48 The Mountaineer 
swift, strong river looked mild mannered enough to those of 
us who remembered it in surging flood four vears ago. The 
water was indeed uncommonly low and the season very far 
advanced. But the fishermen smiled an anticipatory smile and 
were happy. 
Five miles above the point where the trail enters the can- 
yon permanent camp was established under the Grand Sen- 
tinel in a grove of libocedrus and yellow and sugar pines. 
Here four davs passed uneventfully but happily. Fishing 
parties rambled up stream to Mist Falls or down stream to 
Roaring River where, in the shadow of clilfs half a mile high, 
they lunched most luxuriously on rainbow trout. 
But to most of the one hundred and seventy people there 
assembled permanent camp meant little more than a_head- 
quarters, where, between side trips, clean clothing might oc- 
casionally be procured, or boots be cobbled—a place of fabu- 
lous luxury where bread and meat were consumed daily and 
where the construction of one’s personal camp was a serious 
matter involving the collection of pine needles or fir boughs 
instead of that hasty ceremony of casting down one’s sleeping 
bag on the least precipitous, least bouldery spot in sight so 
characteristic of the more nomadic life of the side trips. 
So, only waiting for the Los Angeles division to reach 
camp, nearly seven-eighths of the entire party set forth for a 
week’s sojourn in the high country in the vicinity of Bullfrog 
Lake. 
About two miles above the Grand Sentinel the Kings River 
branches. To the north lies Paradise Valley and the upper 
waters of the Kings, while eastward lies Bubbs Creek Canyon 
and the main traveled trail to Bullfrog and Kearsarge Pass, 
one of the oldest trails in the region. Half way up Bubbs 
Canyon, at the base of the massive pile of sculptured granite 
known as the West Vidette, the stream again forks. The right 
branch, East Creek, leads to the base of Mount Brewer; our 
trail still followed Bubbs Creek eastward. Passing the north- 
ern flank of the West Vidette and that playground for the 
water ouzel, Bubbs Falls, we came to Vidette Meadows where 
we left the main trail to establish camp half a mile up stream 
in an open forest between the Kearsarge Pinnacles and the 
pyvramid-like East Vidette. 
