noon
High drifts made the trail difficult . Not once but fifty times Macdonald left the gee-pole to break a way through snow-waves for the sled . The best he could get out of his dogs was three miles an hour , and he knew that there was not another team or driver in the North could have done so well . It was close to noon when he reached a division of the road known as the Fork . One trail ran down to the river and up it to the distant creeks . The other led across the divide , struck the Yukon , and pointed a way to the coast . White drifts had long since blotted out the track of the sled that had preceded him .