June 24th.
My Dear B:—
D. and I are going to run down to Grand Lake settlement to-morrow for bacon and flour so I write this today. I have been in camp all morning cooking and mending while D. has been looking for sheep up in the crater of Specimen Mountain. He saw two and shot without effect. Specimen Mountain is an extinct volcano and sheep come to the crater to lick. I have seen as many as a hundred and fifty sheep there at different times during the four trips that I have made to this region, but I have hunted them only one day (the first) of the twenty-five that I have spent in this camp—without success, of course.
Flowers in profusion are found at these altitudes already where the shrinking snow drifts have exposed the ground to the warm June sun, but under the drifts it is yet the dead of winter. As the season advances the snow recedes, and each newly uncovered strip of ground passes with exuberant haste through a cycle of spring.
We came over from Estes Park yesterday and the day before. At one point I carried the horse's pack about a quarter of a mile on account of steepness of trail and depth of snow, leaving the pony under D.'s guidance to wallow through as best she could. We shall, no doubt, have some hard work getting out of the Grand River valley to the north over the Medicine Bow but we intend to keep at it. We are, of course, likely to get cold and wet, tired and hungry. In fact, I am neither very dry nor very warm now as I write, for it is half snowing and half raining; nor hungry (?) for I have just eaten three slices of bacon, half a corn cake eight inches in diameter and an inch thick, with bacon gravy made with flour and water, and nearly a quart of strong coffee of syrupy sweetness. I do wish D. had killed that sheep this morning! We hope to get some trout to-morrow out of Grand River, but to see the sheets of water which are being shed off the range from rain and melting snow makes one feel uncertain of the trout fishing. I will close for this time and put this into my knapsack. To-morrow D. and I will get our "walkins" on bright and early, and pack it to Grand Lake. This is a tough country beyond imagination.
When trailing above timber line on our way to Specimen Mountain and subsequently we were on snow much of the time; below timber line at high altitudes we contended about equally with snow and fallen timber; and at middle altitudes where the timber is heavy and where fires have been frequent and disastrous the fallen timber alone is quite enough to make travel troublesome. Mud and water, fallen and falling, we encountered everywhere, but without much concern. The greatest vexation to the amateur traveler in the Rockies is to slip off a log in trying to cross a stream, and thus get wet all over, when if one had been reasonable, one might have been wet only to the middle. An awkward comrade of '89 did this so many times that it became a standing joke; but 'Gric, as we called him, that is to say Agricola, after his father "Farmer" Funston of Kansas, developed grit enough to take him through Death Valley in southern California, to take him, all alone, 1,600 miles down the Yukon River in an open boat and across 200 miles of unexplored country during the winter night to the shores of the Arctic Ocean, to take him into the Cuban army, where he received three serious wounds, and finally to take him through the Philippines with our Volunteer Army where he captured Aguinaldo.
From Specimen Mountain Camp in Milner Pass we made our way to Grand River over an extremely difficult trail, nearly breaking our pony's leg in the fallen timber, and, finding it impossible to reach Grand Lake by the river trail without wetting our pack, we went into (Mosquito) camp and did our week's washing. The next day we left our pony, and made a flying round trip of thirty miles to the settlement. The next morning, hoping to escape the mosquitoes, we moved campseveral miles up stream and in the afternoon we climbed to the summit of one of the high spurs of a nameless [9] peak in the range of the Medicine Bow. We got back to camp late in the evening in a sharp rain, which continued all night.
The next morning promised fair weather, and after some hesitation, we packed up for the trip over to North Park. Starting at eight o'clock we reached the deserted mining camp, Lulu, at eleven, having forded Grand River seven times, the water of it ice cold and swift as an arrow. We then began to climb the range, the summit of which we reached at three o'clock at the pass of the Bucking Horse far above timber line. At four o'clock we began the descent into the valley of the Michigan fork of the North Platte. The rain, until now fitful, became steady and we, determined to reach a good camping place, kept our pony at a half-trot until eight o'clock, when we found a deserted cabin. We were too impatiently hungry to make biscuit, which we ordinarily baked in the frying pan before cooking our bacon, so we made our supper of graham mush, bacon, bacon gravy and coffee. Next morning we found to our dismay that our baking powder had been left at the Bucking Horse—and no wonder, for our pack had been strewn for a quarter of a mile along the trail—so we were reduced to mush again for breakfast.
Gould's Ranch