Glacier Park is one of the newest, as well as one of the most beautiful, of our National Parks. It is peculiarly fitted to be a summer playground, both for men and women who prefer to travel on horseback and “rough it” by putting up at a hotel at night, and for the true mountain lovers, who delight to use their own legs in climbing, and to sleep under the stars. This book has been written primarily to show Young America just how interesting, exciting, full of outdoor adventure, and full, too, of real education, life in this National park can be. We can promise our boy readers, and their parents, too, that there isn’t any “faking” in this story. The trips we tell about are all real trips, and if you go to Glacier Park you can take them all—all, that is, except, perhaps, the climb up the head wall of Iceberg Lake. You have to have a real mountaineer as a guide, with a real Alpine rope, in order to make that trip. It was fortunate for Tom that one came along. Then, too, unless you stay in the Park over the winter, you haven’t much chance of riding down a mountain on a snow-slide. Possibly you wouldn’t want to. I never knew anybody who took that trip intentionally! Tom and Joe and the Ranger were unlucky enough to take it, and lucky enough to live to tell the tale.
This book isn’t written just to use the Rocky Mountains as a background for adventures which never really could happen to ordinary boys. It is written, on the contrary, to show what fine adventures can happen to ordinary boys, in one of the finest and most healthful and beautiful spots in this great country of ours, if only the boys have pluck, and have been good Scouts enough to learn how to take care of themselves in the open.
And it is written, too, in order to tell about Glacier Park, to make you want to go there and see it for yourself, to make you glad and proud that the United States has set aside for the use of all the public such a splendid playground, and to make you, if possible, more determined than ever to protect this, and all our other parks and State and National forests, from the attacks of the men who are always trying to get laws passed to let them spoil the meadows and the wildflowers with their sheep, or cut the forests for timber, putting their selfish gain above the welfare of the whole people.
W. P. E.
Twin Fires
Sheffield, Massachusetts
1918
CONTENTS
| CHAPTER | PAGE | |
| I. | Joe Gets Bad News About His Lungs—His “Pipes,” as Spider Called Them | [13] |
| II. | Joe Learns How Many Friends He Has, and Achieves a Tent to Sleep In | [21] |
| III. | Spider Finds a Way to Get to the Rocky Mountains, to “Pump Joe’s Pipes Full of Ozone” | [32] |
| IV. | Tom and Joe Cross the Continent with Their Faces Glued to the Car Window and Reach the Rocky Mountains | [43] |
| V. | The Scouts Learn Why the Rocky Mountains Have No Foot-Hills and Arrive at Many Glacier | [54] |
| VI. | Tom Becomes Boss of the Tepee Camp, and the Scouts Pitch Their Tents in the Evergreens | [63] |
| VII. | Joe Gets Acquainted with Porcupines, the Diamond Hitch, and Switchback Trails | [73] |
| VIII. | Joe Gets a Chance at Last to Go out on a Trip As Camp Cook | [93] |
| IX. | Over Piegan Pass to St. Mary Lake, Underneath the Precipices | [100] |
| X. | The Ranger Tells a Grizzly Bear Story Before the Camp-Fire | [123] |
| XI. | To Gunsight Lake, and Joe Falls Into a Crevasse on Blackfeet Glacier | [129] |
| XII. | Over Gunsight to Lake McDonald, and Joe and Bob See a Grizzly at Close Range | [144] |
| XIII. | In Avalanche Basin, Where Bob Learns That the Story of the Englishman’s Walk Before Breakfast Was No Joke | [168] |
| XIV. | Up the Divide in a Rain, with a Lost Horse on the Way, and a Howling Snow-Storm at the Top | [177] |
| XV. | Tom’s Chance for Adventure Comes Unexpectedly, Wearing Hobnail Shoes and Carrying a Rope | [189] |
| XVI. | Tom Goes up a Two Thousand Foot Wall, with an Alpine Rope, and Learns the Proper Way to Climb | [203] |
| XVII. | Tom Sees Both Mountain Sheep and Goats Do Their Wild Leaps Down Dizzy Ledges | [218] |
| XVIII. | Joe Gets Good News from the Doctor, and the Scouts Name Their Camp, “Camp Kent” | [232] |
| XIX. | The Indian Pow-Wow—Tom and Joe Get Into the Squaw Dance | [240] |
| XX. | The Scouts Start on a Trip Together at Last, to Climb Chief Mountain | [250] |
| XXI. | The Climb up the Tower of Chief Mountain, the Indian Relic on the Summit and an Eagle’s Nest | [257] |
| XXII. | A Blizzard on Flat Top—The Camp is Christened “Valley Forge” | [268] |
| XXIII. | Up to Chaney Glacier and the Discovery of a Three Thousand Foot Precipice | [276] |
| XXIV. | The Boys Prepare for Winter in the Park, and Learn Why the Timber-Line Trees Are Only Three Feet Tall | [283] |
| XXV. | Protecting the Deer Yards—the Scouts Wait in the Moonlight and Bag a Mountain Lion | [291] |
| XXVI. | A Hundred Miles in Four Days, Over the Snow, Which Is a Long Trip to Get Your Mail | [302] |
| XXVII. | The Ranger and the Boys Get a Ride Down the Mountain on a Snow Avalanche, and Don’t Look for Another | [312] |
| XXVIII. | Tom Starts on a Long Hike in the Deep Snow, over the Divide, Risking Snow-Slides, to Save the Ranger’s Life | [318] |
| XXIX. | Tom Tramps Down McDonald Creek in a Chinook Wind, and Reaches Shelter Almost Exhausted | [322] |
| XXX. | Tom Gets Back with the Doctor, and Mills Pulls Through—then the Scouts Have to Leave for Home | [327] |
| XXXI. | Home Again—Joe’s Christmas Present to His Mother Is Sound Health Again, and Tom Rejoices | [334] |