ending the Yentna
River, it reached a point upon the Tokositna Glacier beyond which
progress was impossible, and returned to Cook Inlet and disbanded.
Parker returned to New York, and Cook proposed that Browne should lay in
a needed supply of game while he, with a packer named Barrill, should
make what he described as a rapid reconnaissance preparatory to a
further attempt upon the summit the following year. Browne wanted to
accompany him, but was overpersuaded. Cook and Barrill then ascended the
Susitna, struck into the country due south of McKinley, and returned to
Tyonik with the announcement that they had reached the summit. Cook
exhibited a photograph of Barrill standing upon a crag, which he said
was the summit. A long and painful controversy followed upon Cook's
return east with this claim.

In all probability the object of the Parker-Browne expedition of 1910
was as much to follow Cook's course and check his claim as to reach the
summit. The first object was attained, and Herman L. Tucker, a national
forester, was photographed standing on the identical crag upon which
Cook had photographed Barrill four years before. This crag was found
miles south of McKinley, with other peaks higher than its own
intervening. From here the party advanced up a glacier of enormous size
to the very foot of the upper reaches of the mountain's south side, but
was stopped by gigantic snow walls, which defeated every attempt to
cross. "At the slightest touch of the sun," writes Browne, "the great
cliffs literally _smoke_ with avalanches."

The Parker-Browne expedition undertaken in 1912 for purposes of
exploration, also approached from the south, but, following the Susitna
River farther up, crossed the Alaska Range with dog trains to the north
side at a hitherto unexplored point. Just before crossing the divide it
entered what five years later became the Mount McKinley National Park,
and, against an April blizzard, descended into a land of many gorgeous
glaciers. "We were now," writes Belmore Browne, "in a wilderness
paradise. The mountains had a wild, picturesque look, due to their bare
rock summits, and big game was abundant. We were wild with enthusiasm
over the beauty of it all, and every few minutes as we jogged along some
one would gaze fondly at the surrounding mountains and ejaculate: 'This
is sure a white man's country.'"

Of these "happy hunting grounds," as Browne chapters the park country in
his book, Stephen R. Capps of