174 



Sierra Club Bulletin. 



THE MAZAMA CLUB OUTING TO GLACIER 

 PEAK. 



By Marion Randall Parsons. 



Dawn was breaking over the Columbia River when our 

 Mazama Club party left the Pullmans at Wenatchee the 

 morning of August third. A dingy river boat was whist- 

 ling impatiently down at the landing as we hurriedly col- 

 lected dunnage bags, knapsacks and alpenstocks and got 

 them and ourselves aboard. Forty miles of slow cruising 

 up the river followed, coasting around sand-bars, breast- 

 ing foaming rapids, and struggling against the strong 

 current until the skill of the deep sea navigator seemed 

 trifling beside the problems of the river-boat's captain. 



The country, once we left the Wenatchee Valley, was 

 arid and desolate. Low, reddish brown hills almost barren 

 of vegetation shut in the horizon on either side. The few 

 homesteads were usually grouped in the more fertile deltas 

 of the side streams. About midway of our journey a 

 group of curiously marked cliffs and some vigorous yel- 

 low pines (Pinus ponder osa) growing along the shore 

 gave a more picturesque setting to our slow progress. At 

 Chelan Falls we left the river to drive five miles over the 

 hills to Lakeside on Lake Chelan. There we embarked 

 upon the "Lady of the Lake," a crazy little steamer loaded 

 high with our luggage, with boxes and barrels of provi- 

 sions, with four horses, with thirty-five mountaineers, and 

 — least to be forgotten — a vigorous brass band. 



Under the cloudy sky that afternoon the lower end of 

 the lake lay smooth and unruffled, broken only at our 

 steamer's wake into waves and ripples of gleaming silver. 

 The wooded banks came mistily down to the water's edge, 

 low hills at first, but rising as we traveled farther up the 

 lake into high mountain peaks among whose rocky sum- 

 mits patches of snow still lingered. A flurry of rain met 



