<h2>CHAPTER III</h2>
<h3>THE NORTHEAST RIDGE</h3>
<p>Some of the photographs we succeeded in getting will show better than
any words the character of the ridge we had to climb to the upper basin
by. The lowest point of the ridge was that nearest our camp. To reach
its crest at that point, some three hundred feet above the glacier, was
comparatively easy, but when it was reached there stretched ahead of us
miles and miles of ice-blocks heaved in confusion, resting at insecure
angles, poised, some on their points, some on their edges, rising in
this chaotic way some 3,000 feet. Here one would have to hew steps up
and over a pinnacle, there one must descend again and cut around a great
slab. Our wisest course was to seek to reach the crest of the ridge much
further along, beyond as much of this ice chaos as possible. But it was
three days before we could find a way of approach to the crest that did
not take us under overhanging icebergs that threatened continually to
fall upon our heads, as the overhanging hill threatened Christian in
<span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</SPAN></span>
the “Pilgrim’s Progress.” At last we took straight up a steep gully, half of
it snow slope, the upper half ice-incrusted rock, and hewed steps all
the five hundred feet to the top. Here we were about half a mile beyond
the point at which we first attained the crest, with that half mile of
ice-blocks cut out, but beyond us the prospect loomed just as difficult
and as dangerous. We could cut out no more of the ridge; we had tried
place after place and could reach it safely at no point further along.
The snow slopes broke off with the same sharp cleavage the whole ridge
displayed two thousand five hundred feet above; there was no other
approach.</p>
<div class="sidenote">The Shattered Ridge</div>
<p>So our task lay plain and onerous, enormously more dangerous and
laborious than that which our predecessors encountered. We must cut
steps in those ice-blocks, over them, around them, on the sheer sides of
them, under them—whatever seemed to our judgment the best way of
circumventing each individual block. Every ten yards presented a
separate problem. Here was a sharp black rock standing up in a setting
of ice as thin and narrow and steep as the claws that hold the stone in
a finger-ring. That ice must be chopped down level, and then steps cut
all round the rock. It took a solid hour to pass that rock. Here was
<span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</SPAN></span>
a great bluff of ice, with snow so loose and at such a sharp angle about
it that passage had to be hewed up and over and down it again. On either
side the ridge fell precipitously to a glacier floor, with yawning
crevasses half-way down eagerly swallowing every particle of ice and
snow that our axes dislodged: on the right hand to the west fork of the
Muldrow Glacier, by which we had journeyed hither; on the left to the
east fork of the same, perhaps one thousand five hundred feet, perhaps
two thousand feet lower. At the gap in the ridge, with the ice gable on
the other side of it, the difficulty and the danger were perhaps at
their greatest. It took the best part of a day’s cutting to make steps
down the slope and then straight up the face of the enormous ice mass
that confronted us. The steps had to be made deep and wide; it was not
merely one passage we were making; these steps would be traversed again
and again by men with heavy packs as we relayed our food and camp
equipage along this ridge, and we were determined from the first to take
no unnecessary risks whatever. We realized that the passage of this
shattered ridge was an exceedingly risky thing at best. To go along it
day after day seemed like tempting Providence. We were resolved that
nothing on <span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</SPAN>
</span>our part should be lacking that could contribute to safety.
Day by day we advanced a little further and returned to camp.</p>
<div class="figcenter"> <SPAN id="denali16" name="denali16"></SPAN> <SPAN href="./images/denali16.jpg">
<ANTIMG src="./images/denali16_sm.jpg" alt="The shattered Northeast Ridge." height-obs="400" width-obs="273" /></SPAN></div>
<p class="caption">The shattered Northeast Ridge.</p>
<div class="sidenote">The Hall of the Mountain King</div>
<p>The weather doubled the time and the tedium of the passage of this
ridge. From Whitsunday to Trinity Sunday, inclusive, there were only two
days that we could make progress on the ridge at all, and on one of
those days the clouds from the coast poured over so densely and
enveloped us so completely that it was impossible to see far enough
ahead to lay out a course wisely. On that day we toppled over into the
abyss a mass of ice, as big as a two-story house, that must have weighed
hundreds of tons. It was poised upon two points of another ice mass and
held upright by a flying buttress of wind-hardened snow. Three or four
blows from Karstens’s axe sent it hurling downward. It passed out of our
view into the cloud-smother immediately, but we heard it bound and
rebound until it burst with a report like a cannon, and some days later
we saw its fragments strewn all over the flat two thousand feet below.
