go!

"From Dyea to Sheep Camp was bad enough goin', half-frozen muskeg
(mucky swamp), lyin' under soft snow an' all covered with a tangle o'
thorn-vines climbin' over spraggly berry-bushes. There warn't no
trail. It was cut your way, an' drag! We didn't have no dogs, but
lugged the sleighs ourselves. It's only nine miles as the crow flies,
but it took us four days to make it, with our loads.

"An' then the Chilkoot Pass stuck up in front of us, all black rock
an' white snow, reachin' to the sky, an' clouds hidin' the top. It
seemed like it was a-defyin' of us, well-nigh impossible.

"We'd ha' gone back, sure, but we knew two men had climbed it a'ready,
Georgie Holt in '72, and Dumb MacMillan, in '80. What they'd done, we
reckoned we could do.

"Sheer rock, she was, all slick an' icy, to begin with; above that,
stretches o' snow-fields on so steep a slope that a false step meant a
snow-slide an' good-bye! crevasses in the snow goin' down below all
knowin', an' mostly covered over wi' light snow so's you couldn't see
'em; an', near the top, a pile o' loose an' shaky rocks built up like
a wall, straight as the side of a house, an', in some spots, leanin'
over. That was the Chilkoot Pass!

"The cold was cruel; a steady wind, nigh to a blizzard, sucked through
the Pass continooal, tearin' a man from his footin.' There was no
shelter, an' high up, no fire-wood.

"There was no trail, neither! We had to go it, blind. An', up that
rock, over them snow-fields, across them crevasses, an', fly-like,
crawling up that wall o' bowlders, we had to drag our dunnage! The
sleighs had to be pulled up, empty. Our sacks o' flour had to be toted
on our backs! An' our bacon an' groceries, enough to last us months!
An' our tools an' cradles! I made five trips to get my stuff
across--an it took me five weeks. Between whiles, I rested, if lyin'
exhausted means rest!

"There was eight of us that started. There was only three when the
stuff was on the summit o' the pass! Two had been crushed by fallin'
rocks. The other three had all disappeared sudden in a crevasse, what
they thought was solid snow givin' down under 'em. Only Red Bill, Bull
Evans an' me was left.

"Mind, there was no trail an' no guide! Holt had been over years
before, but the Indians killed him. Dumb MacMillan went over it twice,
an' never was heard of no more. Me an' my pardners was the third, an',
as I was sayin', o' the eight that started, only three got to the
top."