 writer, and then Walter. The unbroken surface 
 of the ridge above the cleavage is sensationally 
 steep, and during our absence nearly two feet of 
 new snow had fallen upon it. The steps that had 
 been shovelled as we ascended were entirely oblit- 
 erated and it was necessary to shovel new ones; 
 it was the very heat of the day, and by the can- 
 
 * "Mt. McKinley Region": Alfred H. Brooks, Washington, 191 1, 
 p. 25. 
 
 122 
 
o 
 
 3 
 
 C 
 & 
 
 o 
 -a 
 
 tjo c 
 
 C V 
 
 ■^a 
 
 -a 
 
 G 
 
 '5) 
 
Descent 
 
 ons of climbing we should have camped at the 
 Pass and descended in the early morning. But 
 all were eager to get down, and we ventured it. 
 Now that our task was accomplished, our minds 
 reverted to the boy at the base camp long anx- 
 iously expecting us, and we thought of him and 
 spoke of him continually and speculated how he 
 had fared. One feels upon reflection that we 
 took more risk in descending that ridge than we 
 took at any time in the ascent. But Karstens 
 was most cautious and careful, and in the long 
 and intensive apprenticeship of this expedition 
 had become most expert. I sometimes wondered 
 whether Swiss guides would have much to teach 
 either him or Walter in snow-craft; their chief 
 instruction would probably be along the line of 
 taking more chances, wisely. If the writer had 
 to ascend this mountain again he would intrust 
 himself to Karstens and Walter rather than to 
 any Swiss guides he has known, for ice and snow 
 in Alaska are not quite the same as ice and snow 
 in the Alps or the Canadian Rockies. 
 
 The loose snow was shovelled away and the 
 steps dug in the hard snow beneath, and the 
 creepers upon our feet gave good grip in it. Thus, 
 slowly, step by step, we descended the ridge and 
 in an hour and a half had reached the cleavage, 
 
 123 
 
The Ascent of Denali 
 
 the most critical place in the whole descent. With 
 the least possible motion of the feet, setting them 
 exactly in the shovelled steps, we crept like 
 cats across this slope, thrusting the points of our 
 axes into the holes that had been made in the 
 ice-wall above, moving all together, the rope al- 
 ways taut, no one speaking a word. When once 
 Karstens was anchored on the further ice he 
 stood and gathered up the rope as first one and 
 then another passed safely to him and anchored 
 himself beside him, until at last we were all across. 
 Then, stooping to pass the overhanging ice-cliff 
 that here also disputed the pack upon one's back, 
 we went down to the long, long stretch of jagged 
 pinnacles and bergs, and our intricate staircase in 
 the masonry of them. Shovelling was necessary 
 all the way down, but the steps were there, need- 
 ing only to be uncovered. Passing our ridge 
 camp, passing the danger of the great gable, down 
 the rocks by which we reached the ridge and 
 down the slopes to the glacier floor we went, 
 reaching our old camp at 9.30 p. M., six and a 
 quarter hours from the Parker Pass, twelve hours 
 from the eighteen-thousand-foot camp in the 
 Grand Basin, our hearts full of thankfulness that 
 the terrible ridge was behind us. Until we 
 reached the glacier floor the weather had been 
 
 124 
 
The Glacier Camp 
 
 clear; almost immediately thereafter the old fa- 
 miliar cloud smother began to pour down from 
 above and we saw the heights no more. 
 
 The camp was in pretty bad shape. The snow 
 that had fallen upon it had melted and frozen to 
 ice, in the sun's rays and the night frosts, and 
 weighed the tent down to the ground. But an 
 hour's work made it habitable again, and we glee- 
 fully piled the stove with the last of our wood and 
 used the last spoonfuls of a can of baking-powder 
 to make a batch of biscuits, the first bread we had 
 eaten in two weeks. 
 
 Next day we abandoned the camp, leaving all 
 standing, and, putting our packs upon a Yukon 
 sled, rejecting the ice-creepers, and resuming our 
 rough-locked snow-shoes, we started down the 
 glacier in soft, cloudy weather to our base camp. 
 Again it had been wiser to have waited till night, 
 that the snow bridges over the crevasses might be 
 at their hardest; but we could not wait. Every 
 mind was occupied with Johnny. We were two 
 weeks overstayed of the time we had told him to 
 expect our return, and we knew not what might 
 have happened to the boy. The four of us on one 
 rope, Karstens leading and Walter at the gee-pole, 
 we went down the first sharp descents of the gla- 
 ciers without much trouble, the new, soft snow 
 
 125 
 
The Ascent of Denali 
 
 making a good brake for the sled. But lower 
 down the crevasses began to give us trouble. The 
 snow bridges were melted at their edges, and some- 
 times the sled had to be lowered down to the por- 
 tion that still held and hauled up at the other side. 
 Sometimes a bridge gave way as its edge was 
 cautiously ventured upon with the snow-shoes, and 
 we had to go far over to the glacier wall to get 
 round the crevasse. The willows with which we 
 had staked the trail still stood, sometimes just 
 their tips appearing above the new snow, and they 
 were a good guide, though we often had to leave 
 the old trail. At last the crevasses were all 
 passed and we reached the lower portion of the 
 glacier, which is free of them. Then the snow 
 grew softer and softer, and our moccasined feet 
 were soon wet through. Large patches of the 
 black shale with which much of this glacier is 
 covered were quite bare of snow, and the sled had 
 to be hauled laboriously across them. Then we 
 began to encounter pools of water, which at first 
 we avoided, but they soon grew so numerous that 
 we went right through them. 
 
 The going grew steadily wetter and rougher and 
 more disagreeable. The lower stretch of a glacier 
 is an unhandsome sight in summer: all sorts of 
 rock debris and ugly black shale, with discolored 
 
 126 
 
Flowers 
 
 melting ice and snow, intersected everywhere with 
 streams of dirty water — this was what it had de- 
 generated into as we reached the pass. The snow 
 was entirely gone from the pass, so the sled was 
 abandoned — left standing upright, with its gee- 
 pole sticking in the air that if any one else ever 
 chanced to want it it might readily be found. 
 The snow-shoes were piled around it, and we re- 
 sumed our packs and climbed up to the pass. 
 The first thing that struck our eyes as we stood 
 upon the rocks of the pass was a brilliant traihng 
 purple moss flower of such gorgeous color that we 
 all exclaimed at its beauty and wondered how it 
 grew chnging to bare rock. It was the first bright 
 color that we had seen for so long that it gave 
 unquahfied pleasure to us all and was a foretaste 
 of the enhancing delights that awaited us as we 
 descended to the bespangled valley. If a man 
 would know to the utmost the charm of flowers, 
 let him exile himself among the snows of a lofty 
 mountain during fifty days of spring and come 
 down into the first full flush of summer. We 
 could scarcely pass a flower by, and presently had 
 our hands full of blooms like schoolgirls on a picnic. 
 But although the first things that attracted our 
 attention were the flowers, the next were the mos- 
 quitoes. They were waiting for us at the pass 
 
 127 
 
The Ascent of Denali 
 
 and they gave us their warmest welcome. The 
 writer took sharp blame to himself that, organizing 
 and equipping this expedition, he had made no 
 provision against these intolerable pests. But we 
 had so confidently expected to come out a month 
 earlier, before the time of mosquitoes arrived, 
 that although the matter was suggested and dis- 
 cussed it was put aside as unnecessary. Now 
 there was the prospect of a fifty or sixty mile 
 tramp across country, subject all the while to the 
 assaults of venomous insects, which are a greater 
 hindrance to summer travel in Alaska than any 
 extremity of cold is to winter travel. 
 
 Not even the mosquitoes, however, took our 
 minds from Johnny, and a load was lifted from 
 every heart when we came near enough to our 
 camp to see that some one was moving about it. 
 A shout brought him running, and he never 
 stopped until he had met us and had taken the 
 pack from my shoulders and put it on his own. 
 Our happiness was now unalloyed; the last anxi- 
 ety was removed. The dogs gave us most jubi- 
 lant welcome and were fat and well favored. 
 
 What a change had come over the place! All 
 the snow was gone from the hills; the stream that 
 gathered its three forks at this point roared over 
 its rocks; the stunted willows were in full leaf; the 
 
 128 
 
Johnny Fred who kept the base-camp and fed the dogs and 
 would not touch the sugar. 
 
Johnny and the Sugar 
 
 thick, soft moss of every dark shade of green and 
 yellow and red made a foil for innumerable bril- 
 liant flowers. The fat, gray conies chirped at us 
 from the rocks; the ground-squirrels, greatly mul- 
 tiplied since the wholesale destruction of foxes, 
 kept the dogs unavaihngly chasing hither and 
 thither whenever they were loose. We never 
 grew tired of walking up and down and to and fro 
 about the camp — it was a dehght to tread upon 
 the moss-covered earth after so long treading upon 
 nothing but ice and snow; it was a delight to gaze 
 out through naked eyes after all those weeks in 
 which we had not dared even for a few moments 
 to lay aside the yellow glasses in the open air; 
 it was a delight to see joyful, eager animal life 
 around us after our sojourn in regions dead. Sup- 
 per was a delight. Johnny had killed four moun- 
 tain-sheep and a caribou while we were gone, and 
 not only had fed the dogs well, but from time to 
 time had put aside choice portions expecting our 
 return. But what was most grateful to us and 
 most extraordinary in him, the boy had saved, 
 untouched, the small ration of sugar and milk 
 left for his consumption, knowing that ours was 
 all destroyed; and we enjoyed coffee with these 
 luxurious appurtenances as only they can who 
 have been long deprived of them. There are not 
 
 129 
 
The Ascent of Denali 
 
 many boys of fifteen or sixteen of any race who 
 would voluntarily have done the like. 
 
 The next day there was much to do. There 
 were pack-saddles of canvas to make for the dogs' 
 backs that they might help us carry our necessary 
 stuff out; our own clothing and footwear to over- 
 haul, bread to bake, guns to clean and oil against 
 rust. Yet withal, we took it lazily, with five to 
 divide these tasks, and napped and lay around and 
 continually consumed biscuits and coffee which 
 Johnny continually cooked. We all took at least 
 a partial bath in the creek, cold as it was, the first 
 bath in — well, in a long time. Mountain chmbers 
 belong legitimately to the great unwashed. 
 
