282 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Oct. 8, 1898. 
Climbing Blackfoot. 
It was midsummer. The ceremonies of the Medicine 
Lodge were over, and the camp was breaking up. 
Everywhere women were tearing down the lodges, pack- 
ing their possessions on horses' backs or on the travois, 
and preparing to scatter out over the broad prairie to 
their different homes along the stream. A party of 
white men were just leaving the camp to make a little 
trip into the mountains. Among them were an artist, a 
photographer, a newspaper writer, two cow punchers, 
three hunters, two prospectors, an ethnologist and a 
naturalist. So there were three of us, and we had two 
pack horses,' three saddle horses and Nancy Hanks 
colt— unattached. Two days' travel brought us well 
up on the narrow trail that runs along the side of 
Goat Mountain, and the next day found us working 
our slow wav among the down timber, brush and 
swamps that lie in the narrow valley of the St. Mary's 
River, above the head of the upper lake. 
The winter of 1897-98 had been very severe in north- 
ern Montana, and more snow had fallen in the moun- 
tains than for many years before. Spring had been 
late this year, and the snows had really scarcely begun 
to melt before summer, and now, in mid July, the 
streams were bank full and were rushing torrents. There 
is a tremendous momentum in a body of water 4ft. deep 
and rushing down hill as fast as it can go; and when we 
reached the river bank we did not need to look long at 
the north branch of the St. Mary's River before deciding 
that we would seek for an easier crossing place than the 
usual ford. A year before Jack and I had thoughtlessly 
ridden into the stream about the first of June, when it 
was swollen, and with our horses had been violently 
thrown down, bumped on the bottom and soused about 
in the tumultuous waters, sometimes right side up and 
sometimes wrong, until at last we had drippingly crawled 
out on either shore and counted up our bruises and the 
loss of axe,, hat, overcoat, rifle, and other articles, which 
are usually considered essential to the comfort of a camp- 
ing excursion. 
This year, therefore, we two, who had been swept 
away the summer before, promptly shied off when we 
came to the water, and after a mile or more of difficult 
uphill travel found a crossing where we forded the 
stream with entire comfort, not even the little colt be- 
ing swept off his feet. A few hours later we reached the 
south branch of the river, and there found things quite 
different. A tall fir tree had been undermined by the 
rushing water, and had niade a bridge across the stream 
over which one of the party crossed on foot, sounding 
the depth with a stick as he went. The stream proved 
to be from 4 to 6ft. deep, and while to swim the river 
would not have been difficult, this would have insured 
the wetting of our bedding and provisions, and more or 
less serious discomfort for the next two or three days. 
Turning off to the right, therefore, the right hand or 
northwestern bank of the stream was followed tip until 
nightfall, when we camped in the thick timber, tying 
up most of the horses, as there was but little for them 
to feed on, and there was danger that during the night 
they would wander off in search of grass and so be 
lost. 
By half-past ten the next morning, after an exhausting 
struggle through huckleberry brush, alders, and down 
timber, during which the axe was continually in use, 
and a constant ascent of slopes that were almost ver- 
tical, we reached the edge of timber line and there pur- 
sued our way along over the snow fields along the 
mountain side by well-known trails to the old camp on 
one of the streams which have their heads in the Black- 
foot glacier. 
Tt was not yet noon when we made camp, but the 
rest of the day was devoted to lounging about and re- 
covering from the fatigues of the morning. The flies and 
mosquitoes were as bad as they usually are in the moun- 
tains at this season of the year, and they paid unceasing 
attentions to us and our horses. The horses suffered 
especially, and smudges were built, into which they 
eagerly crowded. The insects were certainly a nuisance, 
but one who should visit this spot at the time when 
there were no flies would fail to see the wealth of alpine 
flowers spread out on the green meadows and among 
the. white snow fields. To describe them all a botanist 
would have been needed, but they were certainly of all 
sorts, sizes, colors and degrees of beauty. Yellow per- 
haps predominated, in the dog tooth violets, some 
crocus-like flowers and a great columbine, but there 
were also reds and blues and purples, now carpeting the 
ground, and again piercing with their stalks the thin 
margins of the retreating snowbanks, and blooming 
above them. 
. At 6 o'clock the next morning. Jack and I, armed with 
ice axes and a coil of rope, set out to see whether a 
way might be found to the summit of the Blackfoot 
Mountain, which had long been the goal of all his hope 
to one at least of the party. 
