ree men are
said to have put up five hundred dollars apiece, and the sum thus raised
sufficed for the needs of the party. In February 1910, therefore, Thomas
Lloyd, Charles McGonogill, William Taylor, Peter Anderson, and Bob
Horne, all experienced prospectors and miners, and E. C. Davidson, a
surveyor, now the surveyor-general of Alaska, set out from Fairbanks,
and by 1st March had established a base camp at the mouth of Cache
Creek, within the foot-hills of the range.

Here Davidson and Horne left the party after a disagreement with Lloyd.
The loss of Davidson was a fatal blow to anything beyond a "sporting"
ascent, for he was the only man in the party with any scientific bent,
or who knew so much as the manipulation of a photographic camera.

[Sidenote: The Sourdough Climb]

The Lloyd expedition was the first to discover the only approach by
which the mountain may be climbed. Mr. Alfred Brooks, Mr. Robert
Muldrow, and Doctor Cook had passed the snout of the Muldrow Glacier
without realizing that it turned and twisted and led up until it gave
access to the ridge by which alone the upper glacier or Grand Basin can
be reached and the summits gained. From observations while hunting
mountain-sheep upon the foot-hills for years past, Lloyd had already
satisfied himself of this prime fact; had found the key to the
complicated orography of the great mass. Lloyd had previously crossed
the range with horses in this neighborhood by an easy pass that led
"from willows to willows" in eighteen miles. Pete Anderson had come into
the Kantishna country this way and had crossed and recrossed the range
by this pass no less than eleven times.

McGonogill, following quartz leads upon the high mountains of Moose
Creek, had traced from his aerie the course of the Muldrow Glacier, and
had satisfied himself that within the walls of that glacier the route
would be found. And, indeed, when he had us up there and pointed out the
long stretch of the parallel walls it was plain to us also that they
held the road to the heights. From the point where he had perched his
tiny hut, a stone's throw from his tunnel, how splendidly the mountain
rose and the range stretched out!

These men thus started with the great advantage of a knowledge of the
mountain, and their plan for climbing it was the first that contained
the possibility of success.

From the base camp Anderson and McGonogill scouted among the foot-hills
of the range for some time before