The Days of a Man 



D899 



Peak 



west, our first adventure, is a Sierran Rigi-Kulm, 

 revealing an amazing panorama which extends 

 from Whitney and Tyndall on the southeast north- 

 ward to Agassiz's Needles and Mount Lyell at the 

 head of the Yosemite. Our next excursion led to 

 loftier heights. Ascending the river and turning to 

 the north up the steep trail along Bubb's Creek 

 with its boiling cascades, we camped at Bullfrog, 

 a high mountain tarn in the midst of a bare, slicken 

 basin with an elevation of 11,000 feet. And from 

 here, on the way to Kearsarge Pass a sudden 

 University break in the main range we climbed the Uni- 

 Lrnfa" vers ity f California Peak, which, from a vantage 

 point of 13,588 feet, commands a majestic view in 

 every direction. 



Again, leaving Bubb's at the forks of the trail, 

 we came to the deep green East Lake, near which 

 John Muir sketched his unrivaled biography of 

 the Water Ouzel Cine/us "the humming bird 

 of the California waterfalls." East Lake lies at 

 the foot of a great basin once occupied by a glacier 

 from the north side of Mount Brewer, 13,577 feet, 

 the highest peak bounding Kings River Canyon. 

 This depression, mapped by me for the Sierra Club, 

 I called Ouzel Basin, and to each of the streams 

 flowing through (the headwaters of Kings) I gave 

 names of mammals and birds actually found in it. 

 At the side of Ouzel Basin on the left towers a 

 stalwart rock mass, Crag Ericsson, 13,625 feet. 

 To the east of the latter lies the steep, stony, and 

 very fatiguing Harrison Pass, the watershed sepa- 

 rating the Kings and the Kern. Beyond, above 

 timber line, are numerous small lakes; the largest 

 of these Brown called Lake South America, from 



C 652 3 



Ouzel 

 Basin 



