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National Geographic : 1925 Apr
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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE became useful in planning for photo graphic work and trail movements of a character to be affected by the approach of a storm from the Pacific northwest. The next point on the Columbia Ice Field which we planned to reach was the head of the Athabaska, immediately un der the great peaks of Alberta - the Twins, King Edward, and Columbia. As the crow flies, the distance was not great, but by the only possible route with pack train it was close to 80 miles of flooded valleys. Because the canyon of the Sunwapta, which heads at the Athabaska Glacier, was impassable for horses, we had to be gin the long and circuitous journey by climbing over the lofty Wilcox Pass to the east (see page 427). We came back to the flats of the Sun wapta below the canyon and encountered a sea of glacial mud far worse than those previously experienced on the Bow, Mis taya and Saskatchewan. Following one serious miring, the whole pack train floundered over the muddy bank into the river, soaking both food and photographic supplies badly. Camp had to be pitched immediately to effect salvage operations. We left the Sunwapta at the strikingly beautiful falls of the same name, crossed a low divide to the Athabaska, and began the long, tiring pull to its glacial source. There was much hard work in fallen tim her, through which we had to push when the valley became too deeply flooded, but nothing comparable for trouble to the mud flats of the middle Sunwapta. The river was crossed often in its upper reaches, but, with swift water flow ing over gravel bottoms, we were com pelled to swim the horses only once or twice. At the end of six days from the head of the Sunwapta we had reached our ob jective. Camp was pitched under the lee of a timbered island three miles below the base of Columbia peak and glacier and literally at "last grass." COLUMBIA PEAK IS THE MOST BEAUTIFUL OF THE NORTH AMERICAN ROCKIES Then followed eight days of futile waiting-an interval in some ways more trying than the worst spells of travel in mud and water. We were vouchsafed one unforgettable view of the slender pinnacle of its summit, suffused in the gold-pink glow of the sun that set on the day of our arrival. Then the most beau tiful peak of the whole North American Rockies system settled down to the pro vocative tactics that had made it a moun tain of mystery since the day of its dis covery. One day it was a chaste madonna, rais ing an adoring face behind a dusky veil that barely revealed a misty outline of its form. Another time it was a dancer, lift ing a tantalizing skirt to show dimpling knees twinkling in the froth of billowing chiffon, or poking a coquettishly bared shoulder from behind a masking screen. This was good "movie stuff," but it was the classic "altogether" that we wanted for the permanent record of the stills. A FOUR-DAY BLIZZARD SWEEPS DOWN UPON TIIE CAMP The half-famished horses were munch ing willow bark and leaves in place of the grass already gnawed to the roots. Our own salt, sugar, and canned goods were gone, and only a much-reduced ration of bacon, flour, and oatmeal remained. Still we hung on, waiting for our perverse minx of the mountain to exhaust her whimseys and, as Soapy put it, "give us an honest-to-goodness look-see." As a reward for our patience, what should she do but take the veil completely. With a four-day blizzard from the north reducing the width of our world to a bare 50 feet from the tepee door, we went on waiting, cheered by the wonders of lighting that we told ourselves had to come when the proverbial sunshine fol lowed the storm. But when on the fifth day-the eighth from that of our arrival-the sunshine, passing by the still veiled mountain peak, came only to flood the snowy valley, we gave up the fight and, dejected and beaten, prepared to depart. With the gaunt, hollow-eyed horses barely able to totter under the depleted loads, the pack train set off down the valley at noon of September 25. The sky was overcast, but Harmon and I, with our saddle animals and the horse packing the cameras, remained behind on the off-chance of an altogether improbable clear-up. Pushing up the valley leisurely 442
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