Belmore Browne in
1912, which came within an ace of success--had approached the mountain
from the interior instead of from the coast, it would have forestalled
us and accomplished the first complete ascent.

The difficulties of the coast approach have been described graphically
enough by Robert Dunn in the summer and by Belmore Browne himself in the
winter. There are no trails; the snow lies deep and loose and falls
continually, or else the whole country is bog and swamp. There is no
game.

[Sidenote: Parker and Browne]

The Parker-Browne expedition left Seward, on Resurrection Bay, late in
January, 1912, and after nearly three months' travel, relaying their
stuff forward, they crossed the range under extreme difficulties, being
seventeen days above any vegetation, and reached the northern face of
the mountain on 25th March. The expedition either missed the pass near
the foot of the Muldrow Glacier, well known to the Kantishna miners, by
which it is possible to cross from willows to willows in eighteen miles,
or else avoided it in the vain hope of finding another. They then went
to the Kantishna diggings and procured supplies and topographical
information from the miners, and were thus able to follow the course of
the Lloyd party of 1910, reaching the Muldrow Glacier by the gap in the
glacier wall discovered by McGonogill and named McPhee Pass by him.

Mr. Belmore Browne has written a lucid and stirring account of the
ascent which his party made. We were fortunate enough to secure a copy
of the magazine in which it appeared just before leaving Fairbanks, and
he had been good enough to write a letter in response to our inquiries
and to enclose a sketch map. Our course was almost precisely the same as
that of the Parker-Browne party up to seventeen thousand feet, and the
course of that party was precisely the same as that of the Lloyd party
up to fifteen thousand feet. There is only one way up the mountain, and
Lloyd and his companions discovered it. The earthquake had enormously
increased the labor of the ascent; it had not altered the route.

A reconnoissance of the Muldrow Glacier to its head and a long spell of
bad weather delayed the party so much that it was the 4th June before
the actual ascent was begun--a very late date indeed; more than a month
later than our date and nearly three months later than the "Pioneer"
date. It is rarely that the mountain is clear after the 1st June; almost
all the summer through