Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1899-11-25
Visit to a Wonderful Hole in the
Cascade Mountains.
VAST FORTUNE IN ACTUAL SIGHT
Floor and Roof Assay Thirty DOL
lars to the Ton.
RICHER THAN GOLCONDA
Special Correspondence of The Evening Star.

| Special Correspondence of The Evening Star
| PASCO, Wash, November Is, 1899.
Have you, gentle reader. ever walked six
| miles over a skid road in the Cascade range
| of mountains in the state of Washington?
If you have. / am sure It must have been
long years ago. because otherwise you
| would not be gentle but wild. for walking
over skid road in the Cascades has
tendency to make sucking dove wilder
| than a hen with fourteen chickens.
Do you know what a skid road is? Not
an ordinary skid road, but a Cascade range
skid road. No? Well, let me explain. A
| skid by the dictionary definition is a log
or timber laid lengthwise on which heavy
| articles may be transported or C'skidded'
| In the vernacular), and q skid road should
| therefore be one somewhat similar in effect
to an ordinary railroad; but Cascade range
skid roads are not constructed according to
| other plans and the logs are laid crossways
| OF the road and at intervals of, say, five TO
six feet. The rcadbed is unaduiterate mud
! ana the logs, from ten to twelve inches in
| diameter, sink into this about six inches.
| so that the horses dragging the usual skid
| sleds long, slender. low runnered affairs.
| may step between them and keep the mud
thoroughly Goft and well churned. on a
new road, that is, one made in virgin soil,
! this process usually establishes a depth Of
| from ten to twelve inches of mud, and as Il
| rains more or less every month in the wes-
| tern Cascades this mud never has the
| water sufficiently squeezed out of il to con-
| vert it into dust. To add still further to
| the pedestrians pleasure, the skids are
| always kept well creased TO facilitate the
| passage of the seds, and If the walker can
| Keep bis feet under him, when he most
| eedS them there. then indeed is he an
| pert. Why not ride on the SiedS. you ask?
| Well, if you should see one of those sleds
| sliding from one side of the road TO the
| other and switching around like the cracker
| a VGF not ask he f4s,. ion,
| We might have gone on horseback, but
| there were no horses except such as were
| otherwise engaged, so we walked. Ne rose
one thousand feet in walking the six miles,
| too. and that did not make our task easier
or our burdens lighter.
But We were bound for cave of gold in
the mountains and VINO thinks of effort
| with such dazzling goal before him?
| On n Rock Slide.
| The trail. they call any kind of a road
trail in this country except the railroad,
| led through such tremendous forests as are
| not found anywhere In the world except on
| the Pacific coast. The great trees growing
| so closely together that there was not a
| limb for a hundred feet, as straight as
| mests rose upward to the light. their enor-
nous trunks almost making a wooden well
! along the trail. Here and there some an
| cient patriarch had fallen, and on it's re-
cUmbent trunk grew giants hundred feet
| in height. Somewhere off in the Businesses
We could hear the rush of a tumbing tor
rent over the great boulders, and a mile
above trees and torrents and Skids and mud
lowered the gray-rOcked saw-teeth and nee
dies of the Cascades, the toughest noun
| tains on earth.
We reached the Golden Tunnel camp in
Salmon Basin at IL o'clock, after three
| hours of steady but slippery going, and
| there they showed us dinner close at hand,
| and far up the mountain at the head OF the
| basin a tiny black line across a field of
| snow, which they told US was part of the
| limo Of Il OK In
| distinguishable on the face of a gigantic
| cliff which seemed to rise straight up to the
| sky. But it 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
| tmpossibility. so as soon as we had eaten
we took our alpenstlcks in our hands and
| began to climb. For half mile fol-
| lowed a skid trail, till it suddenly stopped
| at ore dump, and then we went square
| out upon a huge rock slide and picked our
way carefully across for nearly a quarter
! of mile to a tangled thicket beyond which
were more rocks and then field of snow.
A Serious Danger.
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 great supply
OF rocks OF all sizes, as II nature nau maze
| their particular location her rock dump,
| intending to make a fill across the valley,
| but never getting further than the foot of
the mountain. These rocks, on an incline
of forty-five degrees, will lie quietly repos-
| ing until an unwary foot starts one rolling.
or gun shot or even shout, jars
from its place, and then woe be to the I'M
lucky climber who is out the slide, for
| he must be active indeed IL he escapes
! bruises broken limb from the boulders
| which come bouncing and jumping and fly
l s,rr Il I, -I,.ll
| become moving masses as do avalanches,
sweeping everything down with them; they
are merely covered with loose stones which
come rolling down by twos or threes or
| tens scores the disturbance may be:
| and also, unlike the avalanche, they may
occur a half dozen times day, and are
| therefore constant menace.
| Hard Mountain Climbing.
| Beyond the rock came the snow and
| there was big crevasse in it which ne
| cessitated a trip down the mountain to get
around 1t. and then more rock and more
snow and struck the real climbing
| Here we stopped to look down the valley
upon a double line of mountains clear
cut against the sky, In places again cut
| ting the white clouds like spear points and
presenting magnificent beauty of noun
tain scenery which have not seen eNcelled
outside of the Cascade range
The trail leading up from the snow was
narrow and soft, hedged in by thickets
ia climbing and after enough Of it to make
US almost forswear the gold standard and
adopt free silver, or hay, oats, or gar
den sass, We came UP over a rock slide
on to hog back, narrow ridge Of rock
stuck on to the mountain side at inter-
walls 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 the 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 fasten
their roots among the rocks.
What tremendous climb it was, Three |
hours of constant going, and yet. when we
looked down and down to the damp where |
We had dinner it seemed scarcely a stones |
throw away. But We We're tenderfeet, and !
the veterans who greeted us as We stop
ped to take breath before the final climb |
laughed at They had prospected over
all these mountains and our climb was
nothing to speak of: they told us. too, of |
how only the day before-e of their num-
Der weighing $50 pounds had had his leg
broken by rolling rock and eight of them