May 13, 1911.] 
729 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
WADING A SWOLLEN RIVER. 
squeezed through a narrow corridor that the 
ditchmen had cut out of the snow in the ditch 
itself. 1 he door was of ice, and the walls of 
ice, and snow was eight feet high on each side 
of us. Again the ditch ran around the face of 
a rocky cliff, part of which had been blasted off 
to build up the outer wall on which we walked. 
1 his rim was not over two feet wide, and we 
picked our way over the rough pieces of stone 
with some care, preferring to give them our un¬ 
divided attention, and not think of the distance 
we should fall in case we made a misstep to the 
masses of rock far below. 
Late one afternoon we were trudging along 
high up around the mountain sides in a furious 
snowstorm that prevented our seeing more than 
a short distance ahead. All at once our ditch 
ended, and from it a huge pipe led down into 
the gulch below. To our astonished gaze it ap¬ 
peared to be almost perpendicular and not less 
than a thousand feet in length. 
W ell, wasn’t it mean of those men to teii 
us we could come this way,” was the first ex¬ 
clamation. It had been hours since we passed 
a camp, and we disliked very much the idea of 
turning back, yet this spot certainly looked like 
the jumping-off place. A few minutes’ survey, 
however, showed us it was not so bad as we 
had believed, for through the snowstorm we 
could dimly make out that the pipe shot up 
again to the opposite cliff. \\ e climbed and 
slid down the rocks to the bottom of the gulch 
with no other inconvenience than getting our 
clothes very wet and dirty. We were able to 
vv alk up the other side on the flume, as it was 
covered with snow, and at the top we found 
our ditch again. 
The wading of streams was an interesting 
matter. We were wearing men’s clothes with 
the addition of short skirts, and preparations 
for wading consisted in hanging these extras 
around our necks, where, as capes about our 
shoulders, they were less in the way. The rivers 
were at their highest, and we generally had to 
reconnoiter to find a good crossing place. If 
the current was unusually swift we joined 
forces; one steadied herself behind a rock in 
the stream while the other found the next foot¬ 
hold. We wore hip boots, but often the water 
came above them. After a few experiences of 
this sort, however, we agreed that the presence 
of water in the boots is soothing to tired feet, 
and came to rather enjoy the squashy sound it 
made as we set our heels down at each step 
onward. 
A certain fording place was deep and narrow, 
but quiet, and we tried the plan of throwing 
across our baggage, as well as a part of our 
clothing. The water struck us just above the 
waist. Climbing out on to a wide bank of snow 
in our bare feet had the effect of making us 
exercise some haste in gathering up our belong¬ 
ings. We put on dry clothes and carried the 
wet ones rolled up between the snowshoes till 
dry enough to wear. 
Nugget Creek was not over a foot deep, and 
we thought it would be easier to walk, in it than 
to snowshoe along the banks, so for a most in¬ 
teresting two miles we waded in its bed. The 
snow was not deep where we entered, but pres¬ 
ently it was extending from ten to fifteen feet 
straight up on each side, and it would have been 
impossible for us to climb out. Fortunately 
there was a place where we could ascend when 
we were ready to leave, and we decided very 
suddenly that we were tired of traveling in 
Nugget Creek; that is, one of us did after she 
unexpectedly sat down in the middle of the 
stream. 
W'e had no difficulty in reaching a roadhouse 
each night, though on one occasion we arrived 
ten minutes after midnight, and pounded on the 
door for five minutes before we made ourselves 
heard. As there is very little travel when the 
snow is so soft, we were frequently the only 
guests. Each roadhouse had some distinguish¬ 
ing feature. At the United States it was chickens 
and a cow, while the fresh fish and wild birds 
that were served at Salmon Lake set that camp 
apart from other places along the trail. It would 
have been impossible to find fault with the gen¬ 
erous meals of all of them. The breakfasts, es¬ 
pecially, always tasted so good that we ate too 
much to start off in first rate form. They in¬ 
variably consisted of fruit, mush and milk, eggs, 
bacon or ham, a second meat dish, potatoes, hot 
bread, coffee and sour dough hot cakes with 
syrup. 
One evening wo were so hungry we could 
scarcely wait while our supper was being cooked. 
We had come a strenuous fourteen miles, wad¬ 
ing a number of creeks and struggling through 
thick underbrush a good part of the way, and 
were ready to eat. All at once someone dis¬ 
covered that the roadhouse was on fire, and 
then for the next half hour there was flinging 
of water all over the place, a rushing back and 
forth to the creek with buckets, and a scramb¬ 
ling around in the loft to put out the flames 
there. The supper on the stove was completely 
drowned out, and when the excitement was over 
we had to sit patiently looking on while more 
canned goods were brought out, opened and put 
on to heat. 
The “ladies’ apartment” in the roadhouses was 
usually a smaller inside room, and the objec¬ 
tionable part about it was the lack of fresh air. 
After calling down wrath upon our heads for 
opening the doors one night after everybody else 
was asleep, we endured as best we could the 
next time. On starting out in a drizzling rain 
on the morning after this unsatisfactory rest, it 
was a happy moment when we recalled that we 
were on a pleasure excursion, and that there 
was no compulsion about our arriving anywhere 
on schedule time; so we camped at the first de- 
DOG-SLED AND SLED-CAR. 
