Chilkoot Pass
June 1883
On the morning of the next day about five o'clock, we
commenced the toilsome ascent of this coast range pass, called by the Indians
Kotusk Mountains, and by seven o'clock all my long pack train was strung
up the precipitous pass, making one of the prettiest Alpine sight that
I have ever witnessed, and as seen from a distance strangely resembling
a row of bowlders projecting from the snow. Up banks almost perpendicular
they scrambled on their hands and knees, helping themselves by every projecting
rock and clump of juniper and dwarf spruce, not even refusing to use their
teeth on them at the worst places. Along the steep snow banks and the icy
fronts of hlaciers steps were cut with knives, while rough alpenstocks
from the valley helped them to maintain their footing. in some such places
the incline was so steep that those having boxes on their backs cut scratches
in the icy crust with the corners as they passed along, and oftentimes
it was possible to steady one's self by the open palm of the hand resting
against the snow. In some of these places a single mis-step, or the caving
in of a foot-hold would have sent the unfortunate traveler many hundred
feet headlong to certain destruction. Yet not the slightest accident happened,
and about ten o'clock, almost exhausted, we stood on the top of the
pass, enveloped in a cold drifting fog.
Once on top of the Pass the trail leads northward and
the descent is very rapid for a few hundred yards to a lake of about
a hundred acres in extent, which was yet frozen over and the ice covered
with snow, although drainage from the slopes had made the snow very slushy.
Over the level tracks of snow many of the Indians wore their snow-shoes,
which in the ascent and descent had been lashed to their packs...... This
small Lake, abruptly walled in, greatly resembled an extinct crater, and
such it may well have been. From this resemblance it received its name
of Crater Lake.
Chilkoot Pass, June 2001
Source: Schwatka, Frederick, Along Alaska's
Great River, New york: Cassell and Company, 1885, p. 84-88
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