glance at the rush of elements, I knew it was the like of which I had never seen before. The few spruce I could see within the ten yards range of vision were bowing and swaying almost incredibly. The cache, not forty feet away, was not in sight. The snow did not seem to fall an inch. It was going by on the level. One comprehensive look at the brand of weather surfeited me, and I scurried back to my cramped retreat like a groundhog into his hole. The moment I had stood in the blast was enough to convince me that I would freeze in

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twenty minutes before I finally got my watch wormed out of my pocket. Much to my disgust it only showed 10:30. I turned the watch this way and that again and again, close up to the tiny crack through which a little. snow-filtered light streaked in. I had had it figured out that it must be close to nightfall. As long as it was daylight I watched the second hand jog around. I was so wet that I shook like an aspen.

Occasionally an oppressed, smothering feeling would come over me, and as oftentimes I would notice that my

a half hour of exposure, as already my parka had commenced to stiffen with the congealed moisture.

About a bushel of snow had tumbled into the bag from the sides, so after scooping it out as thoroughly as I could, I squeezed in again, pulled the hood of the bag over my head, and lowered the fly, pulling it up to overlap the hood, thus leaving slanting vent for air to come through. Some time later I got curious to know the time of day. It must have been

a

breath came hard, panting openmouthed as I was, I would poke my left fist up through the snow at the edge of the flap. This move invariably dumped a cool chunk of snow on my neck, but it let in some much-needed air, the good effects of which were no doubt counterbalanced by the consequent bodily chill. I had plenty of time for reflection, and certainly did some hard thinking.

The day had seemed never-ending, but the night was slated to wear along

slower. The nerve-tension put sleep to rout. Some time toward daylight of St. Patrick's day the pressure of the weight of snow on the bag became almost unbearable, but I decided to wait until morning before shaking out again. Although I had raised up the afternoon before, my legs and feet had not moved an inch for twenty-four hours. Cramps were beginning to seize me. Probably I would have been bent up double if I had had room. As there was a little space at the shoulders, I kept beating my left hand against my chest to excite better circulation, and frequently pounded my right arm, which was immovably pinned underneath me.

Now and then there would come an inspiriting lull in the storm, but apparently the wind just let go to get another hold. It would spring up again with such a smash that surely, I thought, no living thing could stand up against it. I wondered what Lewis. and Nash had done the day previous, and if they had been so foolish as to institute a search for me. Here, where I laid, was the only timber-sheltered spot, with one exception, in the sixteen miles. They surely would know that if the blow had caught me elsewhere I would have no possible escape unless I succeeded in retreating with the wind clear back to the big tent. Lewis had signified his intention on Friday morning of making a trip to where Nash was encamped, and so I reasoned that possibly he had remained up at the mountain camp, and no one was holding down the main camp in the timber. In that event, I could expect no aid until late in the approaching day, although I knew that either Lewis or Nash would make a desperate effort to hunt me down if there were the slightest cessation in the storm.

I had slept none that night, and, as the wind dropped off, coming only by puffs, I decided to take a look out, and if possible start for camp. But when I tried to extricate my head, it seemed to be held vice-like in the fur helmet. For some minutes I was frantic with

the fear that I would be buried so deep that I would suffocate under the snow. Finally I succeeded in releasing my head, and, using my

head, and, using my shoulder and head, threw back the flap with the weight of snow. Then followed some minutes tugging, and my feet were free. I crawled out from it under a drift four feet deep of snow as hard as adamant.

It was broad daylight, and there was a gladdening rift flooded with sunlight in the clouds over the mountains to the southeast. A stinging cold west wind was blowing, but the real storm had subsided a few minutes before. I lost not an instant in getting on my snowshoes and striking out to the westward. Before I had gotten out of the copse of spruce, one of the strands. of moosehide in the tread of my right snowshoe snapped, and when when the other end pulled through the frame I went to my hip in snow. I tied the foot thong back so that my heel rested on the cross bar, but to no avail, for it let me through the first step I took.. By this time my hands were so cold I could hardly use them, so I decided to return to the bag. On the return, I walked on the top of drifts may feet deep, and again floundered waist-deep, having to roll over some, as I did not seem to have the strength to pull my legs out.

