69 
BIRDS AND MAMMALS OF THE MOUNT LOGAN EXPEDITION, 
1925 
By Hamilton M. Laing, P. A. Taverner , and R. M. Anderson 
INTRODUCTION 
By H. M. Laing 
During the spring of 1925, by arrangement of the Victoria Memorial 
Museum (now National Museum of Canada), Ottawa, with the Alpine 
Club of Canada, the writer was enabled to accompany the Mount Logan 
Expedition 1 to Alaska as naturalist and cinematographer, and in the present 
paper a brief account is given of biological work in Chitina River region. 
Though a few observations were possible at Cordova and along the 
route of the Copper River railway, field work really began at McCarthy, 
6 miles from the end of steel. After a two-day stay here (May 9 to 11), 
during which much time was consumed in travel preparation, the party 
set out for mount Logan and five days later (May 17) reached Trail End 
on the upper Chitina at the limit of pack-horse travel. The route followed 
led from McCarthy to the new bridge across the Nizina, thence up Young 
creek and over the divide to the Chitina, where the gravelly, flat valley 
afforded fair travelling up as far as the glaciers at Trail End. 
For several reasons it was deemed best to make Hubrick's camp the 
headquarters for biological work, and through the next three months 
field work was carried on in the vicinity of the foot of the Chitina moraine — 
roughly a 20-mile strip on the north side of the river, bounded below by 
the streams of the valley and above by the ice-fields on the summits of 
the range at from 6,000 feet upward. The camp was about 25 miles west 
of the Alaska- Yukon line. No crossing of the Chitina was ever effected, 
and so the south side or cold slope was not visited by the writer. 
The return in August (16-21) was over a partly new route, by way of 
the High trail that leads from Bryson's cabin on the Chitina across the 
divide, following Calamity creek and the Chittitu to the Nizina. This 
seems worthy of mention as types of life were found on these summits not 
encountered on the Chitina slope. 
GENERAL NOTES 
It was somewhat of a surprise on May 8 to find that although winter 
at Cordova on the coast still was strongly entrenched, the farther inland 
we travelled up Copper river the more pronounced was the evidence of 
spring. In the morning within 50 miles of the coast ptarmigan were 
pattering over the white snowbanks and flats; by mid-afternoon the snow 
was gone, bumblebees and butterflies were seen on the wing, and anemones 
were in bloom on a sunny slope; and by evening at McCarthy, at about 
1,400 feet elevation, the spring was represented by j uncos, Gambel’s 
sparrows, and nest-hunting northern violet-green swallows. 
1 The Canadian Alpine Journal, The Alpine Club of Canada, vol. XV, 1925. 
