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They then went to the Kantishna diggings and procured supplies and topographical information from the miners, and were thus able to follow the course of the Lloyd party of 1910, reaching the Muldrow Glacier by the gap in the glacier wall discovered by McGonogill and named McPhee Pass by him. Mr. Belmore Browne has written a lucid and stirring account of the ascent which his party made.
When we came down to the Kantishna diggings and announced to the men who planted it that we had seen the flagstaff, there was a feeling expressed that the climbing party of the previous summer must have seen it also and had suppressed mention of it; but there is no ground whatever for such a damaging assumption.
While thus occupied at the base camp, came an Indian, his wife and child, all the way from Lake Minchúmina, perhaps one hundred miles' journey, to have the child baptized. It was generally known amongst all the natives of the region that the enterprise was on foot, and "Minchúmina John," hoping to meet us in the Kantishna, and missing us, had followed our trail thus far.
The McKinley Fork of the Kantishna, which drains the Muldrow, is black as ink with it, and its presence can be detected in the Tanana River itself as far as its junction with the Yukon. It is largely soluble in water, and where melting snow drips over it on the glacier walls below were great splotches, for all the world as though a gigantic ink-pot had been upset.
When the stampede to the Kantishna took place, and the government was dilatory about instituting a mail service for the three thousand men in the camp, Karstens and his partner organized and maintained a private mail service of their own. He had freighted with dogs from the Yukon to the Iditarod, had run motor-boats on the Yukon and the Tanana. For more than a year he had been guide to Mr.
Pete Anderson had come into the Kantishna country this way and had crossed and recrossed the range by this pass no less than eleven times. McGonogill, following quartz leads upon the high mountains of Moose Creek, had traced from his aerie the course of the Muldrow Glacier, and had satisfied himself that within the walls of that glacier the route would be found.
Another day of twenty-five miles of flats brought us to Knight's comfortable road-house and ranch on the Toklat, a tributary of the Kantishna, the only road-house this trail can now support.
The going was not too bad until we had crossed that stream and climbed the hills to the rolling country between it and the McKinley Fork of the Kantishna. Again and again we looked back for a parting glimpse of the mountain, but we never saw sign of it any more.
It was proposed to use the mission launch Pelican, which has travelled close to twenty thousand miles on the Yukon and its tributaries in the six seasons she has been in commission, to transport the supplies up the Kantishna and Bearpaw Rivers to the head of navigation of the latter, when her cruise of 1912 was complete.
This breach, thus reached, is the pass which the Kantishna miners of the "pioneer" expedition discovered and named "McPhee Pass," after a Fairbanks saloon-keeper. The name should stand. There is no other pass by which the glacier can be reached; certainly none at all above, and probably no convenient one below.
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