TRIALS 
OF THE 
TRAPPING 
TRAIL 
Continuation of "TRAPPING THE 
THREE RIVER ZONE'—Part Seven 
B Y the middle of December a great 
deal of snow had fallen and it 
became apparent that the trail 
between the Athabasca and Edson 
would soon be impassable for anything 
save a dog team. My trapping took 
me further south all the time, and as 
the best marten country was within a 
day’s travel of Mile 27 on the Grande 
Prairie Trail, we decided it was better 
for the wife to go to town and that I 
would work my traplines from that 
end. It was with considerable regret 
that we made this move, but as there 
was so little to trap in the vicinity of 
that part of the Athabasca, it seemed 
foolish to waste so much time in trav¬ 
eling back and forth. There was ab¬ 
solutely no fur-bearing animal in the 
country save the martens and weasels, 
what few foxes and lynx were about 
in the earlier part of the season had 
disappeared and there wasn’t a size¬ 
able “catch” of these animals in the 
whole district. 
The old cabin at the Mile 27 was in 
sad need of repair, but on looking it 
over I saw that with a little fixing it 
could be made to do for the remainder 
of the season. I hired a team in 
Edson to haul a good supply of grub 
and a camping outfit to Mile 27, and 
a couple of days after my arrival had 
things in good shape. As near as I 
could figure out my cabin on the head 
of Lynx Creek was about ten miles 
west and six miles north of Mile 27, 
and as I had run a trapline in the 
general direction of Mile 27 from this 
cabin, all I had to do to make the thing 
complete was to run a line from my 
new camp. Sounds easy! Yes, a great 
deal easier than it proved. 
Between Mile 27 and the country I 
wanted to get into was a high, rugged 
spur of the Moose Mountains, whose 
By RAYMOND THOMPSON 
spruce-clad slopes were covered with 
a tangle of down timber that I would 
never have been able to conquer ex¬ 
cept that the very great depth of snow 
enabled me to snowshoe over the ma¬ 
jority of it. My main difficulty was 
that I didn’t know exactly the location 
of either place in reference to the 
other; besides, I had to break trail 
every step of the way before I could 
drive the dogs over. It was a lone¬ 
some, heart-breaking task. 
The first day I started from Mile 
27 with nothing to hinder me but a 
lunch and an axe. I struck as near 
due west as I could and made good 
time the first mile or so, in spite of 
the fact that I sank a good foot in 
the snow each time I took a step with 
my snowshoes. Then the snow got 
soft, owing to a chinook wind (a rare 
thing in this country) blowing from 
the southwest, and I was obliged to 
turn back. To you who have never 
experienced such a thing as trying to 
snowshoe in wet, clinging snow, I will 
say that there is nothing romantic 
about it! Wearily you drag one shoe 
after the other, the webbed filling be¬ 
comes wet and stretches abominably 
and several pounds of snow clings to 
the bottoms, sapping the very last 
ounce of energy from one’s self. You 
feel that you would be better off with¬ 
out the snowshoes, but after trying 
the change and floundering a few 
yards you wearily slip your wet moc- 
casined feet into the tie stiaps and 
doggedly plunge ahead. 
For three days I was unable to make 
any further progress on account of 
the soft spell, but the fourth day it 
turned colder and I broke trail to 
what I figured as the head of Otter 
Creek, a small stream that crossed 
the Medicine Lodge Trail at a point 
some eight miles east of Lynx Creek. 
Granting that the two creeks flowed 
parallel, I was yet a good ten miles 
from my destination. I went back to 
Mile 27, loaded the toboggan with grub 
and blankets and drove the dogs to the 
end of my trail, where I erected a 
brush shelter. One of those sudden 
changes in temperature which are so 
characteristic of the North Country 
took place, # and it sure was cold “si- 
washing” there on the head of Otter 
Creek. At such times it seems like it 
is impossible for a man to get enough 
blankets to keep him from freezing. I 
couldn’t sleep more than an hour at a 
time, when, awakened by the stinging 
frost, I would jump out and replenish 
the fire. A great red moon hung in the 
tops of the spruce trees and stars as 
cold and brilliant as diamonds mocked 
me from the heavens. Now and then 
a report like the crack of a high-pow¬ 
ered rifle shattered the silence; it was 
the frost in the trees, the only sound 
that broke the solitude of my lonely 
watch. At such times I have always 
felt myself detached from the ordinary 
world, in fact, so remote does civiliza¬ 
tion seem, one could readily imagine 
himself on another planet. Nature is 
a Great Teacher but remorseless in the 
enforcing of her laws. 
This is the one supreme law of the 
wilderness, the man who sallies forth 
to conquer the wilds must have certain 
fighting qualities or he will early go 
down to defeat. I have seen dozens of 
men tackle the trapping game and give 
up in disgust after a few weeks of 
reverses. I do not mean to say that 
these men were cowards in any sense 
of the term: they simply did not under¬ 
stand the nature of the thing they were 
trying to do and consequently did 
not know HOW to meet and conquer 
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