 It was a day of perfect rest and contentment 
 with hearts full of gratitude. Not a single mis- 
 hap had occurred to mar the complete success of 
 our undertaking — not an injury of any sort to any 
 one, nor an illness. All five of us were in perfect 
 health. Surely we had reason to be grateful; and 
 surely we were happy in having Him to whom our 
 gratitude might be poured out. What a bald, in- 
 complete, and disconcerting thing it must be to 
 have no one to thank for crowning mercies like 
 these! 
 
 On Tuesday, the loth June, we made our final 
 abandonment, leaving the tent standing with stove 
 
 130 
 
Across Country 
 
 and food and many articles that we did not need 
 cached in it, and with four of the dogs carrying 
 packs and led with chains, packs on our own backs 
 and the ice-axes for staves in our hands, we turned 
 our backs upon the mountain and went down the 
 valley toward the Clearwater. The going was not 
 too bad until we had crossed that stream and 
 climbed the hills to the rolling country between it 
 and the McKinley Fork of the Kantishna. Again 
 and again we looked back for a parting glimpse of 
 the mountain, but we never saw sign of it any 
 more. The foot-hills were clear, the rugged wall 
 of the glacier cut the sky, but the great mountain 
 might have been a thousand miles off for any 
 visible indication it gave. It is easy to under- 
 stand how travellers across equatorial Africa have 
 passed near the base of the snowy peaks of Ru- 
 wenzori without knowing they were even in the 
 neighborhood of great mountains, and have come 
 back and denied their existence. 
 
 The broken country between the streams was 
 difficult. Underneath was a thick elastic moss in 
 which the foot sank three or four inches at every 
 step and that makes toilsome travelHng. The 
 mosquitoes were a constant annoyance. But the 
 abundant bird life upon this open moorland, con- 
 tinually reminding one as it did of moorlands in 
 
 131 
 
The Ascent of Denali 
 
 the north of England or of Scotland, was full of 
 interest. Ptarmigan, half changed from their 
 snowy plumage to the brown of summer, and pre- 
 senting a curious piebald appearance, were there 
 in great numbers, cackling their guttural cry with 
 its concluding notes closely resembling the *'ko-ax, 
 ko-ax" of the Frogs' Chorus in the comedy of 
 Aristophanes; snipe whistled and curlews whirled 
 all about us. Half-way across to the McKinley 
 Fork it began to rain, thunder-peal succeeding 
 thunder-peal, and each crash announcing a heavier 
 downpour. Soon we were all wet through, and 
 then the rain turned to hail that fell smartly until 
 all the moss was white with it, and that gave place 
 to torrents of rain again. Dog packs and men's 
 packs were alike wet, and no one of us had a dry 
 stitch on him when we reached the banks of the 
 McKinley Fork and the old spacious hunting tent 
 that stands there in which we were to spend the 
 night. Rather hopelessly we hung our bedding 
 to dry on ropes strung about some trees, and our 
 wet clothing around the stove. By taking turns 
 all the night in sitting up, to keep a fire going, 
 we managed to get our clothes dried by morn- 
 ing, but the bedding was wet as ever. Fortu- 
 nately, the night was a warm one. 
 
 The next morning there was the McKinley Fork 
 132 
 
Glacial Streams 
 
 to cross the first thing, and it was a difficult and 
 disagreeable task. This stream, which drains the 
 Muldrow Glacier and therefore the whole north- 
 east face of Denali, occupies a dreary, desolate 
 bed of boulder and gravel and mud a mile or more 
 wide; rather it does not occupy it, save perhaps 
 after tremendous rain following great heat, but 
 wanders amid it, with a dozen channels of varying 
 depth but uniform blackness, the inky solution 
 of the shale which the mountain discharges so 
 abundantly tingeing not only its waters but the 
 whole Kantishna, into which it flows one hundred 
 miles away. Commonly in the early morning the 
 waters are low, the night frosts checking the melt- 
 ing of the glacier ice; but this morning the drainage 
 of yesterday's rain-storm had swollen them. 
 Channel after channel was waded in safety until 
 the main stream was reached, and that swept by, 
 thigh-deep, with a rushing black current that had 
 a very evil look. Karstens was scouting ahead, 
 feeling for the shallower places, stemming the 
 hurrying waters till they swept up to his waist. 
 The dogs did not like the look of it and with their 
 packs, still wet from yesterday, were hampered in 
 swimming. Two that Tatum was leading sud- 
 denly turned back when half-way across, and the 
 chains, entangling his legs, pulled him over face 
 
 133 
 
The Ascent of Denali 
 
 foremost into the deepest of the water. His pack 
 impeded his efforts to rise, and the water swept all 
 over him. Karstens hurried back to his rescue, 
 and he was extricated from his predicament, half 
 drowned and his clothes filled with mud and sand. 
 There was no real danger of drowning, but it was 
 a particularly noxious ducking in icy filth. The 
 sun was warm, however, and after basking upon 
 the rocks awhile he was able to proceed, still wet, 
 though he had stripped and wrung out his clothes 
 — for we had no dry change — and very gritty in 
 underwear, but taking no harm whatever. I think 
 Tatum regretted losing, in the mad rush of black 
 water, the ice-axe he had carried to the top of the 
 mountain more than he regretted his wetting. 
 
 On the further bank of the McKinley Fork we 
 entered our first wood, a belt about three miles 
 wide that lines the river. Our first forest trees 
 gave us almost as much pleasure as our first 
 flowers. Animal life abounded, all in the espe- 
 cially interesting condition of rearing half-grown 
 young. Squirrels from their nests scolded at our 
 intrusion most vehemently; an owl flew up with 
 such a noisy snapping and chattering that our 
 attention was drawn to the point from which she 
 rose, and there, perched upon a couple of rotten 
 stumps a few feet apart, were two half-fledged 
 
 134 
 
Birds and Beasts 
 
 owlets, passive, immovable, which allowed them- 
 selves to be photographed and even handled with- 
 out any indication of life except in their wondering 
 eyes and the circumrotary heads that contained 
 them. Moose signs and bear signs were every- 
 where; rabbits, now in their summer livery, flitted 
 from bush to bush. That belt of wood was a 
 zoological garden stocked with birds and mam- 
 mals. And we rejoiced with them over their 
 promising famihes and harmed none. 
 
 From the wood we rose again to the moorland — 
 to the snipe and ptarmigan and curlews, some yet 
 sitting upon belated eggs — to the heavy going of 
 the moss and the yet heavier going of niggerhead. 
 Our journey skirted a large lake picturesquely 
 surrounded by hills, and we spoke of how pleas- 
 antly a summer lodge might be placed upon its 
 shores were it not for the mosquitoes. The in- 
 cessant leaping of fish, the occasional flight of 
 fowl alone disturbed the perfect reflection of cliff 
 and hill in its waters. At times we followed game 
 trails along its margin; at times swampy ground 
 made us seek the hillside. 
 
 Thus, slowly covering the miles that we had 
 gone so quickly over upon the ice of the lake two 
 months before, we reached Moose Creek and the 
 miners' cabins at Eureka late at night and received 
 
 135 
 
The Ascent of Denali 
 
 warm welcome and most hospitable entertainment 
 from Mr. Jack Hamilton. It was good to see 
 men other than our own party again, good to 
 sleep in a bed once more, good to regale ourselves 
 with food long strange to our mouths. Here we 
 had our first intimation of any happenings in the 
 outside world for the past three months and sor- 
 rowed that Saint Sophia was still to remain a 
 Mohammedan temple, and that the kindly King 
 of Greece had been murdered. Here also Hamil- 
 ton generously provided us with spare mosquito- 
 netting for veils, and we found a package of can- 
 vas gloves I had ordered from Fairbanks long 
 before, and so were protected from our chief ene- 
 mies. From Moose Creek we went over the hills 
 to Caribou Creek and again were most kindly 
 welcomed and entertained by Mr. and Mrs. Quig- 
 ley, and discussed our climb for a long while 
 with McGonogill of the "pioneer" party. Then, 
 mainly down the bed of Glacier Creek, now 
 on lingering ice or snow-drift, with the water 
 rushing underneath, now on the rocks, now 
 through the brush, crossing and recrossing the 
 creek, we reached the long line of desolate, decay- 
 ing houses known as Glacier City, and found 
 convenient refuge in one of the cabins therein, 
 still maintained as an occasional abode. On the 
 
 136 
 
"Muk," the author's pet malamute. 
 
The Boat 
 
 outskirts of the "city" next morning a moose and 
 two calves sprang up from the brush, our ap- 
 proach over the moss not giving enough notice to 
 awake her from sleep until we were almost upon 
 her. 
 
 Instead of pursuing our way across the in- 
 creasingly difficult and swampy country to the 
 place where our boat and supplies lay cached, we 
 turned aside at midday to the "fish camp" on 
 the Bearpaw, and, after enjoying the best our host 
 possessed from the stream and from his early 
 garden, borrowed his boat, choosing twenty miles 
 or so on the water to nine of niggerhead and 
 marsh. But the river was very low and we had 
 much trouble getting the boat over riffles and bars, 
 so that it was late at night when we reached that 
 other habitation of dragons known as Diamond 
 City. While we submerged our cached poling 
 boat to swell its sun-dried seams, Walter and 
 Johnny returned the borrowed boat, and, since 
 the stream had fallen yet more, were many hours 
 in reaching the fish camp and in tramping back. 
 
