Destination Valdez: The Summit

The Summit

After weeks, sometimes more than a month, on the glacier, the prospectors finally reached the steep summit pitch -- the most difficult they had encountered. Margeson in his Experiences of Gold Hunters in Alaska describes how first they relayed their lighter supplies up the top by each person carrying a bag of flour a hundred yards then passing it on to the next person.

For heavier equipment they again had to resort to the rope and pulley. Margeson writes: "We stretched one thousand feet of rope, and sent fifteen men to the top, who seizing hold of one end of the rope, came down, thus drawing up a sled load of ten to twelve hundred pounds on the other end."

Schrader commented on the prospector's commitment: "Both upon the summit and at its foot were temporary camps of considerable size, and accompanying them large caches of supplies, of which the owners might well be proud, for they represented unusual value in the form of sever labor and hardship. . ."

Those who reached the Summit did have a feeling of accomplishment and as they looked down into the forested valley below, Neal Benedict described it as "God's country," while Lute Guiteau referred to it as "A garden of Eden." Nebraskan politician and real estate developer, George Hazelet wrote in his diary: "Moses-like we, Jack and I, have been to the top of the Mountain and viewed the promised land."

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