What a sight it must have been last July, when the whole ridge was
heaving, shattering, and showering down its bergs upon the glacier
floors! One day we were driven off the ridge by a high wind that
threatened to sweep <span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</SPAN></span>us from our footholds. On another,
a fine morning gave place to a sudden dense snow-storm that sent us quickly
below again. Always all day long, while we were on that ridge, the distant
thunder of avalanches resounded from the great basin far above us, into
which the two summits of Denali were continually discharging their
snows. It sounded as though the King of Denmark were drinking healths
all day long to the salvoes of his artillery—that custom “more honored
in the breach than in the observance.” From such fancy the mind passed
easily enough to the memory of that astonishing composition of Grieg’s,
“In the Hall of the Mountain King,” and, once recalled, the stately yet
staccato rhythm ran in one’s ears continually. For if we had many days
of cloud and smother of vapor that blotted out everything, when a fine
day came how brilliant beyond all that lower levels know it was! From
our perch on that ridge the lofty peaks and massive ridges rose on every
side. As little by little we gained higher and higher eminence the view
broadened, and ever new peaks and ridges thrust themselves into view. We
were within the hall of the mountain kings indeed; kings nameless here,
in this multitude of lofty summits, but that elsewhere in the world
would have each one his name and story.</p>
<p><span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</SPAN>
</span>And how eager and impatient we were to rise high enough, to progress far
enough on that ridge that we might gaze into the great basin itself from
which the thunderings came, the spacious hall of the two lords paramount
of all the mountains of the continent—the north and south peaks of
Denali! Our hearts beat high with the anticipation not only of gazing
upon it but of entering it and pitching our tent in the midst of its
august solitudes. To come down again—for there was as yet no spot
reached on that splintered backbone where we might make a camp—to pass
day after day in our tent on the glacier floor waiting for the bad
weather to be done that we might essay it again; to watch the
tantalizing and, as it seemed, meaningless fluctuations of the barometer
for encouragement; to listen to the driving wind and the swirling snow,
how tedious that was!</p>
<div class="sidenote">Camp on the Ridge</div>
<p>At last when we had been camped for three weeks at the head of the
glacier, losing scarce an hour of usable weather, but losing by far the
greater part of the time, when the advance party the day before had
reached a tiny flat on the ridge where they thought camp could be made,
we took a sudden desperate resolve to move to the ridge at any cost. All
the camp contained that would <span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</SPAN></span>be needed above was made up quickly into
four packs, and we struck out, staggering under our loads. Before we
reached the first slope of the ridge each man knew in his heart that we
were attempting altogether too much. Even Karstens, who had packed his
“hundred and a quarter” day after day over the Chilkoot Pass in 1897,
admitted that he was “heavy.” But we were saved the chagrin of
acknowledging that we had undertaken more than we could accomplish, for
before we reached the steep slope of the ridge a furious snow-storm had
descended upon us and we were compelled to return to camp. The next day
we proceeded more wisely. We took up half the stuff and dug out a
camping-place and pitched the little tent. Every step had to be
shovelled out, for the previous day’s snow had filled it, as had
happened so many times before, and it took five and one-half hours to
reach the new camping-place. On Sunday, 25th May, the first Sunday after
Trinity, we took up the rest of the stuff, and established ourselves at
a new climbing base, about thirteen thousand feet high and one thousand
five hundred feet above the glacier floor, not to descend again until we
descended for good.</p>
<p>We were now much nearer our work and it progressed much faster, although
as the ridge rose <span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</SPAN></span>it became steeper and steeper and
even more rugged and chaotic, and the difficulty and danger of its passage increased.