 But the labor of the return journey was now 
 done. A canvas stretched over willows made a 
 shelter for the centre of the boat, and at noon on 
 the second day men, dogs, and baggage were 
 embarked, to float down the Bearpaw to the 
 
 ^37 
 
The Ascent of Denali 
 
 Kantishna, to the Tanana, to the Yukon. The 
 Bearpaw swarmed with animal Hfe. Geese and 
 ducks, with their little terrified broods, scooted 
 ahead of us on the water, the mothers presently 
 leaving their young in a nook of the bank and 
 making a flying detour to return to them. Some- 
 times a duck would simulate a broken wing to 
 lure us away from the little ones. We had no 
 meat and were hungry for the usual early sum- 
 mer diet of water-fowl, but not hungry enough to 
 kill these birds. Beaver dropped noisily into the 
 water from trees that exhibited their marvellous 
 carpentry, some lying prostrate, some half chis- 
 elled through. It seemed, indeed, as though the 
 beaver were preparing great irrigation works all 
 through this country. Since the law went into 
 effect prohibiting their capture until 191 5 they 
 have increased and multiplied all over interior 
 Alaska. They are still caught by the natives, 
 but since their skins cannot be sold the Indians 
 are wearing beaver garments again to the great 
 advantage of health in the severe winters. One 
 wishes very heartily that the prohibition might 
 be made perpetual, for only so will fur become the 
 native wear again. It is good to see the children, 
 particularly, in beaver coats and breeches instead 
 of the wretched cotton that otherwise is almost 
 
The Beaver and the Indians 
 
 their only garb. Would it be altogether beyond 
 reason to hope that a measure which was enacted 
 to prevent the extermination of an animal might 
 be perpetuated on behalf of the survival of an 
 interesting and deserving race of human beings 
 now sorely threatened? Or is it solely the conser- 
 vation of commercial resources that engages the 
 attention of government ? There are few measures 
 that would redound more to the physical benefit 
 of the Alaskan Indian than the perpetuating of 
 the law against the sale of beaver skins. With 
 the present high and continually appreciating 
 price of skins, none of the common people of the 
 land, white or native, can afford to wear furs. 
 Such a prohibition as has been suggested would 
 restore to Alaskans a small share in the resources 
 of Alaska. Is there any country in the world 
 where furs are actually needed more.^ 
 
 Not only beaver, but nearly all fur and game 
 animals have greatly increased in the Kantishna 
 country. In the year of the stampede, when thou- 
 sands of men spent the winter here, there was 
 wholesale destruction of game and trapping of 
 fur. But the country, left to itself, is now re- 
 stocked of game and fur, except of foxes, the high 
 price of which has almost exterminated them here 
 and is rapidly exterminating them throughout in- 
 
 139 
 
The Ascent of Denali 
 
 terior Alaska. They have been poisoned in the 
 most reckless and unscrupulous way, and there 
 seems no means of stopping it under the present 
 law. We saw scarcely a fox track in the country, 
 though a few years ago they were exceedingly 
 plentiful all over the foot-hills of the great range. 
 Mink, marten, and muskrat were seen from time 
 to time swimming in the river; a couple of year- 
 ling moose started from the bank where they had 
 been drinking as we noiselessly turned a bend; 
 brilliant kingfishers flitted across the water. So 
 down these rivers we drifted, sometimes in sun- 
 shine, sometimes in rain, until early in the morn- 
 ing of the 20th June, we reached Tanana, and our 
 journey was concluded three months and four 
 days after it was begun. When the telegraph 
 office opened at 8 o'clock a message was sent, in 
 accordance with promise, to a Seattle paper, and 
 it illustrates the rapidity with which news is 
 spread to-day that a ship in Bering Sea, approach- 
 ing Nome, received the news from Seattle by wire- 
 less telegraph before 1 1 a. M. But a message from 
 the Seattle paper received the same morning 
 asking for "five hundred more words describing 
 narrow escapes" was left unanswered, for, thank 
 God, there were none to describe. 
 
 140 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE HEIGHT OF DENALI, WITH A 
 DISCUSSION OF THE READINGS 
 ON THE SUMMIT AND DUR- 
 ING THE ASCENT 
 
 THE determination of the heights of moun- 
 tains by triangulation is, of course, the 
 method that in general commends itself to the 
 topographer, though it may be questioned whether 
 the very general use of aneroids for barometric 
 determinations has not thrown this latter means of 
 measuring altitudes into undeserved discredit 
 when the mercurial barometer is used instead of 
 its convenient but unreliable substitute. 
 
 The altitude given on the present maps for 
 Denali is the mean of determinations made by tri- 
 angulation by three different men: Muldrow on 
 the Sushitna* side in 1898, Raeburn on the Kus- 
 kokwim side in 1902, and Porter, from the Yentna 
 
 * "Sushitna" represents unquestionably the native pronunciation 
 and the "h" should be retained. The reason for its elision current 
 in Alaska is too contemptible to be referred to further. Perhaps the 
 same genius removed this "h" who removed the '"s" from the 
 "Cook's Inlet" of the British admiralty. One is not surprised when 
 
 141 
 
The Ascent of Denali 
 
 country in 1906. In addition, a determination 
 was made by the Coast and Geodetic Survey in 
 1910, from points near Cook's Inlet. "The work 
 of the Coast Survey," writes Mr. Alfred Brooks, 
 "is more refined than the rough triangulation 
 done by our men; at the same time they were 
 much further away." "It is a curious coinci- 
 dence," he adds, "that the determination made 
 by the Coast Survey was the mean which we had 
 assumed from our three determinations" (twenty 
 thousand three hundred feet). 
 
 There are, however, two sources of error in the 
 determination of the height of this mountain by 
 triangulation — a general one and a particular one. 
 The general one lies in the difficulty of ascertain- 
 ing the proper correction to be applied for the 
 refraction of the atmosphere, and the higher the 
 mountain the greater the liability to this error; 
 for not much is positively known about the angle 
 of refraction of the upper regions of the air. The 
 officers of the Trigonometrical Survey of India 
 
 a post-ofRce at Cape Prince of Wales is named "Wales" because one 
 is not surprised at any banalities of the postal department — in Alaska 
 or elsewhere, but one expects better things from the cultured branches 
 of the government service. It is interesting to speculate what will 
 happen to Revillegigedo Island, which Vancouver named for the 
 viceroy of Mexico who was kind to him, when the official curtailer 
 of names finds time to attend to it. If there be a post-office thereon 
 it is probably already named " Gig." 
 
 142 
 
Theodolites and Barometers 
 
 have published their opinion that the heights of 
 the great peaks of the Himalayas will have to be 
 revised on this account. The report of the Coast 
 Survey*s determination of the height of Denali 
 claims a "co-efficient of refraction nearer the 
 truth" than the figure used on a previous occa- 
 sion; but a very slight difference in this factor 
 will make a considerable difference in the result. 
 
 The particular source of error in the case of this 
 mountain lies in the circumstance that its sum- 
 mit is flat, and there is no culminating point upon 
 which the cross-hairs of the surveying instrument 
 may intersect. 
 
 The barometric determination of heights is, of 
 course, not without similar troubles of its own. 
 The tables of altitudes corresponding to pressures 
 do not agree, Airy's table giving relatively greater 
 altitudes for very low pressures than the Smith- 
 sonian. All such tables as originally calculated 
 are based upon the hypothesis of a temperature 
 and humidity which decrease regularly with the 
 altitude, and this is not always the case; nor is 
 the "static equilibrium of the atmosphere" which 
 Laplace assumed always maintained; that is to 
 say an equal difference of pressure does not always 
 correspond to an equal difference of altitude. 
 There is, in point of fact, no absolute way to de- 
 
 143 
 
The Ascent of Denali 
 
 termine altitude save by running an actual line 
 of levels; all other methods are approximations 
 at best. But there had never been a barometric 
 determination of the height of this mountain made, 
 and it was resolved to attempt it on this expedi- 
 tion. 
 
 To this end careful arrangements were made 
 and much labor and trouble undergone. The 
 author carried his standard mercurial mountain 
 barometer to Fort Gibbon on the Yukon in Sep- 
 tember, 191 2, and compared it with the instru- 
 ment belonging to the Signal Corps of the United 
 States army at that post. A very close agreement 
 was found in the two instruments; the reading of 
 the one, by himself, and of the other, by the ser- 
 geant whose regular duty it was to read and re- 
 cord the instrument, being identical to two places 
 of decimals at the same temperature. 
 
 Arrangements were made with Captain Michel 
 of the Signal Corps at Fort Gibbon, when the 
 expedition started to the mountain in March, 
 191 3, to read the barometer at that post three 
 times a day and record the reading with the 
 reading of the attached thermometer. Acknowl- 
 edgment is here made of Captain Michel's cour- 
 tesy and kindness in this essential co-operation. 
 The reading at Fort Gibbon which most nearly 
 
 144 
 
Readings on the Summit 
 
 synchronizes with the reading on top of the 
 mountain is the one taken at noon on the 7th 
 June. The reading on top of the mountain was 
 made at about 1.50 p. m., so that there was an 
 hour and fifty minutes difference in time. The 
 weather, however, was set fair, without a cloud 
 in the sky, and had been for more than twelve 
 hours before and remained so for thirty-six hours 
 afterward. It would seem, therefore, that the 
 difference in time is negligible. The reading at 
 Fort Gibbon, a place of an altitude of three 
 hundred and thirty-four feet above sea-level, at 
 noon on the 7th June, was 29.590 inches with an at- 
 tached thermometer reading 76.5° F. The reading 
 on the summit of Denali, at 1.50 p. m. on the same 
 day, was 13.617. The writer is greatly chagrined 
 that he cannot give with the same confidence the 
 reading of the attached thermometer on top of 
 the mountain, but desires to set forth the circum- 
 stances and give the readings in his note-book 
 records. 
 
 The note-book gives the air temperature on the 
 summit as 7° F., taken by a standard alcohol min- 
 imum thermometer, and it remained constant 
 during the hour and a half we were there. The 
 sun was shining, but a bitter north wind was blow- 
 ing. But the reading of the thermometer at- 
 
 145 
 
The Ascent of Denali 
 
 tached to the barometer is recorded as 20° F. I 
 am unable to account for this discrepancy of 13°. 
 The mercurial barometer was swung on its tripod 
 inside the instrument tent we had carried to the 
 summit, a rough zero was established, and it was 
 left for twenty minutes or so to adjust itself to 
 conditions before an exact reading was taken. 
 It was my custom throughout the ascent to read 
 and record the thermometer immediately after 
 the barometer was read, but it is almost certain 
 that on this momentous occasion it was not done. 
 Possibly the thermometer was read immediately 
 the instrument was taken out of its leather case 
 and its wooden case and set up, while it yet re- 
 tained some of the animal heat of the back 
 that had borne it, and the reading was written 
 in the prepared place. Then when the barom- 
 eter was finally read, no temperature of the at- 
 tached thermometer was noted. This is the only 
 possible explanation that occurs, and it is very 
 unsatisfactory. It was not until we were down 
 at the base camp again that I looked at the fig- 
 ures, and discovered their difference, and I could 
 not then recall in detail the precise operations on 
 the summit. It is hard to understand, ordina- 
 rily, how any man could have recorded the two 
 readings on the same page of the book without 
 
 146 
 
In Exculpation 
 
 noticing their discrepancy, but perhaps the ex- 
 citement and difficulty of the situation combined 
 to produce what Sir Martin Conway calls "high 
 altitude stupidity." 
 
