AUTHOR OF “IN THE TRACKS OF THE TRADES,” “HELL’S HATCHES,” ETC. WITH ILLUSTRATIONS FROM PHOTOGRAPHS NEW YORK DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 1921 Copyright 1921 By DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, Inc. The Quinn & Boden Company BOOK MANUFACTURERS RAHWAY      NEW JERSEY TO C. L. CHESTER Hoping he will find in these pages some compensation for the fun he missed in not being along. [Pg vi] [Pg vii]...

The day on which I first conceived the idea of a boat trip down the Columbia hangs in a frame all its own in the corridors of my memory. It was a number of years ago—more than a dozen, I should say. Just previously I had contrived somehow to induce the Superintendent of the Yellowstone National Park to grant me permission to attempt a winter journey on ski around this most beautiful of America’s great playgrounds. He had even sent a Government scout along to keep, or help, me out of trouble. We

The itinerary of our Columbia trip as originally planned in Los Angeles called, first, for an expedition to the source of the river, next, a voyage by boat around the Big Bend from Beavermouth to Revelstoke, and, finally, if there was time and good weather held, a voyage of indefinite length on toward the sea. As the trip to the glaciers was largely a matter of engaging a good packer well in advance, while there was no certainty of getting any one who would undertake the passage of the Big Bend,

When I started north from Los Angeles toward the end of August Chester, held up for the moment by business, was hoping to be able to shake free so as to arrive on the upper Columbia by the time I had arrangements for the Big Bend voyage complete. We would then go together to the Lake of the Hanging Glaciers before embarking on the Bend venture. Luck was not with him, however. The day I was ready to start on up river from Golden I received a wire stating that he was still indefinitely delayed, an

Snow flurries kept us close to camp all that day. The next one, the sixteenth, was better, though still quite hopeless for movie work. After lunch we set out on foot for the big glacier, a mile above, from which the creek took its life. The clouds still hung too low to allow anything of the mountains to be seen, but one had the feeling of moving in a long narrow tunnel through which a cold jet of air was constantly being forced. A few hundred yards above our camp was a frightful zone of riven tr

It was now neck-or-nothing with the Lake of the Hanging Glaciers picture. Having already been out much longer than we had expected to be, there were left only provisions for two days. Nixon had suggested making a hurried trip out and bringing in fresh supplies, but as the time set by Chester for his arrival for the Big Bend trip was already past, I did not feel warranted in prolonging the present jaunt any further. If the morrow was fair all would be well; if not, the main object of our trip wou

Chester’s instructions respecting the two new pictures he wanted us to work on came through to Roos the day following our return to Windermere. One of these was to be confined entirely to the Big Bend voyage. Essaying again my role of “gentleman-cum-sportsman,” I was to get off the train at Beavermouth, meet my boatman, launch the boat and start off down the river. The various things seen and done en voyage were to make up the picture. In the other picture I was to play the part of a young ranch

Through Surprise Rapids We pushed off from Beavermouth at three o’clock of the afternoon of September twenty-ninth. We had hoped for an early start, but the erratically running local freight, six or eight hours behind time, did not arrive with our boat until noon. The introductory shots had already been made. Made up momentarily as a gentleman—wearing an ankle length polished waterproof and a clean cap, that is,—I jumped the westbound Limited as it slowed down on entering the yard, dropping off

Kinbasket Lake and Rapids It continued slushing all night and most of the next day, keeping us pretty close to camp. Andy, like the good housewife he was, kept snugging up every time he got a chance, so that things assumed a homelier and cheerier aspect as the day wore on. I clambered for a couple of miles down the rocky eastern bank of the lake in the forenoon. The low-hanging clouds still obscured the mountains, but underfoot I found unending interest in the astonishing variety of drift corral

Boat Encampment to Revelstoke We were now close to the historic Boat Encampment, where at last our course would join with that followed by the early voyageurs and explorers. No point in the whole length of the Columbia, not even Astoria, has associations more calculated to stir the imagination than this tiny patch of silt-covered overflow flat which has been formed by the erosive action of three torrential rivers tearing at the hearts of three great mountain ranges. Sand and soil of the Rockies,

The voyage round the Big Bend, in spite of the atrocious weather, had gone so well that I had just about made up my mind to continue on down river by the time we reached Revelstoke. A letter which awaited me at the hotel there from Captain Armstrong, stating that he would be free to join me for my first week or ten days south from the foot of the lakes, was all that was needed to bring me to a decision. I wired him that I would pick him up in Nelson as soon as I had cleaned up a pile of correspo

Ike had been working at high speed during our absence, but his imagination appeared rather to have run ahead of his powers of execution. The hundred-feet-long, thirty-feet-wide raft he had set himself to construct (so as to have something that would “stack up big in the movie”) took another two days to complete, and even then was not quite all that critical artist wanted to make it. After filling in the raft proper with solid logs of spruce and cedar, he began heaping cordwood upon it. He was tr

There was plainly something on Ike’s mind all through breakfast, but what it was didn’t transpire until I asked him what time he would be ready to push off. Then, like a man who blurts out an unpalatable truth, he gave the free end of his “toga” a fling back over his shoulder and announced that he had come to the conclusion that the raft was too big and too loosely constructed to run Box Canyon; in fact, we could count ourselves lucky that we got through Hell Gate without smashing up. What he pr

For two reasons I am writing but briefly of our visit to Lake Chelan: first, because it was entirely incidental to the Columbia voyage, and, second, because one who has only made the run up and down this loveliest of mountain lakes has no call to write of it. Chelan is well named “Beautiful Water.” Sixty miles long and from one to four miles wide, cliff-walled and backed by snowy mountains and glaciers, it has much in common with the Arrow Lakes of the upper Columbia, and, by the same tokens, Ko

The only lone-hand river voyage I had ever taken previous to the one on which I was about to embark was down the lower Colorado River, from Needles to the head of the Gulf of California. This had been in comparatively quiet water all the way, with nothing much to look out for save the tidal bore at the lower end. As I had never been above the Dalles on the lower Columbia, I had very little idea of what I would encounter in the way of rapids. I knew that there were locks by which the Dalles and C

The Dalles was the largest town I touched on the Columbia, and one of the most attractive. Long one of the largest wool-shipping centres of the United States, it has recently attained to considerable importance as a fruit market. It will not, however, enter into anything approaching the full enjoyment of its birthright until the incalculably enormous power possibilities of Celilo Falls and the Dalles have been developed. So far, as at every other point along the Columbia with the exception of a