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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.
Its difficulties lie in its remoteness, its size, the great distances of snow and ice its climbing must include the passage of, the burdens that must be carried over those distances. We estimated that it was twenty miles of actual linear distance from the pass by which we reached the Muldrow Glacier to the summit.
In this way we moved steadily though slowly across rolling country and upon the surface of a large lake to the McKinley Fork of the Kantishna, which drains the Muldrow Glacier, down that stream to its junction with the Clearwater Fork of the same, and up that fork, through its canyon, to the last spruce timber on its banks, and there we made a camp in an exceedingly pretty spot.
Alfred Brooks, Mr. Robert Muldrow, and Doctor Cook had passed the snout of the Muldrow Glacier without realizing that it turned and twisted and led up until it gave access to the ridge by which alone the upper glacier or Grand Basin can be reached and the summits gained.
The photograph of the base camp shows a mountainous ridge stretching across much of the background. That ridge belongs to the outer wall of the Muldrow Glacier and indicates its general direction. Just beyond the picture, to the right, the ridge breaks down, and the little valley in the middle distance sweeps around, becomes a steep, narrow gulch, and ends at the breach in the glacier wall.
In 1898 George Eldridge and Robert Muldrow, of the United States Geological Survey, traversed the region, and Muldrow estimated the height of the mountain by triangulation at twenty thousand three hundred feet. In 1899 Lieutenant Herron crossed the range from Cook's Inlet and reached the Kuskokwim.
Passing still along the face of the range in the same direction, the party crossed the terminal moraine of the Muldrow Glacier without recognizing that it affords the only highway to the heart of the great mountain and recrossed the range by an ice-covered pass to the waters of the Chulitna River, down which they rafted after abandoning their horses.
Now, it is important to remember that these two ridges which make the walls of the Muldrow Glacier rise ultimately to the two summits of the mountain, the right-hand wall culminating in the North Peak and the left-hand wall in the South Peak.
On the 11th April Karstens and I wound our way up the narrow, steep defile for about three miles from the base camp and came to our first sight of the Muldrow Glacier, some two thousand five hundred feet above camp and six thousand, three hundred feet above the sea. That day stands out in recollection as one of the notable days of the whole ascent.
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.
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