Our situation up here was decidedly pleasanter than below. We had indeed
exchanged our large tent for a small one in which we could sit upright
but could not stand, and so narrow that the four of us, lying side by
side, had to make mutual agreement to turn over; our comfortable
wood-stove for the little kerosene stove; yet when the clouds cleared we
had a noble, wide prospect and there was not the sense of damp
immurement that the floor of the glacier gave. The sun struck our tent
at 4.30 <span class="smcap lowercase">A. M.</span>, which is nearly two
and one-half hours earlier than we received his rays below, and lingered with us
long after our glacier camp was in the shadow of the North Peak. Moreover, instead of
being colder, as we expected, it was warmer, the minimum ranging around zero
instead of around 10° below.</p>
<div class="figcenter"> <SPAN id="denali17" name="denali17"></SPAN> <SPAN href="./images/denali17.jpg"><ANTIMG src="./images/denali17_sm.jpg" alt="Camp at 13,000 feet on Northeast Ridge." height-obs="400" width-obs="242" /></SPAN></div>
<p class="caption">Camp at 13,000 feet on Northeast Ridge.</p>
<div class="sidenote">Clouds and Climate</div>
<p>The rapidity with which the weather changed up here was a continual
source of surprise to us. At one moment the skies would be clear, the
peaks and the ridge standing out with brilliant definition; literally
five minutes later they would be all blotted out by dense volumes of
vapor that poured over from the south. Perhaps ten minutes <span class='pagenum'>
<SPAN name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</SPAN></span>more and the
cloud had swept down upon the glacier and all above would be clear
again; or it might be the vapor deepened and thickened into a heavy
snow-storm. Sometimes everything below was visible and nothing above,
and a few minutes later everything below would be obscured and
everything above revealed.</p>
<p>This great crescent range is, indeed, our rampart against the hateful
humidity of the coast and gives to us in the interior the dry, windless,
exhilarating cold that is characteristic of our winters. We owe it
mainly to this range that our snowfall averages about six feet instead
of the thirty or forty feet that falls on the coast. The winds that
sweep northward toward this mountain range are saturated with moisture
from the warm waters of the Pacific Ocean; but contact with the lofty
colds condenses the moisture into clouds and precipitates most of it on
the southern slopes as snow. Still bearing all the moisture their
lessened temperature will allow, the clouds pour through every notch and
gap in the range and press resolutely onward and downward, streaming
along the glaciers toward the interior. But all the time of their
passage they are parting with their moisture, for the snow is falling
from them continually in their course. They reach the <span class='pagenum'>
<SPAN name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</SPAN></span>interior, indeed,
and spread out triumphant over the lowlands, but most of their burden
has been deposited along the way. One is reminded of the government
train of mules from Fort Egbert that used to supply the remote posts of
the “strategic” telegraph line before strategy yielded to economy and
the useless line was abandoned. When the train reached the Tanana
Crossing it had eaten up nine-tenths of its original load, and only
one-tenth remained for the provisioning of the post. So these clouds
were being squeezed like a sponge; every saddle they pushed through
squeezed them; every peak and ridge they surmounted squeezed them; every
glacier floor they crept down squeezed them, and they reached the
interior valleys attenuated, depleted, and relatively harmless.</p>
<div class="sidenote">Aneroids</div>
<p>The aneroids had kept fairly well with the mercurial barometer and the
boiling-point thermometer until we moved to the ridge; from this time
they displayed a progressive discrepancy therewith that put them out of
serious consideration, and one was as bad as the other. Eleven thousand
feet seemed the limit of their good behavior. To set them back day by
day, like Captain Cuttle’s watch, would be to depend wholly upon the
other instruments anyway, and this is just what we did, not troubling to
adjust them. They were read <span class='pagenum'>
<SPAN name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</SPAN></span>and
recorded merely because that routine had been established. Says Burns:</p>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">“There was a lad was born in Kyle,<br/></span>
<span class="i0">But <ins class="correction"
title="Transcriber's note: original reads 'whatna''">
whatna</ins> day o’ <ins class="correction"
title="Transcriber's note: original reads 'whatna''">
whatna</ins> style,<br/></span>
<span class="i0">I doubt it’s hardly worth the while<br/></span>
<span class="i0">To be sae nice wi’ Robin.”<br/></span></div>
</div>
<p>So they were just aneroids: aluminum cases, jewelled movements,
army-officer patented improvements, Kew certificates, import duty, and
all—just aneroids, and one was as bad as the other. Within their
limitations they are exceedingly useful instruments, but it is folly to
depend on them for measuring great heights.</p>
<p>Perched up here, the constant struggle of the clouds from the humid
south to reach the interior was interesting to watch, and one readily
understood that Denali and his lesser companions are a prime factor in
the climate of interior Alaska.</p>
<p>Day by day Karstens and Walter would go up and resume the finding and
making of a way, and Tatum and the writer would relay the stuff from the
camp to a cache, some five hundred feet above, and thence to another.
