the last attempt, which culminated in June of the past summer, was virtually a victory, according to the report of the expedition. Earlier than this, Judge James Wickersham, Alaska's delegate in Congress, essayed to reach "The Top of the Continent," as Dr. Cook has appropriately styled the mountain.

Thomas Lloyd, of Fairbanks, led still another party to the mountain in the winter of 1909.

Our expedition carried no private name dominantly. We all joined the project with a common purpose and a common determination, which prevailed throughout, and which is the keynote of the success of such endeavors, for no partiality or superiority can obtain in such a party without a consequent demoralization.

There were three of us, and three we believe to be the best number for such a trip. In October, 1911, George S. Lewis, of Fairbanks, Alaska, and I remained of a party of four which had planned an attempt to scale the mountain during the ensuing winter. Mar

tin Nash, of Fairbanks, later joined us, and the Fairbanks Times assisted in financing the venture.

Nash, the elder member of the trio, is an old "sourdough" (sourdough is the term of the North used to typify the pioneer-one who has seen the ice come and go.) Nash mentioned Michigan as his early home, when questioned, and later it seems he hied himself to the Wyoming plains and took to cowpunching; he worked in the huge B. & M. smelter in Great Falls, and he mixed and rubbed elbows with the roughest of them. When the first wild reports of the fabulous wealth of the Northland percolated through every section of the land, Nash was in the race. Over the Chilkoot Pass he packed his belongings in the spring of '98, and the North has claimed him ever since-one of those stickers who has aided in pushing Alaska to the rank she now takes among the wealthproducing regions of the world.

George Lewis is a practical surveyor and reclamation engineer—a

man in the middle thirties, and one whose bent is more apt to lead him to determine the acerbity of hotcake batter by some scientific reasoning than by its noxious odor, as Nash would do it. But Lewis could make hotcakes, at that. The one-time semi-arid San Joaquin Valley brought him to be, and tutored him in its home institutions. Why he forsook his surroundings, than which there are none better, and trotted up to interior Alaska some three years back, was something quite inexplicable to me.

We three started out from Fairbanks on February 5, 1912, determined to make a well-verified ascent to the summit of the loftiest peak of North America. But somehow, things don't always turn out in harmony with one's expectations. Enough men had turned their backs on Old McKinley before to remind one that the peak is a most formidable adversary.

We started with three sleds and nineteen dogs, and at Chena, ten miles from Fairbanks, our dog-musher, Jack

Phillips, joined us with another sled and four more dogs, making twentythree squealing, yelping animals in all. Phillips was captain of the caravan, and the dogs were surely able lieutenants. We formed a peculiar and strong attachment for our dogs, particularly the three that were with us to the end.

Mt. McKinley is about 200 miles from Fairbanks by the route we took, but in an air line it cannot be much over 150 miles. At a distance, the mountain stands out like a lone sentinel, and in clear weather, when the sun has dropped below the horizon, its great, shadowy bulk looms up plainly visible to the southwest of the Alaskan metropolis. But at close range it is evident that the enormous mass is nested among peaks of lesser height, but possessing equal scenic grandeur.

From Fairbanks the first forty miles is along the Tanana River; thence the trail cuts across country 30 miles to the Nenana River; 25 miles farther across the Tototatlawanika River to

the Toklat, up the last named river 28 miles, and westward over a low divide into the Kantishna watershed near the foothills of the mountain. All in all, considering the size of the dogs, they worked faithfully. The outfit, as it was distributed among the four sleds, and including 400 pounds of dog-salmon, weighed in at approximately an even ton, of which about 1200 pounds were in provisions and utensils, and the remainder in personal dunnage,

climbing paraphernalia, and so forth.

When we reached the Clearwater River, tributary to the Toklat and springing from a mountainous country, an almost continuous sheet of glare ice, formed. formed by overflows, lay before us, and we were not slow in taking advantage of it to the fullest.

Two days later we had crossed the divide to the McKinley River. Here, sheltered in the big tent pitched and used used as headquarters by the Lloyd expedition just two years ago that month, we bade goodbye to our dog-musher, Jack Phillips, who set out for Fairbanks with twenty dogs, leaving us three dogs with which to continue our work preparatory to the climb. It was not without pangs of regret that we saw Phillips turn his back on us, thereby severing the last link to the outside world for two months. Phillips was a corking good man on the trail and had worked hard. A few days later we had further cause to regret Phillips' hasty leavetaking.

After Nash had taken a musher's perspective and had satisfied himself that we were still twentyfive miles from the mountain, we broke trail and moved a camping outfit over the divide which separates the McKinley River and its tributary, the Clearwater (a different stream than the one bearing the same name previously mentioned, and the same stream that Professor Parker and his men experienced a heavy earthquake during the past summer in traveling

along its course.)

The

four ensuing days Lewis and I spent our time in hauling the remaining provisions across the divide.

a

Right here, for the benefit of parties who are equipped with similar object, it is fitting to say that transportation is the big, paramount matter to be kept in mind. The early spring is the time to climb Mt. McKinley, for firewood has to be hauled, and adequate dog teams are imperative for this heavy work. Overloading packhorses or dogs, alike, is fatal. So is it a fatal mistake to overload humans. We made the mistake. It took us a month to push our supplies and fuel through to a camp on the north face of the mountain, on Peter's glacier. To be sure, we were delayed by snow storms and preparatory work.

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Another piece of advice-pilfered from the experience of Professor Parker-is to take the ordinary foods used in the North-flour, beans, rice, dried potatoes, rolled oats, corn meal, tea, coffee, canned butter, canned cream, ham, bacon, and a sufficiency of dried fruits in variety. The pemmican-a composition of jerked meats, such as the Parker expedition used-is said to have produced nausea when eaten as a steady diet. In its place as a sustainer for the last few days of the climb, it is, no doubt, without an equal.. The Times party was in the best of health, and was properly nourished throughout the trip.

Our equipment included two aneroid

barometers, a sight compass, three kodaks, two alcohol stoves and ten gallons of alcohol-a very expensive item in Alaska-one 12x14 ft. tent, one sheet-iron stove, rope, pike poles, creepers, reindeer parkas, etc.

When we found that we needed two camps-one eight miles below the mountain, in the timber at the lower extremity of Peter's glacier, and one on the glacier itself, at the foot of the mountain, Lewis turned tent-maker,