Monday, August 6.
As we did not start today, some of us went deer hunting and killed one buck. At 9 o’clock in the evening the men whom we left behind with Mr. Hodgdon arrived safely, he having nearly recovered.
Tuesday, August 7.
Two or three of our company were not in very good health today and consequently we remained at the old camp ground.
Wednesday, August 8.
Our mules are in much better condition than they were when we camped on Green River. They had become so wild that it was with considerable difficulty that we could catch them this morning.
Start this morning and travel down the river about one mile where we ford it without difficulty. We then followed down the river two miles farther to a branch that came from the west. We followed this branch up 15 miles and camped.
Thursday, August 9.
We left the stream this morning and commenced ascending a mountain. At noon we ate our dinner at a very fine mountain spring.
In the afternoon we continued to ascend and passed through a heavy growth of spruce timber. Our ascent was gradual until about 4 o’clock, when we found ourselves at the top of a peak of the Rocky Mountains. To the west and north the descent was steep—almost precipitous. We could see the stream that we had left in the morning many hundreds of feet below, but to reach it with our pack mules seemed almost an impossibility. There were but two ways from which to choose—either to descend to the stream, or retrace our steps. We were not long in deciding, and we chose the first and concluded to try to descend. In about two hours we reached the stream in a small pleasant valley. The descent made by us was about 2,000 feet and probably about one and one-half miles in length, the greater part being covered with a thick growth of standing and fallen timber.