The grand objective point toward which the advance party was working was
the earthquake cleavage—a clean, sharp cut in the ice and snow of fifty
feet in height. Above that point all was smooth, though fearfully steep;
<span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</SPAN>
</span>below was the confusion the earthquake had wrought. Each day Karstens
felt sure they would reach the break, but each day as they advanced
toward it the distance lengthened and the intricate difficulties
increased. More than once a passage painfully hewn in the solid ice had
to be abandoned, because it gave no safe exit, and some other passage
found. At last the cleavage was reached, and it proved the most ticklish
piece of the whole ridge to get around. Just below it was a loose snow
slope at a dangerous angle, where it seemed only the initial impulse was
needed for an avalanche to bear it all below. And just before crossing
that snow slope was a wall of overhanging ice beneath which steps must
be cut for one hundred yards, every yard of which endangered the climber
by disputing the passage of the pack upon his shoulders.</p>
<div class="figcenter"> <SPAN id="denali18" name="denali18"></SPAN> <SPAN href="./images/denali18.jpg"><ANTIMG src="./images/denali18_sm.jpg" alt="A dangerous passage." height-obs="310" width-obs="400" /></SPAN></div>
<p class="caption">A dangerous passage.</p>
<div class="sidenote">The Primus Stove</div>
<p>Late in the evening of the 27th May, looking up the ridge upon our
return from relaying a load to the cache, we saw Karstens and Walter
standing, clear-cut, against the sky, upon the surface of the unbroken
snow <i>above</i> the earthquake cleavage. Tatum and I gave a great shout of
joy, and, far above as they were, they heard us and waved their
response. We watched them advance upon the steep slope of the ridge
until the usual cloud <span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</SPAN></span>descended and blotted them out.
The way was clear to the top of the ridge now, and that night our spirits were high,
and congratulations were showered upon the victorious pioneers. The next
day, when they would have gone on to the pass, the weather drove them
back. On that smooth, steep, exposed slope a wind too high for safety
beat upon them, accompanied by driving snow. That day a little accident
happened that threatened our whole enterprise—on such small threads do
great undertakings hang. The primus stove is an admirable device for
heating and cooking—superior, one thinks, to all the newfangled
“alcohol utilities”—but it has a weak point. The fine stream of
kerosene—which, under pressure from the air-pump, is impinged against
the perforated copper cup, heated to redness by burning alcohol, and is
thus vaporized—first passes through several convolutions of pipe within
the burner, and then issues from a hole so fine that some people would
not call it a hole at all but an orifice or something like that. That
little hole is the weak spot of the primus stove. Sometimes it gets
clogged, and then a fine wire mounted upon some sort of handle must be
used to dislodge the obstruction. Now, the worst thing that can happen
to a primus stove is to get the wire pricker <span class='pagenum'>
<SPAN name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</SPAN></span>broken off
in the burner hole, and that is what happened to us. Without a special tool that
we did not possess, it is impossible to get at that burner to unscrew it,
and without unscrewing it the broken wire cannot be removed. Tatum and I
turned the stove upside down and beat upon it and tapped it, but nothing
would dislodge that wire. It looked remarkably like no supper; it looked
alarmingly like no more stove. How we wished we had brought the other
stove from the launch, also! Every bow on an undertaking of this kind
should have two strings. But when Karstens came back he went to work at
once, and this was one of the many occasions when his resourcefulness
was of the utmost service. With a file, and his usual ingenuity, he
constructed, out of the spoon-bowl of a pipe cleaner the writer had in
his pocket, the special tool necessary to grip that little burner, and
soon the burner was unscrewed and the broken wire taken out and the
primus was purring away merrily again, melting the water for supper. We
feel sure that we would have pushed on even had we been without fire.
