CHAPTER XXII 
OLD MAN REED 
From our camp at the top we worked a strip of 
country about six miles long—north and south—by 
two miles wide. During these runs we covered. Yel- 
low Jacket peak, the highest point on the range, 
which we found to be over ten thousand feet in 
altitude. 
While nothing like as disagreeable as the work 
on the east side, this was as hard cruising as we 
had encountered. For beside the steep, long climbs, 
a great part of the forest had been burned over here, 
and the one time timber was replaced by a thick 
young growth of pine and fir, mingled in most places 
with aspen and Mexican locust. In spots this cover, 
higher than a man’s head, was so closely set and 
interwoven that it proved well nigh impenetrable. 
When one considers that it grew often on a slope of 
from sixty to eighty per cent grade, that loose boul- 
ders and malpais lay hidden in the long grass be- 
neath the tangled thickets, and that the slippery 
dead and down trees were piled in spots as thickly 
as an abattis, some conception of the difficulty of the: 
cruiser’s task may be formed. 
I remember one day when it took me three hours 
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