The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1899-11-26
copyrighted by the s. s. Mcclure Co.


Pasco, Wash, oct. 31.-Have you,
gentle reader, ever walked six miles
over a skid road in the Cascade range
OF mountains in the state of Washing
ton? If you have, am sure it must
have been long years ago, because
otherwise you would not be gentle, but
wild. for walking over a skid road in
the Cascades has tendency to make
a sucking dove wilder than a hen with
fourteen chickens.
Do you know what a skid road Is?
Not an ordinary skid road, but Cas-
cade range skid road. No? Well, let
me explain. A skid read by the dictcn-
airy definition, is a log or timber laid
lengthwise on which heavy articles may
be transported or C;skidded" in that
vernacular) and a skid road should
therefore be one somewhat similar in
effect TO an ordinary railroad; but Cas-
cade range skid roads are not con-
structed according to other plans and
the logs are laid croSsways of the road
and at intervals OF, say, five or six feet.
The roadbed is unadulterated mud, and
the logs. from ten 10 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 soft
and well churned. On a new road. this
is, one made in virgin soil, this process
usually establishes q depth of from ten
to twelve inches of mud and as ii
rains more or less every month in the
western Cascades, this mud never has
the water sufficiently squeezed out of
it to convert il into dust To add still
further to the pedestrians pleasure, the
skids are always kept well creased 20
facilitate the passage of the sleds, and
if the walker can keep his feet under
him, when he most needs them there,
then indeed he is an expert. Why not
ride on the sleds, you ask? Well. if
you should see one of those sleds slid
ing-from one side of the road to the
other and switching around like the
cracker of a whip, you would not ask
the question. We might have gone on
horseback. but there We're no horses
except such as were otherwise engaged,
so we walked. We rose 1000 feet in
walking the six miles too. and that did
not make our task easier or our bur-
dens lighter
But we were bound for a cave of
gold in the mountains and who thinks
of effort with such dazzling goal be-
fore him?
On a Rock Slide.
The trail, they call any kind Of a road
'traii'' in this country except the rail-
road, led through such tremendous for
ests as are not found anywhere in the
world except on the Pacific coast The
great trees growing so closely together
that there was not limb for hundred
feet, as straight as masts rose upward
to the light, their enormous trunks al
most making a wooden well along the
trail. Here and there some ancient pa
triarch had fallen and on IT'S recumbent
trunk grew giants 100 feet in height
Somewhere off in the Businesses we
could hear the rush of a tumbling tor
rent over the great boulders and a
mile above trees and torrents and skids
and mud lowered the gray rocked saw
teeth and needles of the Cascades, the
toughest mountains on earth
We reached the Golden Tunnel camp
in Salmon basin at IL o'clock, after
three hours of steady, but slippery, GO
ing, and there they showed us dinner,
close at hand, and far up the mouqr-
tain. at the head of the basin, tiny
black line across field OF snow, which
they told us was i part of the trail