The Ascent of Denali (Mount McKinley): A Narrative of the First Complete Ascent of the Highest; Peak in North America — John Shaqi
The Ascent of Denali (Mount McKinley): A Narrative of the First Complete Ascent of the Highest; Peak in North AmericaStuck, Hudson
History
The Ascent of Denali (Mount McKinley): A Narrative of the First Complete Ascent of the Highest; Peak in North America
Stuck, Hudson
McKinley, Mount (Alaska); Mountaineering -- Alaska -- McKinley, Mount; Stuck, Hudson, 1863-1920 -- Travel -- Alaska -- McKinley, Mount
The Muldrow Glacier flows between the peak in the background (Mt.
Brooks) and the ridge just below it.]
[Sidenote: Game and Its Preparation]
Our prime concern at this camp was the gathering and preserving of a
sufficient meat supply for our subsistence on the mountain. It was an
easy task. First Karstens killed a caribou and then Walter a
mountain-sheep. Then Esaias happened into the midst of a herd of caribou
as he climbed over a ridge, and killed three. That was all we needed.
Then we went to work preparing the meat. Why should any one haul canned
pemmican hundreds of miles into the greatest game country in the world?
We made our own pemmican of the choice parts of this tender, juicy meat
and we never lost appetite for it or failed to enjoy and assimilate it.
A fifty-pound lard-can, three parts filled with water, was set on the
stove and kept supplied with joints of meat. As a batch was cooked we
took it out and put more into the same water, removed the flesh from the
bones, and minced it. Then we melted a can of butter, added pepper and
salt to it, and rolled a handful of the minced meat in the butter and
moulded it with the hands into a ball about as large as a baseball. We
made a couple of hundred of such balls and froze them, and they kept
perfectly. When all the boiling was done we put in the hocks of the
animals and boiled down the liquor into five pounds of the thickest,
richest meat-extract jelly, adding the marrow from the bones. With this
pemmican and this extract of caribou, a package of erbswurst and a
cupful of rice, we concocted every night the stew which was our main
food in the higher regions.
[Illustration: Some heads of game killed at the base camp.]
[Sidenote: The Instruments]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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