The Ascent of Denali (Mount McKinley) Part 10

In the summer of the same year, 1910, Professor Parker and Mr. Belmore Browne, members of the second Cook party, convinced by this time that Cook's claim was wholly unfounded, attempted the mountain again, and another party, organized by Mr. C. E. Rust, of Portland, Oregon, also endeavored the ascent. But both these expeditions confined themselves to the hopeless southern side of the range, from which, in all probability, the mountain never can be climbed.

THE PARKER-BROWNE EXPEDITION

To a man living in the interior of Alaska, aware of the outfitting and transportation facilities which the large commerce of Fairbanks affords, aware of the navigable waterways that penetrate close to the foot-hills of the Alaskan range, aware also of the amenities of the interior slope with its dry, mild climate, its abundance of game and rich pasturage compared with the trackless, lifeless snows of the coast slopes, there seems a strange fatuity in the persistent efforts to approach the mountain from the southern side of the range.

It is morally certain that if the only expedition that remains to be dealt with--that organized by Professor Parker and Mr. Belmore Browne in 1912, which came within an ace of success--had approached the mountain from the interior instead of from the coast, it would have forestalled us and accomplished the first complete ascent.

The difficulties of the coast approach have been described graphically enough by Robert Dunn in the summer and by Belmore Browne himself in the winter. There are no trails; the snow lies deep and loose and falls continually, or else the whole country is bog and swamp. There is no game.

[Sidenote: Parker and Browne]

The Parker-Browne expedition left Seward, on Resurrection Bay, late in January, 1912, and after nearly three months' travel, relaying their stuff forward, they crossed the range under extreme difficulties, being seventeen days above any vegetation, and reached the northern face of the mountain on 25th March. The expedition either missed the pa.s.s near the foot of the Muldrow Glacier, well known to the Kantishna miners, by which it is possible to cross from willows to willows in eighteen miles, or else avoided it in the vain hope of finding another. They then went to the Kantishna diggings and procured supplies and topographical information from the miners, and were thus able to follow the course of the Lloyd party of 1910, reaching the Muldrow Glacier by the gap in the glacier wall discovered by McGonogill and named McPhee Pa.s.s by him.

Mr. Belmore Browne has written a lucid and stirring account of the ascent which his party made. We were fortunate enough to secure a copy of the magazine in which it appeared just before leaving Fairbanks, and he had been good enough to write a letter in response to our inquiries and to enclose a sketch map. Our course was almost precisely the same as that of the Parker-Browne party up to seventeen thousand feet, and the course of that party was precisely the same as that of the Lloyd party up to fifteen thousand feet. There is only one way up the mountain, and Lloyd and his companions discovered it. The earthquake had enormously increased the labor of the ascent; it had not altered the route.

A reconnoissance of the Muldrow Glacier to its head and a long spell of bad weather delayed the party so much that it was the 4th June before the actual ascent was begun--a very late date indeed; more than a month later than our date and nearly three months later than the "Pioneer"

date. It is rarely that the mountain is clear after the 1st June; almost all the summer through its summit is wrapped in cloud. From the junction of the Tanana and Yukon Rivers it is often visible for weeks at a time during the winter, but is rarely seen at all after the ice goes out. A close watch kept by friends at Tanana (the town at the confluence of the rivers) discovered the summit on the day we reached it and the following day (the 7th and 8th June) but not for three weeks before and not at all afterward; from which it does not follow, however, that the summit was not visible momentarily, or at certain hours of the day, but only that it was not visible for long enough to be observed. The rapidity with which that summit shrouds and clears itself is sometimes marvellous.

As is well known, the Parker-Browne party pushed up the Northeast Ridge and the upper glacier and made a first attack upon the summit itself, from a camp at seventeen thousand feet, on the 29th June. When within three or four hundred feet of the top they were overwhelmed and driven down, half frozen, by a blizzard that suddenly arose. On the 1st July another attempt was made, but the clouds ascended and completely enveloped the party in a cold, wind-driven mist so that retreat to camp was again imperative. Only those who have experienced bad weather at great heights can understand how impossible it is to proceed in the face of it. The strongest, the hardiest, the most resolute must yield. The party could linger no longer; food supplies were exhausted. They broke camp and went down the mountain.

