My Sled Was About Three Feet Long
And Made As Light As Possible.
A sack of hardtack, a little tea and
sugar, and a sleeping-bag were firmly lashed on it so that nothing
could drop off however much it might be jarred and dangled in
crossing crevasses.
Two Indians carried the baggage over the rocky moraine to the clear
glacier at the side of one of the eastern Nunatak Islands. Mr. Loomis
accompanied me to this first camp and assisted in dragging the empty
sled over the moraine. We arrived at the middle Nunatak Island about
nine o'clock. Here I sent back my Indian carriers, and Mr. Loomis
assisted me the first day in hauling the loaded sled to my second
camp at the foot of Hemlock Mountain, returning the next morning.
July 13. I skirted the mountain to eastward a few miles and was
delighted to discover a group of trees high up on its ragged rocky
side, the first trees I had seen on the shores of Glacier Bay or on
those of any of its glaciers. I left my sled on the ice and climbed
the mountain to see what I might learn. I found that all the trees
were mountain hemlock (Tsuga mertensiana), and were evidently the
remnant of an old well-established forest, standing on the only
ground that was stable, all the rest of the forest below it having
been sloughed off with the soil from the disintegrating slate bed
rock. The lowest of the trees stood at an elevation of about two
thousand feet above the sea, the highest at about three thousand
feet or a little higher.
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