Seven or eight years before this, I had taken up to 
the head of the St. Mary's River the first party that had 
ever visited it, and a few years later had led thither a 
Government party. I had made a rough map of the 
region, and had named the principal peaks here, and for 
years it had been my special ambition to climb Mount 
Jackson and Mount Blackfoot, the two highest of them 
all. In the summer of 1897 Jack and I had made a 
quick run to the head of the river, and having been 
wonderfully fortunate in the matter of weather, had suc- 
ceeded after a hard day's work in reaching the summit 
of Mount Jackson, from which all the kingdoms seemed 
to lie spread out before us. 
The Blackfoot Mountain lies further back than Jack- 
son from the highest point in the valley to be reached by 
horses, and while we believed that its height was only 
about that of Mount Jackson, yet since it was partly 
hidden by a high shoulder of itself, over which only the 
main peak showed, and since to reach it the great Black- 
foot glacier must be crossed — an ice river which might 
present all sorts of difficulties and perhaps even force us 
to turn back— it seemed a much more desirable peak 
to conquer than had the nearer and really more impos- 
ing Mount Jackson. 
Thus we were about to attempt the ascent of the moun- 
tain of which we had often talked, Jack with the cheer- 
ful optimism which leads him to believe that he will 
accomplish whatever he may undertake; I with much 
enthusiasm, but rather hopelessly, for I regarded suc- 
cess as something quite beyond either my deserts or my 
powers. However, we ^ere now to make trial of the 
difficulties of the mountain and their overcoming. 
To men whose legs for a year past had only been ac- 
customed to gripping the flanks of a horse, the climb 
GUNSTGHT LAKE AND PASS. 
Shoulder of Mt. Jackson on left, and of Fusillade on right. 
upward, among the dark firs, over the frozen snow 
banks, seemed long and tiresome. Yet before the up- 
per edge of the timber had been reached both Jack and 
I had got our "second wind," and went along more 
easily. Now there rose before us a tall precipice, brok- 
en at intervals by deep and steep ravines, some of which 
were occupied by great banks of ice and snow, fingers 
of the retreating glacier, and others by huge piles of 
morainal drift, brought down by the ice river from the 
peaks above. 
Scrambling up one of these depressions, the more 
gradually sloping surface of the glacier a few hundred 
feet above was reached, and there, ascending a slight 
elevation, we began to study the great ice field before 
us in order to discover the easiest path to the peak of 
the Blackfoot Mountain, which just showed itself over a 
MT. JACKSON FROM GUNSIGHT LAKE. 
nearer shoulder. The shortest way seemed to be to the 
right, and either over a bare cliff which rose above 
the ice. or else around this cliff's shoulder and then up 
the sag through which the main ice field flowed. This 
was the cut-off — the hypotenuse of a right angled tri- 
angle, and to follow it would save many steps. But at 
the foot of the bare cliff were abundant evidences that 
the ice was frequently breaking off from the field above, 
and between the climbers and the cliff the glacier seemed 
broken and contorted by many crevasses. Up the sag 
the path seemed smoother and safer, yet even here it could 
be seen that the face of the glacier was very steep, and 
that one or two long crevasses stretched out nearly or 
quite across it. Immediately before us, however, or 
nearly due south, and distant perhaps three miles, rose 
a shoulder of rock, at first low, but rising toward the 
west, over which, if it could be reached, there was good 
going in the direction of the main mountain peak- and 
although to reach this and pass along it meant to fol- 
low the two sides of a right angled triangle, yet to push 
for the lower end of this shoulder seemed the better 
policy. So we set out for the lowest point of this 
ledge. 
For the next three or four hours we had monotonous 
but easy climbing over the gently-sloping surface of 
the glacier. The old snow upon its surface was soft 
enough to give good footing, but was not very slippery. 
Occasionally we were obliged to make a long detour 
to avoid an unexpected fissure in the ice, and some of 
these crevasses into which we carefully peered were 
awful m their depth, and in the coldness of their dry 
blue sides. The sky was absolutely cloudless, and the 
glare from the surface of the ice would have been pain- 
ful and dangerous to the eyes had we not both, before 
leaving camp that morning, thoroughly blackened our 
cheeks and noses with charcoal. We took the further 
precaution of tying handkerchiefs across our faces just 
below the eyes, so as to protect them from the blinding 
glare from the snow at our feet. This, to my mind is 
a more effective and less troublesome protection to the 
eyes than the ordinary colored glasses which are com- 
monly worn for this purpose. 