The pemmican was cooked already, and could be eaten as it was, and one
does not die of thirst in the midst of snow; but calm reflection will
hardly allow that we could have reached the summit <span class='pagenum'>
<SPAN name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</SPAN></span>had we been
deprived of all means of cooking and heating.</p>
<div class="sidenote">Germless Air</div>
<p>On this ridge the dough refused to sour, and since our baking-powder was
consumed in the fire we were henceforth without bread. A cold night
killed the germ in the sour dough, and we were never again able to set
up a fermentation in it. Doubtless the air at this altitude is free from
the necessary spores or germs of ferment. Pasteur’s and Tyndall’s
experiments on the Alps, which resulted in the overthrow of the theory
of spontaneous generation, and the rehabilitation of the old dogma that
life comes only from life, were recalled with interest, but without much
satisfaction. We tried all sorts of ways of cooking the flour, but none
with any success. Next to the loss of sugar we felt the loss of bread,
and in the food longings that overtook us bread played a large part.</p>
<p>On Friday, 30th May, the way had been prospected right up to the pass
which gives entrance to the Grand Basin; a camping-place had been dug
out there and a first load of stuff carried through and cached. So on
that morning we broke camp, and the four of us, roped together, began
the most important advance we had made yet. With stiff packs on our
backs we toiled up the steps that had been cut with so much pains
<span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</SPAN>
</span>and stopped at the cache just below the cleavage to add yet further
burdens. All day nothing was visible beyond our immediate environment.
Again and again one would have liked to photograph the sensational-looking
traverse of some particularly difficult ice obstacle, but the mist
enveloped everything.</p>
<p>Just before we reached the smooth snow slope above the range of the
earthquake disturbance lay one of the really dangerous passages of the
climb.</p>
<div class="sidenote">A Perilous Passage</div>
<p>It is easier to describe the difficulty and danger of this particular
portion of the ascent than to give a clear impression to a reader of
other places almost as hazardous. Directly below the earthquake cleavage
was an enormous mass of ice, detached from the cleavage wall. From
below, it had seemed connected with that wall, and much time and toil
had been expended in cutting steps up it and along its crest, only to
find a great gulf fixed; so it was necessary to pass along its base. Now
from its base there fell away at an exceedingly sharp angle, scarcely
exceeding the angle of repose, a slope of soft, loose snow, and the very
top of that slope where it actually joined the wall of ice offered the
only possible passage. The wall was in the main perpendicular, and
turned at a right angle midway. Just where it turned, <span class='pagenum'>
<SPAN name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</SPAN></span>a great mass
bulged out and overhung. This traverse was so long that with both ropes
joined it was still necessary for three of the four members of the party
to be on the snow slope at once, two men out of sight of the others. Any
one familiar with Alpine work will realize immediately the great danger
of such a traverse. There was, however, no avoiding it, or, at whatever
cost, we should have done so. Twice already the passage had been made by
Karstens and Walter, but not with heavy packs, and one man was always on
ice while the other was on snow. This time all four must pass, bearing
all that men could bear. Cautiously the first man ventured out, setting
foot exactly where foot had been set before, the three others solidly
anchored on the ice, paying out the rope and keeping it taut. When all
the first section of rope was gone, the second man started, and when, in
turn, his rope was paid out, the third man started, leaving the last man
on the ice holding to the rope. This, of course, was the most dangerous
part of this passage. If one of the three had slipped it would have been
almost impossible for the others to hold him, and if he had pulled the
others down, it would have been quite impossible for the solitary man on
the ice to have withstood the strain. When the first <span class='pagenum'>
<SPAN name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</SPAN></span>man reached solid
ice again there was another equally dangerous minute or two, for then
all three behind him were on the snow slope. The beetling cliff, where the
trail turned at right angles, was the acutely dangerous spot. With heavy
and bulky packs it was exceedingly difficult to squeeze past this projection.
