¥ 
towered magnificent domes of lava 
crowned with fir trees, the steep canyon 
walls dropped off a clean thousand feet 
or more to the valley floor below. 
OW we entered a misty fog bank 
and it was wet; then it began to 
drizzle and before long we began to see 
patches of new snow under logs and 
secluded places; the trail became 
muddy and slippery. The drizzle 
changed gradually to a cold sleet and 
then a driving snow and as we pulled 
over the summit into Bristow Meadows, 
it was blowing a gale and the snow 
was driving in a horizontal direction. 
The wind cut through us with a chill. 
We buttoned our hunting coats tighter 
and still the wind cut through, espe- 
cially when we crossed an open space 
in the timber on a projecting ridge 
where the blizzard had full sweep. 
Well there I was in my light shoes with 
the mud and icy water in the slippery 
trail half way to my shoe tops, and the 
other boys in their hob-nailed boots. 
Such a contrast! The warm sunshine 
and the Spring-like weather down by 
the river and we in the dead of Winter 
on Bristow Mountain. All of us had 
expected and were prepared for snow 
before we got back to the river, but we 
also expected to reach our destination 
before Winter broke on us. My shoes, 
of course, were in the bottom of the 
pack on one of the horses and I could 
not change without considerable delay 
so I paid the penalty of my secret 
scheming and plodded on in the mud 
and snow in my light shoes. Bristow 
Meadows is five thousand feet above the 
river and an excellent place to camp 
586 
Hugh Black, the author, 

[ » Ee 
Willamette River. 
and hunt. <A perfect open mountain 
meadow for the horses, belly deep in 
grass, and on the right of the trail it 
dips down into a depression in which 
is a small, but pretty mountain lake; 
the entire meadow is surrounded by 
heavy timber. 
It was now 4:00 o’clock and the sky 
overhead was beginning to change to a 
murky darkness. We doubted our abil- 
ity to make our destination at Buck 
Camp on Balm Mountain, still nearly 
five miles over, because the going was 
extremely slow and laborious and we 
were all beginning to freeze, especially 
myself with light shoes on. _ We de- 
cided after a hurried confab that if 
we could make the “dog house” by dark 
we had better call it a day and not try 
to go on over to Buck Camp in the rain 
and snow. 
The “dog house” was situated in an 
ideal little, heavily wooded mountain 
valley under the rim of a long ridge. 
This ridge is the divide between the 
Willamette river and the Umpqua near 
the headwaters of thé North Fork. 
From the top of this ridge one hundred 
yards above the cabin you could over- 
look the mountain basin of the Umpqua 
river and mountain peaks for two hun- 
dred miles to the South. Mt. Shasta in 
California was barely visible. 
T. PITT and to the East the rim 
of Crater Lake, Mt. Scott, Dia- 
mond Peak, Mt. Bailey and a half 
dozen others, all capped with snow the 
year around and at this time of year 
all the more beautiful on account of 
their new coat of snow, were sil- 
houetted against a very blue sky. As 
Grover McDonald and “Fin” Whitney at Camper’s Flat on the 
we slept and dreamed we were at in- 
tervals awakened by the stamping of 
the horses outside. They pawed the 
ground and snorted all night, In the 
morning we saw the reason for the dis- 
turbance. 
ON stepping outside the cabin we 
discovered the tracks of a large 
female bear and two cubs that had 
come down off the mountain to satisfy 
their curiosity, or at the smell of bacon, 
and made a complete circle of the cabin 
and had gone back on the ridge again. 
No wonder the horses snorted. Later 
on in the day I crossed those same 
tracks several times in wandering over 
the ridges, but didn’t get a glimpse of 
the bear family. The cub’s foot print 
was just about as large and not en- 
tirely unlike that of a certain “cub” ~ 
that I left behind on this trip who in 
a few years will be old enough to carry 
a gun and ride a horse in the mountains 
like his dad. Even now, at less than two 
years, he takes a great delight in help- 
ing his dad clean his shotgun after 
each trip to the duck lake, and dragging 
ducks around the back porch by their 
necks jabbering all the time like a 
chinaman. 
After finding a place on the South 
side of the ridge where the snow had 
blown from the grass we hobbled the 
horses and held a consultation of war. 
It was decided that Hugh and Grover 
were to follow the ridge to the East 
and North, while “Fin” and I were to — 
go West and South. 
“Fin” and I hadn’t gone far before 
we separated in order to cover the head 
of a canyon called Dog House Canyon, 
