The Kalispell bee. [volume] (Kalispell, Mont.) 1901-1901, 1901-06-13
BIG DAY FOR DAWSON CITY.
Freezing of the Yukon Great Event
of the Year.

4 OF the year.
The freezing of the Yukon is on
great event of the northern year, say
the New York Commercial Advertiser
The other is the breakup in May. TIL.
day the ice sets for good is chalket
carefully on cabin doors up on the
creeks, with lesser fOrtunities, like the
first day of sluicing, when King Sal
mon or cariboo start to run, when the
cleanup began. The ice in northern
river forms at it's head, but the river
closes from it's mouth. In the tor
rents up Pelly river, under the Rock
| les, up White river under the St. Elias
Alps, in the tiny meadow creeks feed
ing Forty-Nuile and Sixty-mile, the
| September frosts make a little rim
ice, tumble it out into the larger tribu
taries and churn it into slush. In the
father of the northern waters it is lost
More is formed, and more, and more
The little creeks are playing Liliputi
ans to the river CULVER. Early in DC.
tober chunk of slush, no bigger than
hand and like soaked cottonwaste,
steals down in midstream past the big
camp. Some one sees it, and it is
noted in the Daily Nugget or the Daw.
son News. Bets are made when the
river will "set."
Day by day the slush thickens;
lifts itself from the water; the tops
whiten like chunks of snow. After
these cold nights the river is full of it.
The next day a raft can't cross, the
next boat has to twist through the
mushy ice with some one in the stern,
posed as Washington's pilot on the
Delaware. BY the middle of October
the river is full of slush ice. The Yu-
kon is moving roadway, rough and
very white. The soft cakes elbow
each other, and give out a swish like
the rustling of million silken skirts.
The last scOw leaves for Forty Mile,
and timid old timers shake their
heads and say the men are taking
their lives in their hands, which they
are. and can never make landing at
Fort Cudahy. The march of the ice is
impressive; idlers stand on the bank,
thinking, watching it for hours. The
swishing sound gets hard and gritty,
the thin lanes of water close; the
cakes nudge and jolt each other; down
by Circle City or the Ramparts, the
ice blocks where the channel is mar
row, at bend, among the bars of the
great flats. That is only for a night.
It jams now here, now there, along
the whole 1000 miles of the river.
and breaks again, which makes the
white procession only little slower
and little noisier. For a week the
river IS as full you don't see how it
runs at all. More bets are made. with
the recklessness of near settlement.
The men have landed at Forty-nine
and are thinking of going down to
Eagle. The smooth ice, which has
been eating out gradually a rod or so
from the shore will bear a man, and
some one starts for Indian river, old
timers again opposing. It is strange
how the longer men live by north
ern river the more they feel toward it
a generation and nameless fear. In
lands like these, where no other del.
ty gets any show, is it wonderful that
river gods are born!
Then one morning away down by
Tanana or Milato the PROFESSIONS
van halts for good. At Dawson they
do not know it, and won't for days.
The jam does not eat steadily up-
stream, but by leaps and bounds. In
a night there are blocks at Minon
Creek, at Charley River, Forty-mile,
and between them the water clears to
a lake and is smooth, black ice the
next day. On the next a watcher at
the big camp where the bets were
made sees the crowded cakes lift over
the rim ice, float ashore and strand
in the sloughs. The water starts up
the banks, and whoever lives On low
lands gets ready to fly, for when the
water backs up thus June freshets are
Out in the moving lane
the big cakes saunter and twis: along
then stop. one by one, one pressing
on the other. The watcher sees
berg turn on end, big as a house, an
other is lifted clear out of water,
high and dry on the rim ice, another
cavorts and vanishes. Meanwhile
there is cavernous gulping, splash
ing, creak and strain like shivering
timber, and the road ends like the
noise of Bleaching wave. For if the
day is not very cold the hating cakes
not becoming at once homogeneous, are
put to enormous pressure. But if 'it"
is below 40 degrees, a man will rush
out from Front street and cross the
river ten minutes after the cakes have