148 



AMERICAN FORESTRY 



You must fish a river to appreciate it. Standing on 

 its edges, leaping from rock to rock, slipping thigh deep 

 at times, wading recklessly to reach some pool or eddy 

 of special promise, searching the rapids, peering under 

 the alders, testing the pools; that's the way to make 

 friends with a river. You study its moods and its ways 

 as those of a mettlesome horse. 



And after a while its spirit seeps through and finds 

 your soul. Its personality unveils. A great friendliness 

 unites you, a sense of mutual understanding. There fol- 

 lows the completest detachment that I know. Years and 

 the worries disap- 

 pear. You and the 

 river dream away 

 the unnoted hours. 



The approach to 

 ( .1 anite Pass en 

 route from the 

 Tehipite Valley to 

 the Kings River 

 Canyon was noth- 

 ing short of mag- 

 nificent. We enter- 

 ed a superb cirque 

 studded with lake- 

 lets. It was a noble 

 setting. We could 

 see the pass ahead 

 of us on a fine 

 snow-cro wned 

 bench. We ascend- 

 ed the bench and 

 found ourselves, 

 not in the pass, but 

 in the entrance to 

 another cirque, also 

 lake-studded, a lof- 

 tier, nobler cirque 

 encircling the one 

 below. 



But surely we 

 were there. Those 

 inspiring snow- 

 daubed heights 

 whose sharply ser- 

 rated edges cut 

 sharply into the sky 

 certainly marked the supreme summit. Our winding 

 trail up sharp rocky ascents pointed straight to the shelf 

 which must be our pass. An hour's toil would carry us 

 over. 



The hour passed and the crossing of the shelf dis- 

 closed, not the glowing valley of the South Fork across 

 the pass, but still a vaster, nobler cirque, sublime in 

 Arctic glory ! 



these uplifting granite peaks, concentrating combined 

 effort upon this unyielding mass and that, and, beaten 

 back, pouring down the tortuous main channel with 

 rendings and tearings unimaginable ! 



Granite Pass is astonishing! We saw no less than 

 four of these vast concentric cirques, through three of 

 which we passed. And the Geological Survey map dis- 

 closes a tributary basin to the east inclosing a group of 

 large volcanic lakes and doubtless other vast cirque-like 

 chambers. 



We took photographs, but knew them vain. 



A long, dusty de- 

 scent of Copper 

 Creek, which Mc- 

 Cormick correctly 

 diagnosed as some- 

 thing fierce, 

 brought us, near 

 day's end, into the 

 exquisite valley of 

 the South Fork of 

 the King's River 

 the Kings River 

 Canyon. 



Still another 

 Yosemite ! 



It is not so easy 

 to differentiate the 

 two canyons of the 

 Kings. They are 

 similar and yet 

 very different. Per- 

 haps the difference 

 lies chiefly in de- 

 gree. Both lie east 

 and west, with 

 enormous rocky 

 bluffs rising on 

 either side of rivers 

 of quite extraordi- 

 nary beauty. Both 

 present carved and 

 castellated walls of 

 exceptional bold- 

 ness of design. 

 Both are heavily 

 and magnificently 

 wooded, the forests reaching up sharp slopes on either. 

 Both possess to a marked degree the quality that lifts them 

 above the average of even the Sierra's glacial valleys. 

 But the outlines here seem to be softer, the valley floor 

 broader, the river less turbulent. If the keynote of the 

 Tehipite Valley is wild exuberance, that of the Kings 

 River Canyon is wild beauty. The one excites, the other 



AN IMPOSING EXAMPLE OF NATURE'S SYMMETRICAL SCULPTURE 



Probably one of the most wonderful specimens of dome topography in the world, Tehipite 

 Dome rises in sheer majesty three thousand eight hundred feet high from the Middle Fork of 

 the Kings River. 



lulls. The one shares with Yosemite the distinction of 

 How the vast glaciers that cut these titanic carvings extraordinary outline, the other shares with Yosemite 

 must have swirled among these huge concentric walls,? the distinction of extraordinary charm, 

 pouring over this shelf and that, piling together around I The greater of these two canyons is destined to be- 