Ice gives no such entrance to the point of the axe as hard snow does,
yet the only aid in steadying the climber, and in somewhat relieving his
weight on the loose snow, was afforded by such purchase upon the
ice-wall, shoulder high, as that point could effect. Not a word was
spoken by any one; all along the ice-wall rang in the writer’s ears that
preposterous line from “The Hunting of the Snark”—“Silence, not even a
shriek!” It was with a deep and thankful relief that we found ourselves
safely across, and when a few minutes later we had climbed the steep
snow that lay against the cleavage wall and were at last upon the
smooth, unbroken crest of the ridge, we realized that probably the worst
place in the entire climb was behind us.</p>
<p>Steep to the very limit of climbability as that ridge was, it was the
easiest going we had had since we left the glacier floor. The steps were
already cut; it was only necessary to lift one foot after the other and
set the toe well in the hole, <span class='pagenum'>
<SPAN name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</SPAN></span>with the
ice-axe buried afresh in the snow above at every step. But each step
meant the lifting not only of oneself but of one’s load, and the increasing
altitude, perhaps aggravated by the dense vapor with which the air was
charged, made the advance exceedingly fatiguing. From below, the
foreshortened ridge seemed only of short length and of moderate grade,
could we but reach it—a tantalizingly easy passage to the upper
glacier it looked as we chopped our way, little by little, nearer and nearer to it.
But once upon it, it lengthened out endlessly, the sky-line always just a little
above us, but never getting any closer.</p>
<div class="sidenote">The Cock’s Comb</div>
<p>Just before reaching the steepest pitch of the ridge, where it sweeps up
in a cock’s comb,<SPAN name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></SPAN>
<SPAN href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</SPAN> we came upon the
vestiges of a camp made by our predecessors of a year before, in a hollow
dug in the snow—an empty biscuit carton and a raisin package, some
trash and brown paper and discolored snow—as fresh as though they
had been left yesterday instead of a year ago. Truly the terrific storms of this
region are like the storms of Guy Wetmore Carryl’s clever rhyme that “come
early and avoid the <i>rush</i>.” They will sweep a man off his feet, as once
threatened to our advance party, but will pass harmlessly over a cigarette
<span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</SPAN>
</span>stump and a cardboard box; our tent in the glacier basin, ramparted
by a wall of ice-blocks as high as itself, we found overwhelmed and prostrate
upon our return, but the willow shoots with which we had staked our trail
upon the glacier were all standing.</p>
<p>Long as it was, the slope was ended at last, and we came straight to the
great upstanding granite slabs amongst which is the natural
camping-place in the pass that gives access to the Grand Basin. We named
that pass the Parker Pass, and the rock tower of the ridge that rises
immediately above it, the most conspicuous feature of this region from
below, we named the Browne Tower. The Parker-Browne party was the first
to camp at this spot, for the astonishing “sourdough” pioneers made no
camp at all above the low saddle of the ridge (as it then existed), but
took all the way to the summit of the North Peak in one gigantic stride.
The names of Parker and Browne should surely be permanently associated
with this mountain they were so nearly successful in climbing, and we
found no better places to name for them.</p>
<p>There is only one difficulty about the naming of this pass; strictly
speaking, it is not a pass at all, and the writer does not know of any
mountaineering term that technically describes it. Yet it <span class='pagenum'>
<SPAN name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</SPAN></span>should bear a
name, for it is the doorway to the upper glacier, through which all
those who would reach the summit must enter. On the one hand rises the
Browne Tower, with the Northeast Ridge sweeping away beyond it toward
the South Peak. On the other hand, the ice of the upper glacier plunges
to its fall. The upstanding blocks of granite on a little level shoulder
of the ridge lead around to the base of the cliffs of the Northeast
Ridge, and it is around the base of those cliffs that the way lies to
the midst of the Grand Basin. So the Parker Pass we call it and desire
that it should be named.</p>
<div class="figcenter"> <SPAN id="denali19" name="denali19"></SPAN> <SPAN href="./images/denali19.jpg"><ANTIMG src="./images/denali19_sm.jpg" alt="The Upper Basin reached at last. Our camp at the Parker Pass at 15,000 feet."
