With Sack and Stock in Alaska

by Horatio George Broke

Thursday, the 26th.—A beautiful sunrise ushered in a splendid day, and we turned out at four o’clock. At 5.30 Ed., with Matthew and Mike, started down to bring up the stores left in the cache by the Guyot Glacier, and half-an-hour later the rest of us descended the slopes to the Guyot, as a long lake cut us off from going directly on to the Tyndall Glacier. Once on the ice, we curved round to the north, making for the north-east extremity of the opposite hills. The glacier was fairly flat and not much broken, though there were a good many small crevasses in the white ice as we approached the hills. All these glaciers are shrinking so rapidly that crevasses, generally of considerable size, are always to be found anywhere near their edges, and as these are naturally nearly always parallel to their direction, they are some times a great nuisance.

We got on to the green hills at 9.30; Gums showed us Schwatka’s last camping place, and, after rummaging about a bit in the bushes, produced the Niagara crampons brought by Professor Libbey. The last hill, which rose about two hundred feet above the glacier, was almost isolated from the rest, and we pushed on over the low col between it and the main mass, putting up several coveys of ptarmigan as we went over the grass and through patches of alder-scrub. In a few minutes we came to the glacier again; between it and the land was another small lake on which were numerous geese, but we made no attempt at the time to molest them. Two fair-sized streams ran into this, and as Gums declared, wrongly as usual, that we should find no firewood further on, we halted directly after crossing the first of these.

The men then returned, except Jimmy and Billy, who were to stay with us as before. Shorty and Harry were to remain at Camp G, and the rest to go down to the beach and return in about ten days, by which time we expected to have done our possible, though our hopes of getting to the top were very faint by this time. As they departed along the edge of the lake we saw them waving and pointing, but could not make out what it was all about. After resting a little, H. and W. went off to explore, while E. stewed a goose and I made bread and pitched the tent. Our camp was on the edge of a low cliff above the stream, and at the extreme verge of this a bear had been squatting in the long grass. The Indians utilised this spot as their camping-place. H. and W. did not return till half-past eight, decidedly despondent. They found a relic of Seton-Karr on the Tyndall Glacier in the shape of an empty tomato-can. We came to the conclusion that we should have to go a good deal nearer the foot of the mountain before establishing a base camp, and that we must get hold of Lyons and Shorty.

Friday, the 27th.—We spent a quiet morning looking over our stores, and made the painful discovery that a large portion of the oatmeal biscuits, which had not before been unpacked, had gone mouldy, so we spread them in the sun to dry. Directly after lunch W. went off to sleep at G and bring the men back next day, and H. and E. took the Indians with light loads to the proposed site for the new camp, the disadvantage of which was the apparent absence of fuel. I followed up the course of our camp stream, finding fresh and large bear-tracks, to a curious cirque. A promising couloir filled with hard snow presenting itself, I worked up to a height of perhaps two thousand feet, when there came a break in my gully. I tried to turn it, but the rock was of the same rotten clayey consistency that I had before encountered, and I had to give it up, so glissaded down my couloir and returned to camp, where I had got supper ready by the time the others came back.

Saturday, the 28th.—The nights were now very cold, but the weather continued glorious. The Indians got off at 7.30, and we followed them in a few minutes. About a hundred yards beyond our camp the second stream had cut a deep, precipitous gully, but we had found a good place to cross this, just opposite to where a small stream came in on the other side, and we then followed up this stream, flushing sundry ptarmigan. There was very little scrub here, our route lying over what were apparently grassy uplands. In reality there was little or no grass, the vegetation consisting of willow-herbs, veratrum, ranunculus, mallow, violas, and many others, some of which were strange to us but doubtless common enough in America. I noticed a scarlet flower which I had seen in abundance on the Pacific slope of the Canadian Pacific Railway, which is, I believe, known to botanists as Castilleja miniata. It is something like a rattle, but the calyx is scarlet and the real flower green, or at least it looks as if it was. Just as we were getting on to the glacier, which has here a slight outflow from which the stream that we were following up emerges, we saw a brown bear about half-a-mile ahead on a green knoll which was nearly surrounded by ice. E. said, ‘How easily we could cut that fellow off if we only had our rifles,’ and we sighed in chorus. A little later we found that, had we been able to attempt such a manœuvre, it would only have ended in gnashing of teeth, for our furry friend on seeing us had gone straight down on to the glacier, and we now saw him a mile away, going straight for St. Elias, and steeplechasing gaily over the intervening crevasses. We had rather a bad bit of ice here, and in future the men always went over the hill where his bearship had been, which was fearfully steep but saved a good piece.