The falling short of complete success of this very gallant mountaineering attempt seems to have been due, first to the mistake of approaching the mountain by the most difficult route, so that it was more than five months after starting that the actual climbing began; or, if the survey made justified, and indeed decided, the route, then the summit was sacrificed to the survey. But the immediate cause of the failure was the mistake of relying upon canned pemmican for the main food supply. This provision, hauled with infinite labor from the coast, and carried on the backs of the party to the high levels of the mountain, proved uneatable and useless at the very time when it was depended upon for subsistence. There is no finer big-game country in the world than that around the interior slopes of the Alaskan range; there is no finer meat in the world than caribou and mountain-sheep. It is carrying coals to Newcastle to bring canned meat into this country--nature's own larder stocked with her choicest supplies. But if, attempting the mountain when they did, the Parker-Browne party had remained two or three days longer in the Grand Basin, which they would a.s.suredly have done had their food been eatable, their bodies would be lying up there yet or would be crushed beneath the debris of the earthquake on the ridge.

CHAPTER IX

THE NAMES PLACED UPON THE MOUNTAIN BY THE AUTHOR

There was no intent of putting names at all upon any portions of this mountain when the expedition was undertaken, save that the author had it in his mind to honor the memory of a very n.o.ble and very notable gentlewoman who gave ten years of her life to the Alaskan natives, set on foot one of the most successful educational agencies in the interior, and died suddenly and heroically at her post of duty a few years since, leaving a broad and indelible mark upon the character of a generation of Indians. Miss Farthing lies buried high up on the bluffs opposite the school at Nenana, in a spot she was wont to visit for the fine view of Denali it commands, and her brother, the present bishop of Montreal, and some of her colleagues of the Alaskan mission, have set a concrete cross there. When we entered the Alaskan range by Cache Creek there rose directly before us a striking pyramidal peak, some twelve or thirteen thousand feet high. Not knowing that any name had been bestowed upon it, the author discharged himself of the duty that he conceived lay upon him of a.s.sociating Miss Farthing's name permanently with the mountain range she loved and the country in which she labored. But he has since learned that Professor Parker placed upon this mountain, a year before, the name of Alfred Brooks, of the Alaskan Geological Survey. Apart from the priority of naming, to which, of course, he would immediately yield, the author knows of no one whose name should so fitly be placed upon a peak of the Alaskan range, and he would himself resist any effort to change it.

Having gratified this desire, as he supposed, there had meantime arisen another desire,--upon reading the narrative of the Parker-Browne expedition of the previous year, a copy of which we were fortunate enough to procure just as we were starting for the mountain. It was the feeling of our whole company that the names of Professor Parker and Mr.

Belmore Browne should be a.s.sociated with the mountain they so very nearly ascended.

When the eyes are cast aloft from the head of the Muldrow Glacier the most conspicuous feature of the view is a rudely conical tower of granite, standing sentinel over the entrance to the Grand Basin, and at the base of that tower is the pa.s.s into the upper glacier which is, indeed, the key of the whole ascent of the mountain. (See ill.u.s.tration opposite p. 40.)

[Sidenote: Tower, Pa.s.s, and Ridge]

We found no better place to set these names; we called the tower the Browne Tower and the pa.s.s the Parker Pa.s.s. The "pa.s.s" may not, it is true, conform to any strict Alpine definition of that term, but it gives the only access to the glacier floor. From the ridge below to the glacier above this place gives pa.s.sage; and any place that gives pa.s.sage may broadly be termed a pa.s.s.

It was when this pa.s.s had been reached, after three weeks' toil, that the author was moved to the bestowal of another name by his admiration for the skill and pluck and perseverance of his chief colleague in the ascent. Those who think that a long apprentices.h.i.+p must be served under skilled instructors before command of the technique of snow mountaineering can be obtained would have been astonished at Karstens's work on the Northeast Ridge. But it must be kept in mind that, while he had no previous experience on the heights, he had many years of experience with ice and snow--which is true of all of us except Tatum, and _he_ had two winters' experience. In the course of winter travel in the interior of Alaska most of the problems of snow mountaineering present themselves at one time or another.

[Sidenote: Glacier]

The designation "Northeast," which the Parker-Browne party put upon the ridge that affords pa.s.sage from the lower glacier to the upper, is open to question. Mr. Charles Sheldon, who spent a year around the base of the mountain studying the fauna of the region, refers to the _outer_ wall of the Muldrow Glacier as the Northeast Ridge, that is, the wall that rises to the North Peak. Perhaps "East Ridge of the South Peak"

would be the most exact description. But it is here proposed to subst.i.tute Harry Karstens's name for points-of-the-compa.s.s designations, and call the ridge, part of which the earthquake shattered, the dividing ridge between the two arms of the Muldrow Glacier, soaring tremendously and impressively with ice-incrusted cliffs in its lower course, the Karstens Ridge. Regarded in its whole extent, it is one of the capital features of the mountain. It is seen to the left in the picture opposite page 26, where Karstens stands alone. At this point of its course it soars to its greatest elevation, five or six thousand feet above the glacier floor; it is seen again in the middle distance of the picture opposite page 164.