height="400" width="235" /></SPAN></div>
<p class="caption">The Upper Basin reached at last. Our camp at the Parker Pass at 15,000 feet.</p>
<div class="sidenote">Karstens Ridge</div>
<p>And while names are before us, the writer would ask permission to bestow
another. Having nothing to his credit in the matter at all, as the
narrative has already indicated, he feels free to say that in his
opinion the conquest of the difficulties of the earthquake-shattered
ridge was an exploit that called for high qualities of judgment and
cautious daring, and would, he thinks, be considered a brilliant piece
of mountaineering anywhere in the world. He would like to name that
ridge Karstens Ridge, in honor of the man who, with Walter’s help, cut
that staircase three miles long amid the perilous complexities of its
chaotic ice-blocks.</p>
<p>When we reached the Parker Pass all the world <span class='pagenum'>
<SPAN name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</SPAN></span>beneath us
was shrouded in dense mist, but all above us was bathed in bright sunshine.
The great slabs of granite were like a gateway through which the Grand Basin
opened to our view.</p>
<p>The ice of the upper glacier, which fills the Grand Basin, came
terracing down from some four thousand feet above us and six miles
beyond us, with progressive leaps of jagged blue sérac between the two
peaks of the mountain, and, almost at our feet, fell away with cataract
curve to its precipitation four thousand feet below us. Across the
glacier were the sheer, dark cliffs of the North Peak, soaring to an
almost immediate summit twenty thousand feet above the sea; on the left,
in the distance, was just visible the receding snow dome of the South
Peak, with its two horns some five hundred feet higher. The mists were
passing from the distant summits, curtain after curtain of gauze draping
their heads for a moment and sweeping on.</p>
<p>We made our camp between the granite slabs on the natural camping site
that offered itself, and a shovel and an empty alcohol-can proclaimed
that our predecessors of last year had done the same.</p>
<p>The next morning the weather had almost completely cleared, and the view
below us burst upon <span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</SPAN></span>our eyes as we came out of the tent
into the still air.</p>
<div class="sidenote">Parker Pass</div>
<p>The Parker Pass is the most splendid coigne of vantage on the whole
mountain, except the summit itself. From an elevation of something more
than fifteen thousand feet one overlooks the whole Alaskan range, and
the scope of view to the east, to the northeast, and to the southeast is
uninterrupted. Mountain range rises beyond mountain range, until only
the snowy summits are visible in the great distance, and one knows that
beyond the last of them lies the open sea. The near-by peaks and ridges,
red with granite or black with shale and gullied from top to bottom with
snow and ice, the broad highways of the glaciers at their feet carrying
parallel moraines that look like giant tram-lines, stand out with vivid
distinction. A lofty peak, that we suppose is Mount Hunter, towers above
the lesser summits. The two arms of the Muldrow Glacier start right in
the foreground and reveal themselves from their heads to their junction
and then to the terminal snout, receiving their groaning tributaries
from every evacuating height. The dim blue lowlands, now devoid of snow,
stretch away to the northeast, with threads of stream and patches of
lake that still carry ice along their banks.</p>
<p><span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</SPAN>
</span>And all this splendor and diversity yielded itself up to us at once;
that was the most sensational and spectacular feature of it. We went to
sleep in a smother of mist; we had seen nothing as we climbed; we rose
to a clear, sparkling day. The clouds were mysteriously rolling away
from the lowest depths; the last wisps of vapor were sweeping over the
ultimate heights. Here one would like to camp through a whole week of fine
weather could such a week ever be counted upon. Higher than any point in the
United States, the top of the Browne Tower probably on a level with the
top of Mount Blanc, it is yet not so high as to induce the acute
breathlessness from which the writer suffered, later, upon any exertion.
