The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1899-11-26
Gave Of Gold I'm Cascades
Seventy Thousand Tons of Pay Dirt in Sight-H0e In
Washington Mountains That SurpaSses the Riches
of Golconda-0re Runs $50 to the Ton.

I leading to the cave of gold itself, indis-
tinguishable on the face OF a gigantic
cliff which seemed to rise straight up
/ TO the sky. But il was the cave Of gold
we had come To see. for caves of gold
are scarce except IN books of fairy tales.
and we were not TO be deferred by a
little thing like an inpossibility, so as
/ soon as We had eaten We took our al
| pensticks in our hands and began to
! climb. For half a mile we followed a
skid trail, till it suddenly stopped at
an ore dump and then We went square
out upon a huge rock slide and picked
our way carefully across for nearly {,
quarter OF a mile to a tangled thicket,
beyond which We're more rocks and
then a field of snow.
/ Let me stop here long enough to say
that these rock slides. while ordinarily
safe enough, are often the most serious
danger of mountain climbing. AS the
name indicates, they are slides OF rock
which DO not seem to come from any
where, but have always a great supply
of rocks of all sizes, as if nature had
made their particular location her rock
dump, intending to make a fill across
I the valley. but never getting further
than the foot of the mountain. These
rocks, on an incline OF 45 degrees. will
/ lie quietly repoSing until an unwary
foot starts one rolling, or a gunshot or
even shout, jars one from its place.
and then woe be 10 the Cnlucky climber
who is out ON the slide, for he must be
active indeed If he escap pes bruises or
broken limb from the boulders which
come bouncing and jumping and flying
down upon him. These slides do not
become moving masses as are avail
anehes. sweeping everything down with
them; they are merely covered with
loose stones which come rolling down
by twos or threes or tens or scores, as
the disturbance may be; and also I'M
like the avalanche, they may occur a
half dozen times day, and are, there
fore, a constant menace.
Hard Mountain. Climbing.
Beyond the. rock came the snow and
there was a big creyasse in it which
necessitated a trip down the mountain
to get around it, and then more rock
and more snow and We struck the real
climbing. Here we stopped to look
down the valley upon double line of
mountains. clear cut against the sky,
in places again cutting the white
clouds like spear points and presenting
a magnificent beauty of mountain
scenery which / have not seen eXcelled
outside of the Cascade range.
The trail leading up from the snow
waSs narrow and soft, heGged in by
thickets whose limbs and branches aid
ed greatly in climbing and after enough
of it to make US almost foreswear the
gold standard and adopt free silver, or
/ hay, or oats, or garden sass, we came
up, over a rock slide onto a hogback,. a
narrow ridge of rock stuck ION to the
mountain side at intervals with no
other apparent purpose than to make
the climbing more difficult and had our
first view of the cave of gold. 1t was
far above us in the face of a cliff, but
in plain sight, and we went on and on,
up and up, till we reached the tents of
the miners. hung there like the nests
/ of birds among the pine trees that fas-
ten their roots among the rocks.
/ What a tremendous climb it was.
Three hours of constant going and yet,
/ when we looked down and down to the
camp where we had dinner it seemed
scarcely a stones throw away. But
We were tenderfeet, and the veterans
who greeted US as We stopped to take
breath before the final climb. laughed
at US. They had prospected over all
! these mountains and our climb was
nothing TO speak of; they told US, too.