 It is indeed impossible to convey to the reader 
 who has never found himself circumstanced as we 
 were an understanding of our perturbation of 
 mind and body upon reaching the summit of the 
 mountain: breathless with excitement — and with 
 the altitude — hearts afire and feet nigh frozen. 
 What should be done on top, what first, what 
 next, had been carefully planned and even re- 
 hearsed, but we were none of us schooled in stoical 
 self-repression to command our emotions com- 
 pletely. Here was the crown of nearly three 
 months' toil — and of all those long years of desire 
 and expectation. It was hard to gather one's 
 wits and resolutely address them to prearranged 
 tasks; hard to secure a sufficient detachment of 
 mind for careful and accurate observations. The 
 sudden outspreading of the great mass of Denali's 
 Wife immediately below us and in front of us was 
 of itself a surprise that was dramatic and dis- 
 concerting; a splendid vision from which it was 
 difficult to withdraw the eyes. We knew, of course, 
 the companion peak was there, but had forgotten 
 all about her, having had no slightest glimpse of 
 
 147 
 
The Ascent of Denali 
 
 her on the whole ascent until at the one stroke 
 she stood completely revealed. Not more daz- 
 zling to the eyes of the pasha in the picture was 
 the form of the lovely woman when the slave 
 throws off the draperies that veiled her from head 
 to foot. Moreover, problems that had been dis- 
 cussed and disputed, questions about the confor- 
 mation of the mountain and the possibilities of 
 approach to it, were now soluble at a glance and 
 clamored for solution. We held them back and 
 fell at once to our scientific work, denying any 
 gratification of sight until these tasks were per- 
 formed, yet it is plain that I at least was not 
 proof against the disturbing consciousness of the 
 wonders that waited. 
 
 It was bitterly cold, yet my fingers, though 
 numb, were usable when I reached the top; it 
 was in exposing them to manipulate the hypso- 
 metrical instruments that they lost all feeling and 
 came nigh freezing. And breathlessness was nat- 
 urally at its worst; I remember that even the ex- 
 ertion of rising from the prone position it was 
 necessary to assume to read the barometer brought 
 on a fit of panting. 
 
 With these circumstances in mind we will re- 
 sume the discussion of the readings taken on the 
 summit and their bearing upon the altitude of 
 
 148 
 
Calculations for Altitude 
 
 the mountain. It seems right to disregard the 
 temperature recorded for the attached thermom- 
 eter, and to use the air temperature, of which 
 there is no doubt, in correcting the barometric 
 reading. So they stand; 
 
 Bar. Temp. 
 
 13.617 inches 7"* F. 
 
 The boihng-point thermometer stood at 174.9° F. 
 when the steam was pouring out of the vent. 
 They stand therefore: 
 
 Gibbon (334 feet altitude) The Summit of Denali 
 
 Bar. Then Bar. Then 
 
 29.590 76.5° F. 13.617 7° F. 
 
 Now, the tables accessible to the writer do not 
 work out their calculations beyond eighteen thou- 
 sand feet, and he confesses himself too long un- 
 used to mathematical labors of any kind for the 
 task of extending them. He was, therefore, con- 
 strained to fall back upon the kindness of Mr. 
 Alfred Brooks, the head of the Alaskan Division 
 of the United States Geological Survey, and Mr. 
 Brooks turned over the data to Mr. C. E. Giffin, 
 topographic engineer of that service, to which 
 gentleman thankful acknowledgment is made for 
 the result that follows. 
 
 Ignoring a calculation based upon a tempera- 
 149 
 
The Ascent of Denali 
 
 ture of 20° F. on the summit, and another based 
 upon a temperature of 13.5° F. on the summit (the 
 mean of the air temperature and that recorded 
 for the attached thermometer) and confining at- 
 tention to the calculation which takes the air 
 temperature of 7° F. as the proper figure for the 
 correction of the barometer, a result is reached 
 which shows the summit of Denali as twenty- 
 one thousand and eight feet above the sea. It 
 should be added that Mr. Gifiin obtained from the 
 United States Weather Bureau the barometric 
 and thermometric readings taken at Valdez on 
 7th June about the same length of time after our 
 reading on the summit as the reading at Gibbon 
 was before ours. From these readings Mr. Giffin 
 makes the altitude of the mountain twenty thou- 
 sand three hundred and seventy-four feet above 
 Valdez, which is ten feet above the sea-level. 
 From this result Mr. Giffin is disposed to ques- 
 tion the accuracy of the reading at Gibbon, 
 though the author has no reason to doubt it was 
 properly and carefully made. Valdez is much far- 
 ther from the summit than Fort Gibbon and is 
 in a different climatic zone. The calculation from 
 the Valdez base should, however, be taken into 
 consideration in making this barometric determi- 
 nation, and the mean of the two results, twenty 
 
 150 
 
Fort Gibbon and Valdez as Bases 
 
 thousand six hundred and ninety-six feet, or, 
 roundly, twenty thousand seven hundred feet^ is 
 offered as the contribution of this expedition 
 toward determining the true altitude of the 
 mountain. 
 
 The figures of Mr. Giffin's calculations touch- 
 ing the altitude of this mountain and also de- 
 termining the altitudes of various salient points 
 or stages of the ascent of the mountain are 
 printed below: 
 
 DENALI (MOUNT McKINLEY) 
 
 Using Air Thermometer Reading +7° and the Read- 
 ing AT Fort Gibbon for Same Date 
 
 Mount McKlnley, barometric read- 
 ing 13.617 in. 
 
 Barometer reduced to standard 
 temperature +-027 " Temp. 7° 
 
 13.644 in. 
 Fort Gibbon, barometric reading . . 29.590 in. 
 Barometer reduced to standard tem- 
 perature -.128 " Temp. 76.5** 
 
 29.462 in. 
 Mount McKinley, corrected barom- 
 eter 13.644 in. 21,324 ft. 
 
 Fort Gibbon, corrected barometer. . 29.462 " 400" 
 
 20,924 ft. 
 151 
 
The Ascent of Denali 
 
 Mean temperature, 41.7° — approxi- 
 mate diflference in elevation 20,924 ft. — 3S6 ft. 
 
 Latitude, 64° — approximate differ- 
 ence in elevation 20,568 " +IS " 
 
 Mean temperature, 41.7° — approxi- 
 mate difference in elevation 20,568 " +71 " 
 
 Elevation lowest, 400 — approximate 
 
 difference in elevation 20,568 " +20 
 
 Elevation above Fort Gibbon 20,674 ft. 
 
 Elevation of Fort Gibbon 334 " 
 
 Elevation above sea 21,008 ft. 
 
 Using the Thermometric Reading of 7° at Mount 
 
 McKlNLEY AND THE U. S. WeaTHER BuREAU ReADING 
 
 AT Valdez for Same Date 
 
 Mount McKinley, barometric read- 
 ing 13.617 in. 
 
 Barometer reduced to standard tem- 
 perature +.027 " Temp. 7" 
 
 13.644 in. 
 
 Valdez, barometric reading 29.76 in. 
 
 Barometer reduced to standard tem- 
 perature 068 
 
 29.692 in. Temp. 54° 
 Mount McKinley, corrected baro- 
 metric reading 13-644 in. 21,324 ft. 
 
 Valdez, corrected barometric reading 29.692 " 190 
 
 21,134 ft- 
 Mean temperature, 30.5° — approxi- 
 mate difference in elevation 21,134 ft. —840 
 
 Latitude, 62° — approximate differ- 
 ence in elevation 20,295 " +^8 
 
 152 
 
Fort Gibbon and Valdez as Bases 
 
 Mean temperature, 30.5° — approxi- 
 mate difference in elevation. . . . 20,295 ft. +42 ft. 
 
 Elevation lowest, 190 — approximate 
 
 difference in elevation 20,295 " +20 " 
 
 Elevation above Valdez 20,374 ft- 
 
 Elevation of Valdez 10 " 
 
 Elevation above sea 20,384 ft. 
 
 ALTITUDES OF CAMPING STATIONS 
 
 First Glacier Camp 
 
 Glacier Camp, barometric reading. 22.554 in. Temp. 81" 
 Barometer reduced to standard tem- 
 perature —.106 " 
 
 22.448 in. 
 Fort Gibbon, barometric reading. . . 29.110 in. Temp. 74" 
 Barometer reduced to standard tem- 
 perature —.120 " 
 
 28.990 in. 
 Glacier Camp, corrected barometer 22.448 in. 7>79i ft. 
 
 Fort Gibbon, corrected barometer. . 28.990 " 840 " 
 
 6,951 ft. 
 
 Mean temperature, 77.5° — approxi- 
 mate difference in elevation 6,951 ft. +393 
 
 Latitude, 64° — approximate differ- 
 ence in elevation 7>343 " +5 
 
 Mean temperature, 77.5° — approxi- 
 mate difference in elevation 7»343 " +74 
 
 Elevation lowest, 840 — approximate 
 
 difference in elevation 7j343 " +3 
 
 Elevation above Fort Gibbon 7^426 ft. 
 
 Elevation of Fort Gibbon 334 
 
 Elevation above sea 7>76o ft. 
 
 153 
 
The Ascent of Denali 
 
 Head of Muldrow Glacier 
 
 Muldrow Glacier, barometric read- 
 ing 19.640 in. Temp. 36° 
 
 Barometer reduced to standard tem- 
 perature — -013 " 
 
 19.627 in. 
 Fort Gibbon, barometric reading. . . 30.065 in. Temp. 71° 
 Barometer reduced to standard tem- 
 perature —115 " 
 
 29.950 in. 
 Muldrow Glacier, corrected barom- 
 eter 19.627 in. 1 1,441 ft. 
 
 Fort Gibbon, corrected barometer. . 29.950 " (— )4S " 
 
 11,486 ft. 
 
 Temperature, 53-5° — approximate 
 
 difference in elevation 11,486 ft. +79 " 
 
 Latitude, 65° — approximate differ- 
 ence in elevation 1 1*565 " +8 " 
 
 Mean temperature, 53.5° — approxi- 
 mate difference in elevation II)S65 " +63 " 
 
 Elevation lowest, 45 — approximate 
 
 difference in elevation 1 1,565 " +6 " 
 
 Elevation above Fort Gibbon 11,642 ft. 
 
