August 31st

Sunday. Weather today fine. We decided to try and go to g5, spend the night there, doing plane table work in the afternoon and tomorrow, if possible to make an excursion without packs to f2. I carried the canvas bag with blankets, coffee pot, wood, and provisions for three days. McBride carried the plane table, Kodak and some wood. We started about half-past seven. The ice was rough and hummocky. Soon we encountered deep and long crevasses, which a little further were crossed by a second set, requiring us eventually to jump over them; this was very fatiguing with our packs; the crevasses became worse and we soon saw that we would be unable to reach our goal. We stopped having traversed about 1/3 of the distance, and set up the plane table and worked for an hour or so; we then returned to our the nunatak left our packs at the side of the glacier and ascended a mountain just about west of Black Cap and a little higher. We ascended a small glacier, got above the snow line and tied up; we walked about two miles over neve and then struck a snow slope which took us right to the top. The view was beautiful; i made three sketches. We saw to the west the place where Muir Glacier descends by another channel to Glacier Bay, uniting with another large glacier which comes from the west. The top of our mountain was capped with black as are the other peaks in this group. This is due to dykes which run thro' the granite of the main peaks and weather black at the very top. this dyke material seems harder than the granite at the top, but often on the sides it is softer and forms the stream beds.

We had a glorious glissade down the snow slope, about seven hundred and fifty feet. We were an hour going up, and five minutes sliding down. We reached camp at 7:30. This nunatak like G is of hard light grey granite, and is polished and scratched by the glacier, and has great grooved running in the direction of the scratches, (N 25 W). It is also covered with granite debris.

Tonight the sky is not so clear; the few clouds have a somewhat lurid look; so we have put everything in the tent.