Boy Scouts in Glacier Park

Books by

WALTER P. EATON

The Boy Scouts of Berkshire—A story of how the Chipmunk Patrol was started, what they did and how they did it. Colored frontispiece. 313 pages. Boy Scouts in the Dismal Swamp—A story of Boy Scouting in the Dismal Swamp. Colored frontispiece. 304 pages. Boy Scouts in the White Mountains—A story of a hike over the Franconia and Presidential Ranges. Colored frontispiece. 308 pages. Boy Scouts of the Wildcat Patrol.—A Story of Boy Scouting. Colored frontispiece. 315 pages. Peanut—Cub Reporter—A Boy Scout’s life and adventures on a newspaper. Colored frontispiece. 320 pages. Boy Scouts in Glacier Park 336 pages. Cloth bound. Price, $1.75 net each

The Great Continental Divide and the Game Trail Along the Top

Boy Scouts in Glacier Park

The Adventures of Two Young Easterners

in the Heart of the High Rockies

By

WALTER PRICHARD EATON

Illustrated with Photographs by

FRED H. KISER

W. A. WILDE COMPANY

BOSTON CHICAGO

Copyrighted, 1918,

BY W. A. WILDE COMPANY

All rights reserved

BOY SCOUTS IN GLACIER PARK

To

FRED H. KISER

who photographs mountains so well because he loves them so much Best of companions on the high trails and around the evening camp-fire

FOREWORD

Glacier Park is one of the newest, as well as one of the most beautiful, of our National Parks. It is peculiarly fitted to be a summer playground, both for men and women who prefer to travel on horseback and “rough it” by putting up at a hotel at night, and for the true mountain lovers, who delight to use their own legs in climbing, and to sleep under the stars. This book has been written primarily to show Young America just how interesting, exciting, full of outdoor adventure, and full, too, of real education, life in this National park can be. We can promise our boy readers, and their parents, too, that there isn’t any “faking” in this story. The trips we tell about are all real trips, and if you go to Glacier Park you can take them all—all, that is, except, perhaps, the climb up the head wall of Iceberg Lake. You have to have a real mountaineer as a guide, with a real Alpine rope, in order to make that trip. It was fortunate for Tom that one came along. Then, too, unless you stay in the Park over the winter, you haven’t much chance of riding down a mountain on a snow-slide. Possibly you wouldn’t want to. I never knew anybody who took that trip intentionally! Tom and Joe and the Ranger were unlucky enough to take it, and lucky enough to live to tell the tale.

This book isn’t written just to use the Rocky Mountains as a background for adventures which never really could happen to ordinary boys. It is written, on the contrary, to show what fine adventures can happen to ordinary boys, in one of the finest and most healthful and beautiful spots in this great country of ours, if only the boys have pluck, and have been good Scouts enough to learn how to take care of themselves in the open.

And it is written, too, in order to tell about Glacier Park, to make you want to go there and see it for yourself, to make you glad and proud that the United States has set aside for the use of all the public such a splendid playground, and to make you, if possible, more determined than ever to protect this, and all our other parks and State and National forests, from the attacks of the men who are always trying to get laws passed to let them spoil the meadows and the wildflowers with their sheep, or cut the forests for timber, putting their selfish gain above the welfare of the whole people.

W. P. E.

Twin Fires

Sheffield, Massachusetts

1918

CONTENTS

CHAPTERPAGE

I.Joe Gets Bad News About His Lungs—His “Pipes,” as Spider Called Them13

II.Joe Learns How Many Friends He Has, and Achieves a Tent to Sleep In21

III.Spider Finds a Way to Get to the Rocky Mountains, to “Pump Joe’s Pipes Full of Ozone”32

IV.Tom and Joe Cross the Continent with Their Faces Glued to the Car Window and Reach the Rocky Mountains43

V.The Scouts Learn Why the Rocky Mountains Have No Foot-Hills and Arrive at Many Glacier54

VI.Tom Becomes Boss of the Tepee Camp, and the Scouts Pitch Their Tents in the Evergreens63

VII.Joe Gets Acquainted with Porcupines, the Diamond Hitch, and Switchback Trails73

VIII.Joe Gets a Chance at Last to Go out on a Trip As Camp Cook93

IX.Over Piegan Pass to St. Mary Lake, Underneath the Precipices100

X.The Ranger Tells a Grizzly Bear Story Before the Camp-Fire123

XI.To Gunsight Lake, and Joe Falls Into a Crevasse on Blackfeet Glacier129

XII.Over Gunsight to Lake McDonald, and Joe and Bob See a Grizzly at Close Range144

XIII.In Avalanche Basin, Where Bob Learns That the Story of the Englishman’s Walk Before Breakfast Was No Joke168

XIV.Up the Divide in a Rain, with a Lost Horse on the Way, and a Howling Snow-Storm at the Top177

XV.Tom’s Chance for Adventure Comes Unexpectedly, Wearing Hobnail Shoes and Carrying a Rope189

XVI.Tom Goes up a Two Thousand Foot Wall, with an Alpine Rope, and Learns the Proper Way to Climb203

XVII.Tom Sees Both Mountain Sheep and Goats Do Their Wild Leaps Down Dizzy Ledges218

XVIII.Joe Gets Good News from the Doctor, and the Scouts Name Their Camp, “Camp Kent”232

XIX.The Indian Pow-Wow—Tom and Joe Get Into the Squaw Dance240

XX.The Scouts Start on a Trip Together at Last, to Climb Chief Mountain250

XXI.The Climb up the Tower of Chief Mountain, the Indian Relic on the Summit and an Eagle’s Nest257

XXII.A Blizzard on Flat Top—The Camp is Christened “Valley Forge”268

XXIII.Up to Chaney Glacier and the Discovery of a Three Thousand Foot Precipice276

XXIV.The Boys Prepare for Winter in the Park, and Learn Why the Timber-Line Trees Are Only Three Feet Tall283

XXV.Protecting the Deer Yards—the Scouts Wait in the Moonlight and Bag a Mountain Lion291

XXVI.A Hundred Miles in Four Days, Over the Snow, Which Is a Long Trip to Get Your Mail302

XXVII.The Ranger and the Boys Get a Ride Down the Mountain on a Snow Avalanche, and Don’t Look for Another312

XXVIII.Tom Starts on a Long Hike in the Deep Snow, over the Divide, Risking Snow-Slides, to Save the Ranger’s Life318

XXIX.Tom Tramps Down McDonald Creek in a Chinook Wind, and Reaches Shelter Almost Exhausted322

XXX.Tom Gets Back with the Doctor, and Mills Pulls Through—then the Scouts Have to Leave for Home327

XXXI.Home Again—Joe’s Christmas Present to His Mother Is Sound Health Again, and Tom Rejoices334