 Elevation of Fort Gibbon 334 " 
 
 Elevation above sea 1 1,976 ft. 
 
 Parker Pass 
 
 Parker Pass, barometric reading. . . 17.330 in. Temp. 43° 
 Barometer reduced to standard tem- 
 perature —-023 " 
 
 17.307 in. 
 154 
 
Fort Gibbon and Valdez as Bases 
 
 Fort Gibbon, barometric reading . . 30.050 in. Temp. 69.5° 
 Barometer reduced to standard tem- 
 perature —.Ill " 
 
 29.939 in. 
 Parker Pass, corrected barometer.. . 17.307 in. 14,861 ft. 
 Fort Gibbon, corrected barometer. . 29.939 " (~)3S " 
 
 14,896 ft. 
 
 Mean temperature, 56.25° — approxi- 
 mate difference in elevation 14,896 ft. +185 " 
 
 Latitude, 64° — approximate differ- 
 ence in elevation I5j09I " +11 " 
 
 At temperature of 56.25° — approxi- 
 mate difference in elevation I5>09i " +92 " 
 
 Elevation lowest, —35° — approxi- 
 mate difference in elevation I5>09i " +11 " 
 
 Elevation above Fort Gibbon. I5>I95 ft. 
 
 Elevation of Fort Gibbon 334 " 
 
 Elevation above sea IS>S29 ft. 
 
 Last Camp 
 
 Last Camp, barometric reading. . . . 15.220 in. Temp. 40® 
 Barometer reduced to standard tem- 
 perature —.016 " 
 
 15.204 in. 
 Fort Gibbon, barometric reading. . . 29.660 in. 
 Barometer reduced to standard tem- 
 perature —.120 " Temp. 73.5° 
 
 29.540 in. 
 Last Camp, corrected barometer. . . 15.204 in. 18,382 ft. 
 Fort Gibbon, corrected barometer.. 29.540 " 329 
 
 18,053 ft. 
 ISS 
 
The Ascent of Denali 
 
 Mean temperature, 56.75° — approxi- 
 mate diflFerence in elevation 18,053 ft. +248 ft. 
 
 Latitude, 64° — approximate differ- 
 ence in elevation 18,301 " -I-17 " 
 
 Mean temperature, 56.75° — approxi- 
 mate difference in elevation 18,301 " +112 " 
 
 Elevation lowest, 329 — approximate 
 difference in elevation 18,301 " +16 " 
 
 Elevation above Fort Gibbon 18,446 ft. 
 
 Elevation of Fort Gibbon 334 " 
 
 Elevation above sea 18,780 ft. 
 
 156 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 EXPLORATIONS OF THE DENALI RE- 
 
 GION AND PREVIOUS ATTEMPTS 
 
 AT ITS ASCENT 
 
 THE first mention In literature of the greatest 
 mountain group In North America Is in the 
 narrative of that most notable navigator, George 
 Vancouver. While surveying the Knik Arm of 
 Cook's Inlet, In 1794, he speaks of his view of a 
 connected mountain range "bounded by distant 
 stupendous snow mountains covered with snow 
 and apparently detached from each other." Van- 
 couver's name has grown steadily greater during 
 the last fifty years as modern surveys have shown 
 the wonderful detailed accuracy of his work, and 
 the seamen of the Alaskan coast speak of him as 
 the prince of all navigators. 
 
 Not until 1878 Is there another direct mention 
 of these mountains, although the Russian name 
 for Denali, "Bulshala Gora," proves that It had 
 long been observed and known. 
 
 In that year two of the early Alaskan traders, 
 157 
 
The Ascent of Denali 
 
 Alfred Mayo and Arthur Harper, made an ad- 
 venturous journey some three hundred miles up 
 the Tanana River, the first ascent of that river 
 by white men, and upon their return reported 
 finding gold in the bars and mentioned an enor- 
 mous ice mountain visible in the south, which 
 they said was one of the most remarkable things 
 they had seen on their trip. 
 
 In 1889 Frank Densmore, a prospector, with 
 several companions, crossed from the Tanana to 
 the Kuskokwim by way of the Coschaket and Lake 
 Minchumina, and had the magnificent view of the 
 Denali group which Lake Minchumina affords, 
 which the present writer was privileged to have 
 in 191 1. Densmore's description was so enthu- 
 siastic that the mountain was known for years 
 among the Yukon prospectors as "Densmore's 
 mountain." 
 
 Though unquestionably many men traversed 
 the region after the discovery of gold in Cook's 
 Inlet in 1894, no other public recorded mention of 
 the great mountain was made until W. A. Dickey, 
 a Princeton graduate, journeyed extensively In the 
 Sushitna and Chulltna valleys in 1896 and reached 
 the foot of the glacier which drains one of the 
 flanks of Denali, called later by Doctor Cook the 
 Ruth Glacier. Dickey described the mountain 
 
 158 
 
Harper, Densmore, Dickey 
 
 in a letter to the New York Sun in January, 1907, 
 and guessed its height with remarkable accuracy 
 at twenty thousand feet. Probably unaware that 
 the mountain had any native name, Dickey gave 
 it the name of the Republican candidate for Presi- 
 dent of the United States at that time — McKin- 
 ley. Says Mr. Dickey : "We named our great peak 
 Mount McKinley, after WiUiam McKinley, of 
 Ohio, the news of whose nomination for the presi- 
 dency was the first we received on our way out 
 of that wonderful wilderness." 
 
 In 1898 George Eldridge and Robert Muldrow, 
 of the United States Geological Survey, traversed 
 the region, and Muldrow estimated the height of 
 the mountain by triangulation at twenty thousand 
 three hundred feet. 
 
 In 1899 Lieutenant Herron crossed the range 
 from Cook's Inlet and reached the Kuskokwim. 
 It was he who named the lesser mountain of the 
 Denali group, always known by the natives as 
 Denali's Wife, "Mount Foraker," after the senator 
 from Ohio. 
 
 In 1902 Alfred Brooks and D. L. Raeburn made 
 a remarkable reconnoissance survey from the 
 Pacific Ocean, passing through the range and 
 along the whole western and northwestern faces 
 of the group. They were the first white men to 
 
 159 
 
The Ascent of Denali 
 
 set foot upon the slopes of Denali. Shortly after- 
 ward, in response to the interest this journey 
 aroused among Alpine clubs, Mr. Brooks published 
 a pamphlet setting forth what he considered the 
 most feasible plan for attempting the ascent of 
 the mountain. 
 
 The next year saw two actual attempts at as- 
 cent. After holding the first term of court at 
 Fairbanks, the new town on the Tanana River 
 that had sprung suddenly into importance as the 
 metropolis of Alaska upon the discovery of the 
 Tanana gold-fields. Judge Wickersham (now dele- 
 gate to Congress) set out with four men and two 
 mules in May, 1903, and by steamboat ascended 
 to the head of navigation of the Kantishna. Head- 
 ing straight across an unknown country for the 
 base of the mountain. Judge Wickersham's party 
 unfortunately attacked the mountain by the 
 Peters Glacier and demonstrated the impossibility 
 of that approach, being stopped by the enor- 
 mous ice-incrusted cliflFs of the North Peak. 
 Judge Wickersham used to say that only by a 
 balloon or a flying-machine could the summit be 
 reached; and, indeed, by no other means can the 
 summit ever be reached from the north face. 
 After a week spent in climbing, provisions began 
 to run short and the party returned, descending 
 
 160 
 
Herron, Brooks, Wickersham 
 
 the rushing, turbid waters of that quite unnavi- 
 gable and very dangerous stream, the McKinley 
 Fork of the Kantishna, on a raft, with little of 
 anything left to eat, and that little damaged by 
 water. Judge Wickersham was always keen for 
 another attempt and often discussed the matter 
 with the writer, but his judicial and political ac- 
 tivities thenceforward occupied his time and at- 
 tention to the exclusion of such enterprises. His 
 attempt was the first ever made to climb the 
 mountain. 
 
 Doctor Cook's Attempts 
 
 About the time that Judge Wickersham was 
 leaving the north face of the mountain an expe- 
 dition under Doctor Frederick A. Cook set out 
 from Tyonek, on Cook's Inlet, on the other side 
 of the range. Doctor Cook was accompanied by 
 Robert Dunn, Ralph Shainwald (the "Hiram" 
 of Dunn's narrative), and Fred Printz, who had 
 been chief packer for Brooks and Raeburn, and 
 fourteen pack-horses bore their supplies. The 
 route followed was that of Brooks and Raeburn, 
 and they had the advantage of topographical 
 maps and forty miles of trail cut in the timber 
 and a guide familiar with the country. Going up 
 
 i6i 
 
The Ascent of Denali 
 
 the Beluga and down the Skwentna Rivers, they 
 crossed the range by the Simpson Pass to the south 
 fork of the Kuskokwim, and then skirted the base 
 of the mountains until a southwesterly ridge was 
 reached which it is not very easy to locate, but 
 which, as Doctor Brooks judges, must have been 
 near the headwaters of the Tatlathna, a tributary 
 of the Kuskokwim. Here an attempt was made 
 to ascend the mountain, but at eight thousand 
 feet a chasm cut them off from further advance. 
 Pursuing their northeast course, they reached 
 the Peters Glacier (which Doctor Cook calls the 
 Hanna Glacier) and stumbled across one of Judge 
 Wickersham's camps of a couple of months before. 
 Here another attempt to ascend was made, only 
 to find progress stopped by the same stupendous 
 cliffs that had turned back the Wickersham party. 
 "Over the glacier which comes from the gap be- 
 tween the eastern and western peaks" (the North 
 and South Peaks as we speak of them), says Doc- 
 tor Cook, "there was a promising route." That is, 
 indeed, part of the only route, but it can be reached 
 only by the Muldrow Glacier. "The walls of the 
 main mountain rise out of the Hanna (Peters) 
 Glacier," Cook adds. The "main mountain" has 
 many walls; the walls by which the summit alone 
 may be reached rise out of the Muldrow Glacier, 
 
 162 
 
Doctor Cook 
 
 a circumstance that was not to be discovered for 
 some years yet. 
 