The climbing of the tower, the traversing to the other side of it, the
climbing of the ridge, would afford pleasant excursions, while the
opportunity for careful though difficult photography would be
unrivalled. Even in thick weather the clouds are mostly below; and their
rapid movement, the kaleidoscopic changes which their coming and going,
their thickening and thinning, their rising and falling produce, are a
never-failing source of interest and pleasure. The changes of light and
shade, the gradations of color, were sometimes wonderfully delicate and
charming. Seen through <span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</SPAN></span>rapidly attenuating mist, the bold
crags of the icy ridge between the glacier arms in the foreground would give
a soft French gray that became a luminous mauve before it sprang into
dazzling black and white in the sunshine. In the sunshine, indeed, the whole
landscape was hard and brilliant, and lacked half-tones, as in the main
it lacked color; but when the vapor drew the gauze of its veil over it
there came rich, soft, elusive tints that were no more than hinted ere
they were gone.</p>
<div class="figcenter"> <SPAN id="denali20" name="denali20"></SPAN> <SPAN href="./images/denali20.jpg">
<ANTIMG src="./images/denali20_sm.jpg" alt="Above all the range except Denali and Denali’s Wife." height-obs="241" width-obs="400" /></SPAN></div>
<p class="caption">Above all the range except Denali and Denali’s Wife.</p>
<div class="sidenote">The Himalayas</div>
<p>Here, with nothing but rock and ice and snow around, nine thousand feet
above any sort of vegetation even in the summer, it was of interest to
remember that at the same altitude in the Himalayas good crops of barley
and millet are raised and apples are grown, while at a thousand feet or
so lower the apricot is ripened on the terrace-gardens.</p>
<p>Karstens and Walter had brought up a load each on their reconnoissance
trip; four heavy loads had been brought the day before. There were yet
two loads to be carried up from the cache below the cleavage, and Tatum
and Walter, always ready to take the brunt of it, volunteered to bring
them. So down that dreadful ridge once more the boys went, while
Karstens and the writer prospected ahead for a route into the Grand
Basin.</p>
<p><span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</SPAN></span>The storms and snows of ten or a dozen winters may make a “steep but practicable snow
slope” of the Northeast Ridge again. One winter only had passed since
the convulsion that disrupted it, and already the snow was beginning to
build up its gaps and chasms. All the summer through, for many hours
on clear days, the sun will melt those snows and the frost at night will
glaze them into ice. The more conformable ice-blocks will gradually be
cemented together, while the fierce winds that beat upon the ridge will
wear away the supports of the more egregious and unstable blocks, and
one by one they will topple into the abyss on this side or on that. It will
probably never again be the smooth, homogeneous slope it has been;
“the gable” will probably always present a wide cleft, but the slopes beyond
it, stripped now of their accumulated ice so as to be unclimbable, may
build up again and give access to the ridge.</p>
<p>The point about one thousand five hundred feet above the gable, where
the earthquake cleavage took place, will perhaps remain the crux of the
climb. The ice-wall rises forty or fifty feet sheer, and the broken
masses below it are especially difficult and precipitous, but with care
and time and pains it can be surmounted even as we <span class='pagenum'>
<SPAN name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</SPAN></span>surmounted it. And
wind and sun and storm may mollify the forbidding abruptness of even
this break in the course of time.</p>
<div class="sidenote">The Denali Problem</div>
<p>With the exception of this ridge, Denali is not a mountain that presents
special mountaineering difficulties of a technical kind. Its
difficulties lie in its remoteness, its size, the great distances of
snow and ice its climbing must include the passage of, the burdens that
must be carried over those distances. We estimated that it was twenty
miles of actual linear distance from the pass by which we reached the
Muldrow Glacier to the summit. In the height of summer its snow-line
will not be higher than seven thousand feet, while at the best season
for climbing it, the spring, the snow-line is much lower. Its climbing
is, like nearly all Alaskan problems, essentially one of transportation.
But the Northeast Ridge, in its present condition, adds all the spice of
sensation and danger that any man could desire.</p>
<hr style="width: 65%;" />
<p><span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</SPAN></span></p>
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