I

I stuck my snowshoes up as a marker to catch the eye, and then went to the cache, and brought back the gunny containing hams and bacons. Dumping the contents, I slit the end of it and the sides for my head and arms, and tried to pull it on, but it was too narrow in the shoulders. knew that the cold was beginning to get the best of me, so I pulled on my parka, which was frozen as stiff as a board, and tried to get back into the bag. It refused to receive me. I tried to shake it loose, but the snow had iced around it, forming a perfect casing. Neither could I break the hard drift up with my moccasined feet.

My only recourse was to start a fire, so away I went after some dry branches. Without an axe I gathered

quite a pile of what looked like combustible stuff, and after poking a quarter of my diary book under the whole, tried to ignite it. This, too, failed. The diary paper was wet through, and the wind did the rest. I used up a block of matches that had been in a water-proof case, and when the last one flickered out I knew that I was at my rope's end. I thought I'd write a few lines to my mother, but when I tried to fish out a little stub pencil, I found that my pocket had frozen tight.

I had been wearing a pair of woolen gloves inside of woolen mitts, and had thrown both on the ground when I tried to get a fire. I attempted to pull them on, but the gloves would only go half way, and the mitts rested on my fingers' ends. I sat down on the edge of the bag. Soaking wet for thirty-six hours, during which I had not had a bite to eat, my vitality was reaching a low ebb. When I first got out of the bag I stuffed my beaver cap, which was soaking wet, into the pocket of the parka. I had then pulled the hood up and pressed it together, forming a narrow slot to look through, in which shape it froze. Through this aperture I squinted up along the first divide, and I recall that I shouted Lewis' name time after time.

Thereafter, my thoughts were in confusion, and I recollect nothing tangible until I felt my arms and legs being rubbed by Nash, who, it seems, had descried my snowshoes from a distance, and had come on the run. I was standing up when he first saw me, and as he says I fell down and got up three times before he reached me, he thought my feet were frozen. When he grabbed me, I was embracing a side of bacon tenaciously, having nibbled the edge a little. This last was a blank to me, but the moment Nash took hold of me I knew I was all right. No person on earth ever looked better to any one than did that man Nash.

After rubbing me vigorously, Nash slashed my parka up the sleeves to get it off, pulled off the heavy reindeer parka he had worn over, and bundled me into it, also shelling off his Siwash

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mitts for me. He then had me make a poor imitation of a war-dance while he yanked out the sleeping bag, which was no mean job. He jerked it onto me and dragged the "mummy" into its former resting place. This done, he tried to start a fire, and though successful in the end, he met with the same difficulties which transported me into the depths of despair. With a roaring fire started, he yelled that he would be back with the dogs and sled in a couple of hours.

It usually took two hours to make the trip one way over the two divides, but not much over two hours later I saw Nash snowshoeing down the grade, closely followed by Lewis, who was mushing the dogs. I had in the meantime gotten out to warm my feet. With a can full of hot tea, topped off with oat meal, I felt "skookum,” and was ready to start for camp. It was all over, and the sum total of frostbites numbered only a few fingers, Nash having as many as myself, as he had suffered severely on the back trip without his heavy mitts.

It was Sunday afternoon, St. Patrick's day, and the severest storm of the winter was over. I didn't know much about the Patron Saint, but I was glad to see that I was not doomed, as were his snakes. On Friday, the day I started for the old Lloyd camp, Lewis met Nash coming down from the mountain camp, which accounts for the fact that Nash came over to the cache when he did. I did not expect him, but did expect Lewis, who could not come, as there was only one pair of snowshoes in that camp. Nash's intention was to go through the Lloyd camp on the McKinley River, although both he and Lewis had given up hope of ever seeing me alive again, reckoning that there would be but one chance in a thousand that I could have gotten back to the old camp.

Nash had gone up on a shoulder of the first divide from the Muddy River. camp on Friday afternoon, and after shouting my name for several minutes hurried to camp, not without apprehensions for his own safety in the

blinding blizzard. He told Lewis that no human could weather that gale on the summit.

In camp they had experienced a gloomy, enforced idleness. But for the three or more feet of earlier snows which were banked up around the tent and iced over from the heat within, no doubt our canvas home would have been sticking in a spruce tree long before the storm had spent its force. They took the dogs inside, and there dogs and men hibernated alike until the great Outdoors became more hospitable.