 The lateness of the season now compelled imme- 
 diate return. Passing still along the face of the 
 range in the same direction, the party crossed the 
 terminal moraine of the Muldrow Glacier without 
 recognizing that it affords the only highway to the 
 heart of the great mountain and recrossed the 
 range by an ice-covered pass to the waters of the 
 Chulitna River, down which they rafted after 
 abandoning their horses. Doctor Cook calls this 
 pass "Harper Pass," and the name should stand, 
 for Cook was probably the first man ever to use it. 
 
 The chief result of this expedition, besides the 
 exploration of about one hundred miles of un- 
 known country, was the publication by Robert 
 Dunn of an extraordinary narrative in several 
 consecutive numbers of Outing., afterward repub- 
 lished in book form, with some modifications, as 
 "The Shameless Diary of an Explorer," a vivid 
 but unpleasant production, for which every squab- 
 ble and jealousy of the party furnishes literary 
 material. The book has a curious, undeniable 
 power, despite its brutal frankness and its striving 
 after "the poor renown of being smart," and it 
 may live. One is thankful, however, that it is 
 unique in the literature of travel. 
 
 163 
 
The Ascent of Denali 
 
 Three years later Doctor Cook organized an 
 expedition for a second attempt upon the moun- 
 tain. In May, 1906, accompanied by Professor 
 Herschel Parker, Mr. Belmore Browne, a topogra- 
 pher named Porter, who made some valuable 
 maps, and packers, the party landed at the head 
 of Cook's Inlet and penetrated by motor-boat and 
 by pack-train into the Sushitna country, south of 
 the range. Faihng to cross the range at the head 
 of the Yentna, they spent some time in explora- 
 tions along the Kahilitna River, and, finding no 
 avenue of approach to the heights of the moun- 
 tain, the party returned to Cook's Inlet and 
 broke up. 
 
 With only one companion, a packer named 
 Edward Barrille, Cook returned in the launch 
 up the Chulitna River to the Tokositna late in 
 August. *'We had already changed our mind as 
 to the impossibility of climbing the mountain," 
 he writes. Ascending a glacier which the To- 
 kositna River drains, named by Cook the Ruth 
 Glacier, they reached the amphitheatre at the 
 glacier head. From this point, ''up and up to the 
 heaven-scraped granite of the top, " Doctor Cook 
 grows grandiloquent and vague, for at this point 
 his true narrative ends. 
 
 The claims that Doctor Cook made upon his 
 • 164 
 
Doctor Cook and Robert Dunn 
 
 return are well known, but it is quite impossible 
 to follow his course from the description given in 
 his book, "To the Top of the Continent." This 
 much may be said: from the summit of the 
 mountain, on a clear day, it seemed evident that 
 no ascent was possible from the south side of the 
 range at all. That was the judgment of all four 
 members of our party. Doctor Cook talks about 
 "the heaven-scraped granite of the top" and "the 
 dazzhng whiteness of the frosted granite blocks," 
 and prints a photograph of the top showing granite 
 slabs. There is no rock of any kind on the South 
 (the higher) Peak above nineteen thousand feet. 
 The last one thousand five hundred feet of the 
 mountain is all permanent snow and ice; nor is 
 the conformation of the summit in the least like 
 the photograph printed as the "top of Mt. 
 McKinley." In his account of the view from the 
 summit he speaks of "the ice-Mink caused by the 
 extensive glacial sheets north of the Saint Ehas 
 group," which would surely be out of the range 
 of any possible vision, but does not mention at 
 all the master sight that bursts upon the eye 
 when the summit is actually gained — the great 
 mass of "Denali's Wife," or Mount Foraker, fill- 
 ing all the middle distance. We were all agreed 
 that no one who had ever stood on the top of 
 
 165 
 
The Ascent of Denali 
 
 Denali in clear weather could fail to mention the 
 sudden splendid sight of this great mountain. 
 
 But it is not worth while to pursue the subject 
 further. The present writer feels confident that 
 any man who climbs to the top of Denali, and then 
 reads Doctor Cook's account of his ascent, will 
 not need Edward Barrille's affidavit to convince 
 him that Cook's narrative is untrue. Indigna- 
 tion is, however, swallowed up in pity when one 
 thinks upon the really excellent pioneering and 
 exploring work done by this man, and realizes 
 that the immediate success of the imposition 
 about the ascent of Denali doubtless led to the 
 more audacious imposition about the discovery of 
 the North Pole — and that to his discredit and 
 downfall. 
 
 The Pioneer Ascent 
 
 Although Cook's claim to have reached the sum- 
 mit of Denali met with general acceptance out- 
 side, or at least was not openly scouted, it was 
 otherwise in Alaska. The men, in particular, who 
 lived and worked in the placer-mining regions 
 about the base of the mountain, and were, per- 
 haps, more familiar with the orography of the 
 range than any surveyor or professed topographer, 
 
 1 66 
 
Doctor Cook 
 
 were openly incredulous. Upon the appearance 
 of Doctor Cook's book, "To the Top of the Conti- 
 nent," in 1908, the writer well remembers the 
 eagerness with which his copy (the only one in 
 Fairbanks) was perused by man after man from 
 the Kantishna diggings, and the acute way in 
 which they detected the place where vague "fine 
 writing" began to be substituted for definite 
 description. 
 
 Some of these men, convinced that the ascent 
 had never been made, conceived the purpose of 
 proving it in the only way in which it could be 
 proved — by making the ascent themselves. They 
 were confident that an enterprise which had now 
 baffled several parties of "scientists," equipped 
 with all sorts of special apparatus, could be accom- 
 plished by Alaskan "sourdoughs" with no special 
 equipment at all. There seems also to have en- 
 tered into the undertaking a naive notion that in 
 some way or other large money reward would fol- 
 low a successful ascent. 
 
 The enterprise took form under Thomas Lloyd, 
 who managed to secure the financial backing of 
 McPhee and Petersen, saloon-keepers of Fair- 
 banks, and Griffin, a wholesale liquor dealer of 
 Chena. These three men are said to have put 
 up five hundred dollars apiece, and the sum 
 
 167 
 
The Ascent of Denali 
 
 thus raised sufficed for the needs of the party. 
 In February, 1910, therefore, Thomas Lloyd, 
 Charles McGonoglll, William Taylor, Peter An- 
 derson, and Bob Home, all experienced prospec- 
 tors and miners, and E. C. Davidson, a surveyor, 
 now the surveyor-general of Alaska, set out from 
 Fairbanks, and by 1st March had established a 
 base camp at the mouth of Cache Creek, within 
 the foot-hills of the range. 
 
 Here Davidson and Home left the party after 
 a disagreement with Lloyd. The loss of David- 
 son was a fatal blow to anything beyond a "sport- 
 ing" ascent, for he was the only man in the party 
 with any scientific bent, or who knew so much as 
 the manipulation of a photographic camera. 
 
 The Lloyd expedition was the first to discover 
 the only approach by which the mountain may 
 be climbed. Mr. Alfred Brooks, Mr. Robert 
 Muldrow, and Doctor Cook had passed the 
 snout of the Muldrow Glacier without realizing 
 that it turned and twisted and led up until it 
 gave access to the ridge by which alone the upper 
 glacier or Grand Basin can be reached and the 
 summits gained. From observations while hunt- 
 ing mountain-sheep upon the foot-hills for years 
 past, Lloyd had already satisfied himself of this 
 prime fact; had found the key to the complicated 
 
 168 
 
The Sourdough Climb 
 
 orography of the great mass. Lloyd had pre- 
 viously crossed the range with horses in this neigh- 
 borhood by an easy pass that led "from willows 
 to willows" in eighteen miles. Pete Anderson 
 had come into the Kantishna country this way 
 and had crossed and recrossed the range by this 
 pass no less than eleven times. 
 
 McGonogill, following quartz leads upon the 
 high mountains of Moose Creek, had traced from 
 his aerie the course of the Muldrow Glacier, and 
 had satisfied himself that within the walls of that 
 glacier the route would be found. And, indeed, 
 when he had us up there and pointed out the long 
 stretch of the parallel walls it was plain to us 
 also that they held the road to the heights. From 
 the point where he had perched his tiny hut, a 
 stone's throw from his tunnel, how splendidly the 
 mountain rose and the range stretched out! 
 
 These men thus started with the great advan- 
 tage of a knowledge of the mountain, and their 
 plan for chmbing it was the first that contained 
 the possibility of success. 
 
 From the base camp Anderson and McGonogill 
 scouted among the foot-hills of the range for some 
 time before they discovered the pass that gives 
 easy access to the Muldrow Glacier. On 25th 
 March the party had traversed the glacier and 
 
 169 
 
The Ascent of Denali 
 
 reached its head with dogs and supplies. A camp 
 was made on the ridge, while further prospect- 
 ing was carried on toward the upper glacier. This 
 was the farthest point that Lloyd reached. On 
 loth April, Taylor, Anderson, and McGonogill 
 set out about two in the morning with great climb- 
 ing-irons strapped to their moccasins and hooked 
 pike-poles in their hands. Disdaining the rope and 
 cutting no steps, it was "every man for himself," 
 with reliance solely upon the crampons. They 
 went up the ridge to the Grand Basin, crossed the 
 ice to the North Peak, and proceeded to climb it, 
 carrying the fourteen-foot flagstaff with them. 
 Within perhaps five hundred feet of the summit, 
 McGonogill, outstripped by Taylor and Anderson, 
 and fearful of the return over the slippery ice- 
 incrusted rocks if he went farther, turned back, 
 but Taylor and Anderson reached the top (about 
 twenty thousand feet above the sea) and firmly 
 planted the flagstaff, which is there yet. 
 
 This is the true narrative of a most extraor- 
 dinary feat, unique — the writer has no hesitation 
 in claiming — in all the annals of mountaineering. 
 He has been at the pains of talking with every 
 member of the actual climbing party with a view 
 to sifting the matter thoroughly. 
 
 For, largely by the fault of these men them- 
 170 
 
Lloyd and McGonogill 
 
 selves, through a mistaken though not unchival- 
 rous sense of loyalty to the organizer of the expe- 
 dition, much incredulity was aroused in Alaska 
 touching their exploit. It was most unfortunate 
 that any mystery was made about the details, 
 most unfortunate that in the newspaper accounts 
 false claims were set up. Surely the merest com- 
 mon sense should have dictated that in the ac- 
 count of an ascent undertaken with the prime 
 purpose of proving that Doctor Cook had ?iot 
 made the ascent, and had falsified his narrative, 
 everything should be frank and aboveboard; but 
 it was not so. 
 
