Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v108.djvu/362

344 sand feet are rounded like a beehive, and three spurs offer resting-places for glacier ice, over which a route to the summit may, perhaps, be found.

The season had now so far advanced that if we cared to avoid being detained for the winter, we saw that we must take to our rafts quickly and descend the Chulitna River. We had still to raft sixty miles of an unknown stream. Our supply of provisions was nearly exhausted and our clothing was torn into rags. Hatless and almost shoeless, we pushed our raft over bars, wading icy streams several hours daily, until we reached the deep waters of the Sushitna River. We arrived at Tyonek on September 26, just four months after our start. In that time we had walked over seven hundred miles, and by boat and raft we had travelled three hundred miles. We had explored a good deal of new territory. We had ascended Mount McKinley 11,400 feet, encircled the McKinley group, and made a fair geological and botanical collection. Altogether, we had done all that determined human effort could in the short time of an Alaskan summer.

As to the future efforts to climb Mount McKinley, it is not likely that the highest peak in North America will be abandoned as impossible of ascent until the great mountain has been thoroughly explored for a route from every side. I hope to be able to make an attempt from the east. In the mean time other mountaineers will consider the project. Any attempt to reach the summit is sure to prove a more prodigious task than Alpine enthusiasts are likely to realize. The area of the mountain is far inland, making the transportation of supplies and men a very arduous task. It is surely the steepest of all the great mountains, and arctic conditions begin at the very base. Unlike Mount St. Elias, the glaciation is not extensive enough to offer an all-ice route. The prospective conqueror of this immense uplift must pick his path over broken stones, icy slopes, sharp cliffs, and an average slope of forty-five degrees for at least fourteen thousand feet. It is an effort which, for insurmountable difficulties and hard disappointments, is comparable with the task of expeditions to reach the north pole.