Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 55.djvu/20

10 a snow traverse, but an easy one; at this time, however, it began to snow heavily, and the immediate prospect was anything but cheerful. A low fog hung over the waters, but not so low or so dense as to prevent us from occasionally catching glimpses of the rocks which projected with disagreeable frequency from an assumed bottomless pit or "crater." The ascent from Crater Lake to the summit, somewhat less than three hundred and fifty feet, was made in about half an hour, and then began the steep and sudden plunge which marks the southern declivity of this famous mountain pass. Some little caution was here required to keep a foothold, and a too sudden break might have led to an exhilarating, even if not anxiously sought after, glissade; but in truth, to any one only moderately practiced in mountaineering, even this steep face, which descends for a thousand feet or more from a summit elevation of thirty-four hundred feet, presents little difficulty and hardly more danger. What there is of a trail zigzags in wild and rapid courses over an almost illimitable mass of rock débris, at times within sheltered or confined hollows, but more generally on the open face of the declivity. This it is more particularly that carries to many a certain amount of fear in the making of the passage, but, with proper caution and the right kind of boots, nothing of danger need be apprehended.

Unfortunately for the enjoyment of the scenery of the pass, I could see but a modest part of it. Although snow was no longer falling, and the atmosphere had settled down to a condition of almost passive inactivity—much to the surprise, if not disappointment, of a few who had prophesied a stiff and biting wind the moment we passed the divide—heavy cloud banks hovered about the summits, and only at intervals did they afford glimpses of the majestic mountain peaks by which we were surrounded. Enough, however, could be seen to justify for the pass the claims of most imposing scenery, and its superiority in this respect over the White Pass. The temperature at the time of our crossing was a few degrees below freezing, perhaps 25° or 27° F., but our rapid walk brought on profuse perspiration, and it would have been a pleasure, if a sense of proper caution had permitted, to divest ourselves of mackinaws and travel in summer fashion. We made Sheep Camp, with its surroundings of beautiful woodland, shortly after noon, and Canon City, which, as the terminus of a good coach road to Dyea, virtually marks the end or beginning of the Chilkoot trail, at two o'clock.

To a mountaineer or traveler of ordinary resource neither the White Pass nor the Chilkoot Pass will appear other than it actually is—i.e., a mountain pass, sufficiently rough and precipitous in places, and presenting no serious obstacle to the passage of man, woman, or child. True, I did not see them at their worst, but they were both