 A narrative, gathered from Lloyd himself and 
 agreed to by the others, was reduced to writing 
 by Mr. W. E. Thompson, an able journaHst of 
 Fairbanks, and was sold to a newspaper syndi- 
 cate. The account the writer has examined was 
 "featured" in the New York Sunday Times of the 
 5th June, 1910. 
 
 In that account Lloyd is made to claim un- 
 equivocally that he himself reached both sum- 
 mits of the mountain. "There were two summits 
 and we climbed them both"; and again, "When I 
 reached the coast summit" are reported in quota- 
 tion marks as from his lips. As a matter of fact, 
 Lloyd himself reached neither summit, nor was 
 
 171 
 
The Ascent of Denali 
 
 much above the glacier floor; and the south or 
 coast summit, the higher of the two, was not at- 
 tempted by the part)^ at all. There is no question 
 that the party could have climbed the South 
 Peak, though by reason of its greater distance it 
 is safe to say that it could not have been reached, 
 as the North Peak was, in one march from the 
 ridge camp. It must have involved a camp in 
 the Grand Basin with all the delay and the labor 
 of relaying the stuff up there. But the men who 
 accomplished the astonishing feat of climbing the 
 North Peak, in one almost superhuman march 
 from the saddle of the Northeast Ridge, could most 
 certainly have climbed the South Peak too. 
 
 They did not attempt it for two reasons, first, 
 because they wanted to plant their fourteen-foot 
 flagstaff where it could be seen through a tele- 
 scope from Fairbanks, one hundred and fifty miles 
 away, as they fondly supposed, and, second, be- 
 cause not until they had reached the summit of 
 the North Peak did they realize that the South 
 Peak is higher. They told the writer that upon 
 their return to the floor of the upper glacier they 
 were greatly disappointed to find that their flag- 
 staff was not visible to them. It is, indeed, only 
 just visible with the naked eye from certain points 
 on the upper glacier and quite invisible at any 
 
 172 
 
The North Peak 
 
 lower or more distant point. Walter Harper has 
 particularly keen sight, and he was well up in the 
 Grand Basin, at nearly seventeen thousand feet 
 altitude, sitting and scanning the sky-line of the 
 North Peak, seeking for the pole, when he caught 
 sight of it and pointed it out. The writer was 
 never sure that he saw it with the naked eye, 
 though Karstens and Tatum did so as soon as 
 Walter pointed it out, but through the field-glasses 
 it was plain and prominent and unmistakable. 
 
 When we came down to the Kantishna diggings 
 and announced to the men who planted it that 
 we had seen the flagstaff, there was a feeling ex- 
 pressed that the climbing party of the previous 
 summer must have seen it also and had suppressed 
 mention of it; but there is no ground whatever 
 for such a damaging assumption. It would never 
 be seen with the naked eye save by those who 
 were intently searching for it. Professor Parker 
 and Mr. Belmore Browne entertained the pretty 
 general increduUty about the "Pioneer" ascent, 
 perhaps too readily, certainly too confidently; but 
 the men themselves must bear the chief blame for 
 that. The writer and his party, knowing these 
 men much better, had never doubt that some of 
 them had accomphshed what was claimed, and 
 these details have been gone into for no other rea- 
 
 173 
 
The Ascent of Denali 
 
 son than that honor may at last be given where 
 honor is due. 
 
 To Lloyd belongs the honor of conceiving and 
 organizing the attempt but not of accompHshing 
 it. To him probably also belongs the original dis- 
 covery of the route that made the ascent possible. 
 To McGonogill belongs the credit of discovering 
 the pass, probably the only pass, by which the 
 glacier may be reached without following it from 
 its snout up, a long and difficult journey; and 
 to him also the credit of cHmbing some nineteen 
 thousand five hundred feet, or to within five hun- 
 dred feet of the North Peak. But to Pete Ander- 
 son and Billy Taylor, two of the strongest men, 
 physically, in all the North, and to none other, 
 belongs the honor of the first ascent of the North 
 Peak and the planting of what must assuredly be 
 the highest flagstaff in the world. The North 
 Peak has never since been climbed or attempted. 
 
 In the summer of the same year, 1910, Professor 
 Parker and Mr. Belmore Browne, members of the 
 second Cook party, convinced by this time that 
 Cook's claim was wholly unfounded, attempted 
 the mountain again, and another party, organized 
 by Mr. C. E. Rust, of Portland, Oregon, also en- 
 
 174 
 
Pete Anderson and Billy Taylor 
 
 deavored the ascent. But both these expeditions 
 confined themselves to the hopeless southern side 
 of the range, from which, in all probability, the 
 mountain never can be climbed. 
 
 The Parker-Browne Expedition 
 
 To a man living in the interior of Alaska, aware 
 of the outfitting and transportation facilities which 
 the large commerce of Fairbanks affords, aware 
 of the navigable waterways that penetrate close to 
 the foot-hills of the Alaskan range, aware also of 
 the amenities of the interior slope with its dry, 
 mild climate, its abundance of game and rich 
 pasturage compared with the trackless, lifeless 
 snows of the coast slopes, there seems a strange 
 fatuity in the persistent efforts to approach the 
 mountain from the southern side of the range. 
 
 It is morally certain that if the only expedition 
 that remains to be dealt with — that organized by 
 Professor Parker and Mr. Belmore Browne in 191 2, 
 which came within an ace of success — had ap- 
 proached the mountain from the interior instead 
 of from the coast, it would have forestalled us 
 and accomplished the first complete ascent. 
 
 The difficulties of the coast approach have been 
 described graphically enough by Robert Dunn in 
 
 175 
 
The Ascent of Denali 
 
 the summer and by Belmore Browne himself in the 
 winter. There are no trails; the snow lies deep 
 and loose and falls continually, or else the whole 
 country is bog and swamp. There is no game. 
 
 The Parker-Browne expedition left Seward, on 
 Resurrection Baj^, late in January, 191 2, and after 
 nearly three months' travel, relaying their stuff 
 forward, they crossed the range under extreme 
 difficulties, being seventeen days above any veg- 
 etation, and reached the northern face of the 
 mountain on 25th March. The expedition either 
 missed the pass near the foot of the Muldrow 
 Glacier, well known to the Kantishna miners, by 
 which it is possible to cross from willows to willows 
 in eighteen miles, or else avoided it in the vain 
 hope of finding another. They then went to the 
 Kantishna diggings and procured supplies and 
 topographical information from the miners, and 
 were thus able to follow the course of the Lloj'd 
 party of 1910, reaching the Muldrow Glacier by the 
 gap in the glacier wall discovered by McGonogill 
 and named McPhee Pass by him. 
 
 Mr. Belmore Browne has written a lucid and 
 stirring account of the ascent which his party 
 made. We were fortunate enough to secure a 
 copy of the magazine in which it appeared just 
 before leaving Fairbanks, and he had been good 
 
 176 
 
Parker and Browne 
 
 enough to write a letter in response to our inquiries 
 and to enclose a sketch map. Our course was 
 almost precisely the same as that of the Parker- 
 Browne party up to seventeen thousand feet, and 
 the course of that party was precisely the same as 
 that of the Lloyd party up to fifteen thousand feet. 
 There is only one way up the mountain, and Lloyd 
 and his companions discovered it. The earth- 
 quake had enormously increased the labor of the 
 ascent; it had not altered the route. 
 
 A reconnoissance of the Muldrow Glacier to its 
 head and a long spell of bad weather delayed the 
 party so much that it was the 4th June before the 
 actual ascent was begun — a very late date indeed; 
 more than a month later than our date and nearly 
 three months later than the "Pioneer" date. It 
 is rarely that the mountain is clear after the ist 
 June; almost all the summer through its summit 
 is wrapped in cloud. From the junction of the 
 Tanana and Yukon Rivers it is often visible for 
 weeks at a time during the winter, but is rarely 
 seen at all after the ice goes out. A close watch 
 kept by friends at Tanana (the town at the con- 
 fluence of the rivers) discovered the summit on 
 the day we reached it and the following day (the 
 7th and 8th June) but not for three weeks before 
 and not at all afterward; from which it does not 
 
 177 
 
The Ascent of Denali 
 
 follow, however, that the summit was not visible 
 momentarily, or at certain hours of the day, but 
 only that it was not visible for long enough to 
 be observed. The rapidity with which that sum- 
 mit shrouds and clears itself is sometimes marvel- 
 lous. 
 
 As is well known, the Parker-Browne party 
 pushed up the Northeast Ridge and the upper 
 glacier and made a first attack upon the summit 
 itself, from a camp at seventeen thousand feet, on 
 the 29th June. When within three or four hun- 
 dred feet of the top they were overwhelmed and 
 driven down, half frozen, by a blizzard that sud- 
 denly arose. On the ist July another attempt 
 was made, but the clouds ascended and com- 
 pletely enveloped the party in a cold, wind-driven 
 mist so that retreat to camp was again imper- 
 ative. Only those who have experienced bad 
 weather at great heights can understand how im- 
 possible it is to proceed in the face of it. The 
 strongest, the hardiest, the most resolute must 
 yield. The party could linger no longer; food 
 supplies were exhausted. They broke camp and 
 went down the mountain. 
 
 The falling short of complete success of this 
 very gallant mountaineering attempt seems to 
 have been due, first to the mistake of approaching 
 
 178 
 
Parker and Browne 
 
 the mountain by the most difficult route, so that 
 it was more than five months after starting that 
 the actual climbing began; or, if the survey made 
 justified, and indeed decided, the route, then 
 the summit was sacrificed to the survey. But 
 the immediate cause of the failure was the mis- 
 take of relying upon canned pemmican for the 
 main food supply. This provision, hauled with 
 infinite labor from the coast, and carried on the 
 backs of the party to the high levels of the moun- 
 tain, proved uneatable and useless at the very 
 time when it was depended upon for subsistence. 
 There is no finer big-game country in the world 
 than that around the interior slopes of the Alaskan 
 range; there is no finer meat in the world than 
 caribou and mountain-sheep. It is carrying coals 
 to Newcastle to bring canned meat into this 
 country — nature's own larder stocked with her 
 choicest supplies. But if, attempting the moun- 
 tain when they did, the Parker-Browne party had 
 remained two or three days longer in the Grand 
 Basin, which they would assuredly have done had 
 their food been eatable, their bodies would be 
 lying up there yet or would be crushed beneath 
 the debris of the earthquake on the ridge. 
 