Not until this book was in preparation and the author was digging into the literature of the mountain did he discover the interesting connection of Arthur Harper, father of Walter Harper, narrated in another place, with Denali, and not until that discovery did he think of suggesting the name Harper for any feature of the mountain, despite the distinction that fell to the young man of setting the first foot upon the summit. Then the upper glacier appeared to be the most appropriate place for the name, and, after reflection, it is deemed not improper to ask that this glacier be so known.

It has thus fallen out that each of the author's colleagues is distinguished by some name upon the mountain except Robert Tatum. But to Tatum belongs the honor of having raised the stars and stripes for the first time upon the highest point in all the territory governed by the United States; and he is well content with that distinction. Keen as the keenest amongst us to reach the top, Tatum had none the less been entirely willing to give it up and go down to the base camp and let Johnny take his place (when he was unwell at the head of the glacier owing to long confinement in the tent during bad weather), if in the judgment of the writer that had been the wisest course for the whole party. Fortunately the indisposition pa.s.sed, and the matter is referred to only as indicating the spirit of the man. I suppose there is no money that could buy from him the little silk flag he treasures.

It was also while this book was preparing that the author found that he had unwittingly renamed Mount Brooks, and the prompt withdrawal of his suggested name for that peak left the one original desire of naming a feature of the mountain or the range ungratified, and his obligation toward a revered memory unfulfilled.

[Sidenote: Horns of the South Peak]

Where else might that name be placed? For a long time no place suggested itself; then it was called to mind that the two horns at the extremities of the horseshoe ridge of the South Peak were unnamed. Here were twin peaks, small, yet lofty and conspicuous--part of the main summit of the mountain. The naming of one almost carried with it the naming of the other; and as soon as the name Farthing alighted, so to speak, from his mind upon the one, the name Carter settled itself upon the other. In the long roll of women who have labored devotedly for many years amongst the natives of the interior of Alaska, there are no brighter names than those of Miss Annie Farthing and Miss Clara Carter, the one forever a.s.sociated with Nenana, the other with the Allakaket. To those who are familiar with what has been done and what is doing for the Indians of the interior, to the white men far and wide who have owed recovery of health and relief and refreshment to the ministrations of these capable women, this naming will need no labored justification; and if self-sacrifice and love, and tireless, patient labor for the good of others be indeed the greatest things in the world, then the mountain top bearing aloft these names does not so much do honor as is itself dignified and enn.o.bled. These horns of the South Peak are shown in the picture opposite page 94; they are of almost equal height; the near one the author would name the Farthing Horn, the far one the Carter Horn.

[Sidenote: Denali and His Wife]

And now the author finds that he has done what, in the past, he has faulted others for doing--he has plastered a mountain with names. The prerogative of name-giving is a dangerous one, without definite laws or limitations. Nothing but common consent and usage ultimately establish names, but he to whom falls the first exploration of a country, or the first ascent of a peak, is usually accorded privilege of nomenclature.

Yet it is a privilege that is often abused and should be exercised with reserve. Whether or not it has been overdone in the present case, others must say. This, however, the author will say, and would say as emphatically as is in his power: that he sets no store whatever by the names he has ventured to confer comparable with that which he sets by the restoration of the ancient native names of the whole great mountain and its companion peak.

It may be that the Alaskan Indians are doomed; it may be that the liquor and disease which to-day are working havoc amongst them will destroy them off the face of the earth; it is common to meet white men who a.s.sume it with complacency. Those who are fighting for the natives with all their hearts and souls do not believe it, cannot believe it, cannot believe that this will be the end of all their efforts, that any such blot will foul the escutcheon of the United States. But if it be so, let at least the memorial of their names remain. When the inhabited wilderness has become an uninhabited wilderness, when the only people who will ever make their homes in it are exterminated, when the placer-gold is gone and the white men have gone also, when the last interior Alaskan town is like Diamond City and Glacier City and Bearpaw City and Roosevelt City; and Bettles and Rampart and Coldfoot; and Cleary City and Delta City and Vault City and a score of others; let at least the native names of these great mountains remain to show that there once dwelt in the land a simple, hardy race who braved successfully the rigors of its climate and the inhospitality of their environment and flourished, until the septic contact of a superior race put corruption into their blood. So this book shall end as it began.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Map Showing Route of the Stuck-Karstens Expedition to the Summit of Mt. Denali (Mt. McKinley.) 1913]