CHAPTER XXIII--Up To Chaney Glacier and the Discovery of a Three

Thousand Foot Precipice

It was a hard job digging the camp out of the snow, and only the fact that Tom had covered the wood and weighted down the canvas to hold it on gave them dry fuel to cook with. They had no snow shovels, using frying-pans and dippers to clear away the drifts from the fire pit and their packs.

"Valley Forge is the right name," Mr. Crimmins laughed as he stamped his feet and blew on his fingers, as Robert had done.

But the sun was now up, the air was rapidly warming, and while Joe got the breakfast, Mills and Tom waded out through the snow in search of the horses. They had to go a long way, too, for the wise beasts had simply wandered down the trail into the woods, and kept on descending until they had got below the snow line into rain, where the grass was not covered and they could feed. It was almost two hours later that the Ranger and Tom came driving them back, cross, hungry, and with boots soaked by the snow and clothes soaked by the wet bushes.

So they got a late start that morning.

"We'll go up the Little Kootenai Canon," said Mills, "as far as the old cabin of Death-on-the-trail Reynolds, and see how the land lies for a try at the west wall of Cleveland the next day. If it isn't promising, we can make an afternoon trip up to Waterton Lake, and then come back the next day. If it does look like a try at the big mountain, we can push up the side a way, and make a base camp."

So they mounted, and pushed up through the soft, rapidly melting snow to the top of the ridge where the Divide crosses from the eastern to the western range, and after a short trip through the snow-filled, open meadows of Flat Top, with the little pines and balsams looking like Christmas cards, they began to drop down a more than two-thousand foot slope into the canyon of the Little Kootenai River, which flows due north, with Cleveland on the right, and Kootenai and Citadel Peaks on the left. Especially Citadel Peak was superb in its snow mantle, a great, glistening white fortress towering thousands of feet up from the canyon.

They reached the old cabin of Death-on-the-trail Reynolds at one o'clock, and found there the ranger for that district.

"How about Cleveland?" Mills asked.

"Getting sort of tired of life?" the other ranger inquired.

"That's what I thought," Mills replied. "Any chance to-morrow?"

"Not much. She'll melt on the lower slopes to-day, but the peak'll not begin cataracting snowslides till to-morrow morning, about ten A.M. Day after you might make it."

"No use--we can't wait that long," said Mr. Crimmins. "I'm sorry, but even the State Department can't control nature."

So, after lunch in the cabin, they left the packhorses behind, and free to travel at a good gait, trotted down the trail to Waterton Lake, a long, narrow, beautiful sheet of green water which stretched away north ten miles, into Canada, and being warm with the ride the two scouts and Robert had a swim--or, at least, they went into the water. They came out before they had swum far, their bodies stung red as boiled lobsters by the cold.

"This Park reminds me of the poem," Robert said,

"'Water, water everywhere, but not a place to swim.'"

Back at the Ranger's cabin, they had a big, leisurely supper, with the Ranger as their guest, and after supper he told them tales of Death-on-the-trail Reynolds, an old mining prospector, who had first built the cabin, and when the Park became national property was made a ranger, and true to his name died in the saddle on one of the trails he had followed so long. This old trail from Waterton Lake south over Flat Top and down Mineral Creek to McDonald Creek, and so to Lake McDonald, was a regular smuggler's route in the old days, the Ranger said, and many a horse had been driven down it in the dark, before the American rangers on one end and the Canadian Northwestern mounted police on the other put a stop to that sort of thing.

That night they slept in the cabin, and early the next day went back in their tracks--the first time they had repeated a trail--reaching "Valley Forge" camp at noon. The snow was about all melted here now, and when Mills pointed up the cliffs to the east, and said Chaney Glacier lay just on the other side, it was voted to camp here once more, and spend the afternoon on the glacier, and the peak above.

"I've never been up that peak," Mills said, "but I have a hunch there'd be some view up there."

Lunch was eaten quickly, Tom got out his rope, and they started.

It was an easy climb, and could have been made without the rope, probably, though the rope was a great help in making speed. After a long grade up a shale slide, and across a snow-field, they reached the base of a rough, jagged cliff, and by picking out upward slanting ledges on this cliff, Tom led the way rapidly upward, Mills keeping the rear of the rope anchored, while Tom anchored the upper end, thus making a rope railing on the outer edge of each ledge. In less than an hour they reached the spine of the Divide, at a col between two higher peaks. This spine was a knife blade, not over ten feet wide, and directly on the east side, with its upper edge so close you could step off on to it, lay Chaney Glacier, a vast field of snow now, with little ice showing, a mile in extent, and sloping downward till the lower end disappeared over the rim of a precipice. Out beyond this precipice, they saw the Belly River Canon, looking straight down it, over the green waters of Glenns Lakes, to the spot where they had camped, and beyond that to the green ocean of the prairies. From here, too, they got a superb view of Cleveland, rearing up, still snow covered, a great pyramid of white.

"Want to go out on the glacier?" the Ranger asked Joe.

"Oh, I don't mind," Joe laughed. "The rope's strong."

Every one did want to go out on the glacier, so Mills roped them all, keeping last place himself, and they ventured out over the apparently unbroken field of snow. But this snow was light and rapidly melting, and they had not gone far before Tom, in the lead, with a sounding staff he had cut before they left camp, detected a frail snow bridge and sent it crumbling down into the crevasse, disclosing the green ice walls. One look down this well into the ice decided the party not to venture far over the treacherous field, and they returned to the firm rocks of the Divide, and climbed on up another eight hundred feet to the top of the peak to the south.

The summit of this peak was only about the size of a big table, and to the east it fell away absolutely sheer for three thousand feet to a tiny lake far below, out of which, on the opposite side, shot up the cliff wall of Merritt. The wind was strong up here, and the peak so small that all six lay on their stomachs to peer over the precipice.

"Say, that's a hole in the earth!" Mr. Crimmins exclaimed.

Robert spit over the edge. "I never spit three thousand feet before," he said. "Want to climb up that cliff with your rope, Tom?"

Tom shook his head. "It couldn't be done, not even by a goat," he said, wisely.

"As a matter of fact, you're right," Mills laughed. "I never even knew that cliff was here, either. This Park hasn't been more'n half explored yet."

From almost the very top of this peak, a long, very steep shale slope led to the "Valley Forge" meadow, and down this they descended, by the aid of the rope, sending showers of stones ahead, so that the leader was in constant danger, and wearing down the spikes and soles of their boots rapidly. They camped that night in the old spot, using their former fire pit, but there was no storm, and the next day they had an uneventful passage back down Mineral Creek, up to Swift Current by the trail Joe had first climbed in the rain, and so on back to Many Glacier--a long trip of twenty-four miles, but to Joe, who by this was as hard as nails, not very tiresome. At Many Glacier the boys bid the two men and Robert good-bye, and as darkness was gathering, once more cooked their supper in Camp Kent, which by now was like home to them.

"Well," said Tom, "that was some trip, old wifey--let's see, we were six days out, and we didn't meet a soul after we left the road till we got back to Granite Park, except the ranger up under Cleveland. The real wilderness stuff, eh?"

"You bet!" said Joe. "And eighteen dollars more for me and ma."

"You're getting terribly practical," Tom laughed.

"I'm getting self-supporting," Joe replied. "No more grafting off you."

"You're getting _well_," Tom cried. "That's the real thing. Gee, you're harder'n I am now! You never seem to get tired."

"Bet I can hit the little old cot, though," Joe laughed, as he began to make up the beds in the tent.