We then crossed two glaciers coming in from the west, which were curiously different in appearance. The first, subsequently christened the Daisy Glacier, was about a mile wide and six miles long, beautifully smooth and white, with hardly a crevasse in it except at its junction with the Tyndall, at which point it was lower than the glacier into which it flowed. The other, which we called the Coal Glacier, was rather smaller, say five miles long by twelve hundred yards wide, was a good deal broken, and was covered with débris, among which we found lots of coal which burnt fairly well in our camp fire. The mountains adjacent were sandstone with great seams of coal plainly visible. The amount of débris on the surface of the Coal Glacier protected it so much more from waste than the Daisy Glacier, that its level was about the same as that of the Tyndall. On the north side of this we put down our packs, and the men returned to H for more, with instructions to bring up a load of fuel as well. This proved to be unnecessary, as there was still enough alder round Camp I to supply us with fire-wood. H., E., and I then went on up the Tyndall Glacier. We had gone about a mile, and the others were some little way ahead, when in jumping a crevasse the elastic of my snow-spectacles gave way and one of the glasses got broken. As they were my only pair and I am hopelessly short-sighted, so that ordinary ones are no use, here was a fearful catastrophe! I shouted to the others that I was going back, and returned shortly to camp. From previous experience in Switzerland I knew I could use no makeshift without fearfully delaying the others. The risk of ophthalmia too, from which I had once suffered, was not lightly to be risked in these desert places, and I reluctantly came to the conclusion that I must abandon all idea of climbing. It was a fearful nuisance after coming so far, but was partly attributable to my carelessness in not bringing two proper pairs, instead of these and a ramshackle old pair which I found at Sitka to have come to grief on the journey. This was due to the haste with which I had had to leave England. My first idea was to return to the beach so as not to be wasting the food we had brought up with so much labour, but no one could be spared to go down with me, and the others were opposed to my going alone, so I consented to wait for them.

I then pitched the tent, to do which I had to excavate part of the hill and remove a good many boulders. About six o’clock the shrill whistles of the marmots, which were very plentiful here, heralded some one’s approach, and a few minutes later W. arrived, followed by the four men. H. and E. came in ten minutes later, having had rather a bad time among the big crevasses of the Tyndall Glacier, many of which were more than partly covered with snow. Shorty said they were waving at the lake as they went down to point out that the geese were leaving the water and climbing on to the moraine, so that we might have cut them off, but we had not understood.

Sunday, the 29th.—A cool grey day with high clouds, the first break in the brilliant weather which began on the 21st. The other three, with Lyons and Shorty, left at 7 A.M. to make a high camp on the other side of the Tyndall Glacier. They took the big white tent and the Edgington ground-sheet, with provisions for about four days, their intention being to try to reach at least the upper rim of the so-called ‘crater’ on the south arête. Soon afterwards I took Billy and Jimmy leisurely down to Camp H for more stores, and, as Shorty had said, my going round the lake sent the geese up the moraine. Billy and Jimmy lay in ambush and succeeded in slaying four with ice-axes. I got back first to Camp H, lit a fire, and had to make a damper, as there was no baking-powder in the sack of flour there. By making it quite thin it turned out very palatable, and, after lunching off this and some of the dried salmon, which was a trifle high by this time, we set off home again, Billy carrying the hams, fish, beans, and one goose, Jimmy a box of stores and medicines and another goose, while I took the other two. We plucked, singed, and cleaned them all, and then buried three in the snow on the glacier. We had the fourth for supper, with an entrée of foie gras (not very gras) and bacon, and as I felt lazy I commanded Billy to make the bread. The result was so excellent that he remained chief baker while I was alone, and I fancy he washed his hands quite as often as I did.

At this camp there were hardly any flies or mosquitoes, the former of which plagues had been terrible down at H. After supper the men went after marmots, but of course without getting any, and I saw them clambering up and down the most break-neck-looking places behind the camp. They showed no distaste for ice, but they were never on snow, and we never had occasion to use the rope with them.

Monday, the 30th.—In the morning there were light clouds, but the sun was more or less visible, and from its position I judged that we got up at about eight o’clock. (Finn and H. were the only two whose watches were still going, and they didn’t agree particularly well.) I spent the morning in camp, washing myself and my clothes, cleaning my revolver, etc. In the afternoon I set out up the rocks behind camp; they were very rotten, and I got into considerable difficulties, especially at one point, where, my foothold having disappeared, I dangled for some time by my fingers in imminent expectation of returning to camp in a rather undignified, not to say disorderly, manner. At last I got a knee up to the ledge, and soon stood on the ridge, in which was a large seam of coal, six or eight feet wide. Along this crest, then over snow-beds, and then up more rock, always more or less rotten, I reached a height of between four and five thousand feet, from which I had a magnificent view of the wide sweeps of the Tyndall Glacier below me, but to the north and west I was cut off by the spurs of the peak I was on. It was very thick in the south, and rain was evidently driving up, so I determined to descend promptly, and, by making a detour to the right, found a much easier way down, and got in just as the rain began. It was only slight, and kindly left off during supper, but then went on all night.