“I happened to be a member of the last expedition.”
“Honestly!” the boys exclaimed.
“Yes, and I tell you, boys, when I first looked through Katmai Pass, it just looked as if the whole valley were full of smoke. Of course it was steam.”
“Weren’t you afraid of another volcano?” asked the boys, snuggling down ready for a real story.
“No, because with all those vents letting off steam, it must relieve the pressure from below, like so many safety-valves. Two black, glassy looking lava mountains guard the pass. The wind on the side of Observation Mountain was blowing so hard it honestly lifted us off our feet at times, and it blew a hail of pumice stone in our faces that literally cut the flesh. Of course we wore goggles.
“Once in the valley, there were certainly all of ten thousand smokes rising from the ground. We were simply speechless, it was such an awesome spectacle.”
“I’ll bet you were!” breathed Ted.
“Personally, I consider it more wonderful than either the Grand Canyon or the geysers of the Yellowstone. As far as we could see in any direction,—and there seemed to be three arms to the valley,—the white vapor was steaming out of the ground until it mingled with a great cloud that hung between the mountain walls. And we later camped in places where we could keep our food in a hollow of a glacier while we boiled our breakfast in a steam hole, and the ground was almost too warm for comfort.”
“Must have been an ideal camping place,” said Ace.
“Far from that. Too much danger of breaking through. And then of course there wasn’t a tree or a grass blade anywhere, much less a stick of firewood. But we sure had steam heat at night, and we cooked, in the milder of the fumaroles.”