 179 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE NAMES PLACED UPON THE 
 MOUNTAIN BY THE AUTHOR 
 
 THERE was no intent of putting names at 
 all upon any portions of this mountain 
 when the expedition was undertaken, save that 
 the author had it in his mind to honor the mem- 
 ory of a very noble and very notable gentlewoman 
 who gave ten years of her Hfe to the Alaskan na- 
 tives, set on foot one of the most successful edu- 
 cational agencies in the interior, and died sud- 
 denly and heroically at her post of duty a few 
 years since, leaving a broad and indelible mark 
 upon the character of a generation of Indians. 
 Miss Farthing lies buried high up on the bluffs 
 opposite the school at Nenana, in a spot she was 
 wont to visit for the fine view of Denali it com- 
 mands, and her brother, the present bishop of 
 Montreal, and some of her colleagues of the 
 Alaskan mission, have set a concrete cross there. 
 When we entered the Alaskan range by Cache 
 Creek there rose directly before us a striking py- 
 
 i8o 
 
Tower, Pass, and Ridge 
 
 ramidal peak, some twelve or thirteen thousand 
 feet high. Not knowing that any name had been 
 bestowed upon it, the author discharged himself 
 of the duty that he conceived lay upon him of as- 
 sociating Miss Farthing's name permanently with 
 the mountain range she loved and the country 
 in which she labored. But he has since learned 
 that Professor Parker placed upon this mountain, 
 a year before, the name of Alfred Brooks, of 
 the Alaskan Geological Survey. Apart from the 
 priority of naming, to which, of course, he would 
 immediately yield, the author knows of no one 
 whose name should so fitly be placed upon a 
 peak of the Alaskan range, and he would himself 
 resist any effort to change it. 
 
 Having gratified this desire, as he supposed, 
 there had meantime arisen another desire, — upon 
 reading the narrative of the Parker-Browne ex- 
 pedition of the previous year, a copy of which 
 we were fortunate enough to procure just as we 
 were starting for the mountain. It was the feel- 
 ing of our whole company that the names of 
 Professor Parker and Mr. Belmore Browne should 
 be associated with the mountain they so very 
 nearly ascended. 
 
 When the eyes are cast aloft from the head of 
 the Muldrow Glacier the most conspicuous fea- 
 
 i8i 
 
The Ascent of Denali 
 
 ture of the view is a rudely conical tower of 
 granite, standing sentinel over the entrance to 
 the Grand Basin, and at the base of that tower 
 is the pass into the upper glacier which is, in- 
 deed, the key of the whole ascent of the moun- 
 tain. (See illustration opposite p. 40.) 
 
 We found no better place to set these names; 
 we called the tower the Browne Tower and the 
 pass the Parker Pass. Thfe "pass" may not, it 
 is true, conform to any strict Alpine definition 
 of that term, but it gives the only access to the 
 glacier floor. From the ridge below to the glacier 
 above this place gives passage; and any place 
 that gives passage may broadly be termed a pass. 
 
 It was when this pass had been reached, after 
 three weeks' toil, that the author was moved to 
 the bestowal of another name by his admiration 
 for the skill and pluck and perseverance of his 
 chief colleague in the ascent. Those who think 
 that a long apprenticeship must be served under 
 skilled instructors before command of the tech- 
 nique of snow mountaineering can be obtained 
 would have been astonished at Karstens's work 
 on the Northeast Ridge. But it must be kept in 
 mind that, while he had no previous experience 
 on the heights, he had many years of experience 
 with ice and snow — which is true of all of us ex- 
 
 182 
 
Glacier 
 
 cept Tatum, and he had two winters' experience. 
 In the course of winter travel in the interior of 
 Alaska most of the problems of snow mountain- 
 eering present themselves at one time or another. 
 The designation *'Northeast,"which the Parker- 
 Browne party put upon the ridge that affords 
 passage from the lower glacier to the upper, is 
 open to question. Mr. Charles Sheldon, who 
 spent a year around the base of the mountain 
 studying the fauna of the region, refers to the 
 outer wall of the Muldrow Glacier as the North- 
 east Ridge, that is, the wall that rises to the 
 North Peak. Perhaps "East Ridge of the South 
 Peak" would be the most exact description. But 
 it is here proposed to substitute Harry Karstens's 
 name for points-of-the-compass designations, and 
 call the ridge, part of which the earthquake 
 shattered, the dividing ridge between the two 
 arms of the Muldrow Glacier, soaring tre- 
 mendously and impressively with ice-incrusted 
 cliffs in its lower course, the Karstens Ridge. Re- 
 garded in its whole extent, it is one of the capital 
 features of the mountain. It is seen to the left 
 in the picture opposite page 26, where Karstens 
 stands alone. At this point of its course it soars 
 to its greatest elevation, five or six thousand 
 feet above the glacier floor; it is seen again in 
 
 183 
 
The Ascent of Denali 
 
 the middle distance of the picture opposite page 
 164. 
 
 Not until this book was in preparation and the 
 author was digging into the literature of the 
 mountain did he discover the interesting connec- 
 tion of Arthur Harper, father of Walter Harper, 
 narrated in another place, with Denali, and not 
 until that discovery did he think of suggesting 
 the name Harper for any feature of the mountain, 
 despite the distinction that fell to the young man 
 of setting the first foot upon the summit. Then 
 the upper glacier appeared to be the most appro- 
 priate place for the name, and, after reflection, it 
 is deemed not improper to ask that this glacier 
 be so known. 
 
 It has thus fallen out that each of the author's 
 colleagues is distinguished by some name upon 
 the mountain except Robert Tatum. But to 
 Tatum belongs the honor of having raised the 
 stars and stripes for the first time upon the 
 highest point in all the territory governed by the 
 United States; and he is well content with that 
 distinction. Keen as the keenest amongst us to 
 reach the top, Tatum had none the less been 
 entirely willing to give it up and go down to the 
 base camp and let Johnny take his place (when 
 he was unwell at the head of the glacier owing 
 
 184 
 
Horns of the South Peak 
 
 to long confinement in the tent during bad 
 weather), if in the judgment of the writer that 
 had been the wisest course for the whole party. 
 Fortunately the indisposition passed, and the mat- 
 ter is referred to only as indicating the spirit of 
 the man. I suppose there is no money that could 
 buy from him the Httle silk flag he treasures. 
 
 It was also while this book was preparing that 
 the author found that he had unwittingly re- 
 named Mount Brooks, and the prompt with- 
 drawal of his suggested name for that peak left 
 the one original desire of naming a feature of the 
 mountain or the range ungratified, and his obli- 
 gation toward a revered memory unfulfilled. 
 
 Where else might that name be placed .f* For 
 a long time no place suggested itself; then it 
 was called to mind that the two horns at the 
 extremities of the horseshoe ridge of the South 
 Peak were unnamed. Here were twin peaks, 
 small, yet lofty and conspicuous — part of the 
 main summit of the mountain. The naming of 
 one almost carried with it the naming of the 
 other; and as soon as the name Farthing alighted, 
 so to speak, from his mind upon the one, the 
 name Carter settled itself upon the other. In 
 the long roll of women who have labored devot- 
 edly for many years amongst the natives of the 
 
 185 
 
The Ascent of Denali 
 
 interior of Alaska, there are no brighter names 
 than those of Miss Annie Farthing and Miss 
 Clara Carter, the one forever associated with Ne- 
 nana, the other with the AUakaket. To those 
 who are familiar with what has been done and 
 what is doing for the Indians of the interior, to 
 the white men far and wide who have owed re- 
 covery of health and relief and refreshment to 
 the ministrations of these capable women, this 
 naming will need no labored justification; and if 
 self-sacrifice and love, and tireless, patient labor 
 for the good of others be indeed the greatest 
 things in the world, then the mountain top bear- 
 ing aloft these names does not so much do honor 
 as is itself dignified and ennobled. These horns 
 of the South Peak are shown in the picture op- 
 posite page 96; they are of almost equal height; 
 the near one the author would name the Farthing 
 Horn, the far one the Carter Horn. 
 
 And now the author finds that he has done 
 what, in the past, he has faulted others for doing 
 — he has plastered a mountain with names. The 
 prerogative of name-giving is a dangerous one, 
 without definite laws or limitations. Nothing but 
 common consent and usage ultimately establish 
 names, but he to whom falls the first exploration 
 of a country, or the first ascent of a peak, is usu- 
 
 186 
 
Denali and His Wife 
 
 ally accorded privilege of nomenclature. Yet it 
 is a privilege that is often abused and should be 
 exercised with reserve. Whether or not it has 
 been overdone in the present case, others must 
 say. This, however, the author will say, and 
 would say as emphatically as is in his power: 
 that he sets no store whatever by the names 
 he has ventured to confer comparable with that 
 which he sets by the restoration of the ancient 
 native names of the whole great mountain and 
 its companion peak. 
 
 It may be that the Alaskan Indians are doomed; 
 it may be that the liquor and disease which to-day 
 are working havoc amongst them will destroy 
 them off the face of the earth; it is common to 
 meet white men who assume it with complacency. 
 Those who are fighting for the natives with all 
 their hearts and souls do not beheve it, cannot 
 believe it, cannot believe that this will be the 
 end of all their efforts, that any such blot will 
 foul the escutcheon of the United States. But if 
 it be so, let at least the memorial of their names 
 remain. When the inhabited wilderness has be- 
 come an uninhabited wilderness, when the only 
 people who will ever make their homes in it are 
 exterminated, when the placer-gold is gone and 
 the white men have gone also, when the last in- 
 
 187 
 
The Ascent of Denali 
 
 terlor Alaskan town is like Diamond City and 
 Glacier City and Bearpaw City and Roosevelt 
 City; and Bettles and Rampart and Coldfoot; 
 and Cleary City and Delta City and Vault City 
 and a score of others; let at least the native 
 names of these great mountains remain to show 
 that there once dwelt in the land a simple, hardy 
 race who braved successfully the rigors of its 
 climate and the inhospitality of their environ- 
 ment and flourished, until the septic contact of a 
 superior race put corruption into their blood. So 
 this book shall end as it began. 
 
 i88 
 
 360 90 
 
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