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On either side the ridge fell precipitously to a glacier floor, with yawning crevasses half-way down eagerly swallowing every particle of ice and snow that our axes dislodged: on the right hand to the west fork of the Muldrow Glacier, by which we had journeyed hither; on the left to the east fork of the same, perhaps one thousand five hundred feet, perhaps two thousand feet lower.
During the five days' stay here the stuff was brought up and carried forward, and a quantity of dry wood was cut and advanced to a cache at the mouth of the creek by which we should reach the Muldrow Glacier.
It was interesting to speculate how much further he would have penetrated: Walter thought as far as the glacier, but I think he would have followed as far as the dogs could go or until food was quite exhausted. Meanwhile, the relaying of the supplies and the wood to the base camp had gone on, and the advancing of it to a cache at the pass by which we should gain the Muldrow Glacier.
The designation "Northeast," which the Parker-Browne party put upon the ridge that affords passage from the lower glacier to the upper, is open to question. Mr. Charles Sheldon, who spent a year around the base of the mountain studying the fauna of the region, refers to the outer wall of the Muldrow Glacier as the Northeast Ridge, that is, the wall that rises to the North Peak.
But it is here proposed to substitute Harry Karstens's name for points-of-the-compass designations, and call the ridge, part of which the earthquake shattered, the dividing ridge between the two arms of the Muldrow Glacier, soaring tremendously and impressively with ice-incrusted cliffs in its lower course, the Karstens Ridge.
These men thus started with the great advantage of a knowledge of the mountain, and their plan for climbing it was the first that contained the possibility of success. From the base camp Anderson and McGonogill scouted among the foot-hills of the range for some time before they discovered the pass that gives easy access to the Muldrow Glacier.
The expedition either missed the pass near the foot of the Muldrow Glacier, well known to the Kantishna miners, by which it is possible to cross from willows to willows in eighteen miles, or else avoided it in the vain hope of finding another.
The "main mountain" has many walls; the walls by which the summit alone may be reached rise out of the Muldrow Glacier, a circumstance that was not to be discovered for some years yet. The lateness of the season now compelled immediate return.
A reconnoissance of the Muldrow Glacier to its head and a long spell of bad weather delayed the party so much that it was the 4th June before the actual ascent was begun a very late date indeed; more than a month later than our date and nearly three months later than the "Pioneer" date.
This stream, which drains the Muldrow Glacier and therefore the whole northeast face of Denali, occupies a dreary, desolate bed of boulder and gravel and mud a mile or more wide; rather it does not occupy it, save perhaps after tremendous rain following great heat, but wanders amid it, with a dozen channels of varying depth but uniform blackness, the inky solution of the shale which the mountain discharges so abundantly tingeing not only its waters but the whole Kantishna, into which it flows one hundred miles away.
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