We all had a two-days' reunion in camp, since the weather was still inclement, and Nash needed some time to restring my broken snowshoe, and one of Lewis' that had given out. Frequently while in this camp we would look up at the mountain in her majestic solitude, realizing that the casual eye failed to grasp her stupendousness and appreciate her splendid proportions. We wondered if the craggy edge of the northeast ridge, at an elevation of about 15,000 feet—a part we must traverse-in reality contained sheer walls of rock hundreds of feet in height, instead of being sculptured in stair-steps, as it appeared. Was old McKinley so shaped in the titanic upheaval which shot her skyward as to defy all humans? We wondered, and we were impatient to find out.

On March 18th, Nash and Lewis left with packs on their backs for the mountain camp. For a week or more after that, snow fell with the least effort that one could imagine. In the vicinity of the mountain it seemed that the air was saturated with moisture. I was cutting and hauling wood to the upper camp, so there would be fuel for each day when Lewis and Nash returned for the night. They left notes daily. When together the first day, they managed to get a double hitch around Nash's pike pole, which he had lost in a crevasse the day before the big blizzard. It had jammed itself across the walls of ice in an uneven place in the cleft some twenty feet below the surface. It was impos

sible to see the bottom of many of these chasms, as they would angle out of line at a great depth. With the aid of a length of rope the pole was hooked and withdrawn. This crack in the icy surface of the mountain was at an elevation of about 8,000 feet.

On another occasion, while alone on the mountain, Nash felt his footing giving away without warning. Taking the one chance, he threw himself cross-wise. Fortunately, the opening was only a couple of feet wide, so he was able to span it. Every foot of the route chosen up the mountain had to be carefully sounded by jabbing the pike poles energetically, sometimes to their hilts. Lewis carried bundles of glacier willows up the mountain and stuck them in to mark the route.

While Lewis and Nash were at the mountain camp, I was hauling wood and baking bread in the camp on the Muddy River, eight miles below. The dogs' larder looked pretty slim. Each dog should have a salmon and a half every day when he is working, but our supply was so low that that was impossible. I was cooking dog “mulligans." Dog epicureans like these stews. The ingredients are whatever one feels like throwing into a general conglomeration. With us, they usually consisted of water, rice, flour, bacon and salmon chopped in bits. Dog feed finally was at such a premium that we had to bake loaves of bread, peppered with salmon-the rations being one loaf per dog per day.

When about a week's supply of dog bread had been cooked and enough wood had been hauled up to the mountain for several days' consumption, I went on up to the mountain camp. We all went up together after that. The weather was not propitious for the work, and we were disappointed in not being able to get more pictures on the mountain. The utmost caution had to be exercised in guarding against one false step. In several places steps for a toehold had to be cut into the icy slopes of the mountain. With everything in a state of readiness for the final dash from a camp which we

planned to establish on the ridge at an elevation of about 15,000 feet, where it looked as though a dug-out could be made in a snow saddle, we were abruptly blocked by a series of icy pinnacles, or saw-teeth, capping the ridge, with no possible alternate course presenting itself.

To attempt to go over these ice-plastered cones on the top of the ridge would have meant a fall straight down of about 3,000 feet on the north side, or a tumble on the south side, unless one fell into a crevasse, to a fork of Muldrow glacier, styled by the Lloyd party "Wall Street" glacier. There was no going over them, and we, as a party, do not hesitate in pronouncing the most northerly of these two ridges impassable as a consequence of what we found.

Accordingly, the one route open is to follow the Cook route over the south

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east ridge, or the Lloyd and Parker route via Muldrow glacier to its head and thence to the more easterly of the two ridges. Several readings on our two aneroid barometers showed over 10,000 feet, but averaging all of the elevations shown under different atmospherical conditions, the computation for the top of the ridge is 9,950 feet.

Old McKinley had defeated us. We were cooped in where we were. With another month we could have gotten our outfit onto Muldrow glacier, but our food stores were becoming rapidly depleted, and the dog feed was almost entirely gone. There was no use dealing in "ifs," for they were idle palaver. We gazed over the wonderful panorama of mountains and glaciers, then down at Camp Disappointment, and with regretful voices we muttered "home."

WINONA C. MARTIN.