“Wait till they get really heavy before you kick,” said Uncle Billy. “Forward, march!”
The thousand-foot wall of the Sun Creek ravine which faced them was just about the height from the lake to the rim at the hotel, but it was not so steep, except for a little distance at the start. On the other hand, there was no trail at all, no sign that any other human being had ever been up it, and when the going was not amid treacherous lava fragments which broke if you put your weight on them, it was over soft pumice into which your feet sank deep, and then began to slide backwards. Finally Bennie took his uncle’s rope and scrambled up ahead with it, till he could find anchorage, so the rest could have its help. When he was fagged, somebody else took a turn. It took them more than an hour to make the half mile up the wall, and at the top they pitched off their packs and blankets, their shoulders and backs dripping wet with perspiration, and everybody set his mouth to his canteen and drank.
After a rest, they crossed Dutton ridge, a mile of broken going, and then began to descend into the next ravine, called Kerr Valley, which is the deepest ravine on the slopes of old Mount Mazama, and lies right at the foot of Scott Peak. The descent was not dangerously steep till the last three hundred feet, and there they used the rope again to help them.
As they came out at last into the mile wide ravine of Kerr Valley, out of which the snow had pretty well melted except under the trees, and in which the wild flowers were springing up, they saw where the rim road came down from the rim and descended the valley to get around the mass of ledges and ravines they had been crossing. It was now three o’clock, and, as Mr. Stone had predicted, nobody was saying much.
They could see the round, dome-like pile of Scott’s Peak, directly across the valley, and Bennie did ask how far it was from there to the top.
“Thinking of keeping on up today?” his uncle asked.
“Aw, don’t rub it in,” said Bennie. “I couldn’t climb an ant-hill now.”
“Well, a mile more will take us across the valley to water,” his uncle laughed. “Guess we can all stick that out.”
On the other side of the valley, across the still deserted and useless rim road, they found a stream, called Sand Creek, which came down, the doctor said, from a spring on the cliffs of Scott, just above them.
Here they dumped their packs again, stripped off their clothes, and the three boys were only restrained by main force from falling in.