We were plodding slowly along and were more than 
two-thirds way across the ice, when suddenly our move- 
ments were arrested by a shot, followed in quick succes- 
sion by two more, and then a pause and a fourth shot 
and another much longer pause, and then a fifth After 
that there was nothing. "Well," said Jack, "that sounds 
to me as if something had jumped up in front of him 
and he had wounded it, and then finally killed it with the 
last shot. 
. "Yes," said I, "to me it sounds as if something had 
juniped up in front of him, and he had fired at it and 
missed it, and then it had gone out of sight and come 
in sight again long enough to give him one shot, and 
then disappeared and shown itself again, and he had 
shot at it a long way off and missed it. We'll see when 
we get back. 
At length we reached the border of the glacier and 
the rocks, pulled ourselves up, and took our way along 
the gentle ascent of the shoulder. Even as high up as 
this a httle vegetation grew in the scanty soil; a bright 
green moss-like plant like a round pincushion, dotted 
with delicate pink flowers, was very striking and beauti- 
ful. Here, before long, we came upon the fresh track 
of mountain sheep going in the direction we were pur- 
suing; but nothing living was seen. Almost at the 
crest of the shoulder we sat down and took a long 
rest, looking over the valley beneath us, seeing the green 
waters of the Upper Lake between the peaks of Little 
Chief and Almost a Dog, and seeing too to the south 
the valley of tributaries of the Flathead River, and 
the wooded slopes of many a tall mountain. Mount 
Stimson,- to the east, no longer towered above us, as it 
had for the last two days. We were almost on a level 
with it. 
When the pipe was knocked out, we moved on to the 
very top of the shoulder, and then climbed down its 
southwestern face into a cavity between the rock and the 
glacier. Here the action of wind and sun had melted 
the ice back for ,30 or 40ft. from the rock, making a 
canon with vertical sides, in which we stood. The ice 
wall was 25ft. high and quite soft, and Jack promptly 
began to cut steps in it and to ascend. It seemed to me 
that it would have been less laborious and would have 
taken no longer to have walked 100yds. or so to the 
right and then to have climbed up the more gentle as- 
cent which there presented itself; but before long we 
had both surmounted the ice wall and were again work- 
ing our way over the sloping snow field, which lay 
upon the main mountain. 
In the next half-mile lay perhaps the only dangerous 
• part of the climb. Here the ice field fell away sharply, 
and we were working across it at right angles to the 
direction of its slope. For 1,500 or 2,000ft. below us this 
slope continued or grew steeper, and then there was an 
abrupt fall into a rocky couloir far below. If one had 
slipped on the traverse, he would have brought up in 
another state of existence. The rope now came into 
play, and tied together we made a progress which was 
still more slow and careful. One man usually had his 
ice axe firmly planted in the hard snow before the 
other moved. It was really a relief to reach the edge 
of the glacier, and to be treading once more on solid 
earth and stone, steeply sloping though it was. We 
threw ourselves down by a little rill which trickled from 
a snow bank and rested there for a few moments. The 
view before us to the north and west was beginning 
to open out in a wonderful way. Mount Jackson, which 
we had climbed the year before, cut off a part of the 
outlook, but now we could look far down into Pinchot's 
icy basin at the head of Harrison's Creek, which looked 
like a little section of the Arctic region. Nothing was 
to be seen there save snow and ice, except where now 
and then some dark rib of gray rock showed its shoul- 
der above the white of the snow field. From the steep 
sides of Jackson twenty small glaciers sent down their 
streams to swell the greater one that lay in the valley 
bel ow. Mount Kainah, which from the camp towered so 
far into the blue sky, seemed now, as we looked down 
on it, only a valley. 
Starting on again,- we toiled up the steep mountain 
side, now winding in and out among great rocks, again 
pulling ourselves up over tiny precipices. As we neared 
the summit, nothing was to be seen under foot or about 
us except these great masses of lichen-covered rocks. 
We scrambled up over the last of these, and when only 
a few feet below the comb, Jack, who was in advance, 
with a fine courtesy and a thoughttulness that would be 
matched in few companions, stopped, turned to me and 
motioned me to go ahead. It was a touch of delicate 
generosity which gave an insight into my friend's char- 
acter; for, as I have already suggested, to me it did mean 
a little something to place my foot first on the summit. 
As I thanked him for his consideration, Jack responded: 
"It's easy to give up things that you don't care any- 
thing for." Half a dozen steps more brought us to the 
mountain's crown, and as we lightly hurried on to its 
ve^-y highest point, all the labors of the morning seemed 
to "us as nothing. 
As we stood upon the top, however, my heart was in 
• my mouth for a second or two, for there before me 
was a huge stone freshly turned over. Could it be that 
