CHAPTER XXIII 



DOWN AVALANCHE CREEK, AND OUT 



Cutting our Way Out — A Side Trip to High Summits — Discovery of 

 Lake Josephine — A Camp for Three — A Lofty Hunting Ground — 

 My Luck Against the Storm-Clouds — A Body-Racking Descent — 

 The Struggle for a Trail Out — Mr. Phillips and I Go Out on 

 Foot — The Jack Pine, Down and Up — Running Logs Over Down 

 Timber — Out at Last. 



Below Camp Necessity, the vaHey of Avalanche 

 Creek was in a frightful state. It was full of " down 

 timber," through which no trail ever had been cut. Our 

 guides knew that to cut our way out to Elk River Valley 

 would be a serious undertaking, but it was voted less 

 laborious and more expeditious than to retrace our route, 

 and swing back twenty-five miles northward. To retrace 

 our steps would mean a total loss in distance of at least 

 fifty miles, half of it over very bad trails, with much 

 climbing; so the guides and the cook voted to chop out 

 a trail down stream in order to save the horses. 



At the beginning it seemed like a three days' task, and 

 it afforded an interval that Charlie Smith and I made 

 haste to spend in a hunt up to the summits south of our 

 camp. He said, 



" There is some mighty fine country up there. I have 

 seen it from the south, but I don't believe any white 



man ever has been in it, — at least not in my time. There 



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