ON TOP OF CALIFORNIA, 
D. M. LADD. 
The sharp clanging that gradually grew 
into a roar loud enough to have recalled 
the 7 sleepers from the land of dreams, 
was the breakfast gong in the vigorous 
hands of Tim, the cook. 
Jack Frost was attending strictly to busi- 
ness, though this was but May. The high- 
er Sierras do not don their summer garb 
until much later in the year. It mat- 
tered not that the air was cold, or that the 
blankets seemed like an earthly paradise; 
for that weazened, taciturn son of the Orient 
was the undisputed autocrat of the camp. 
His motto was: “No comee, no eatee.” 
Brief it undoubtedly was, but we found it 
built for business, since more than one care- 
less fellow had gone into the hills on a 
frosty morning with a light stomach and a 
heavy heart before that epigram was rec- 
ognized as law. It was at last well under- 
stood, and if any of the heavy sleepers did 
not put in a prompt though perhaps undig- 
nified appearance, it was a case for the doc- 
tor, the undertaker, or perchance for both. 
So much for discipline as administered by 
a Chinaman. 
The moonlight still gleamed softly on the 
valley, making the great pines look ghostly 
and unreal in the uncertain changing light 
and shadow. 
The camp was pitched deep in the valley 
of the middle fork, just where a little 
mountain brook, clear as crystal and cold as 
ice, came tearing down to meet the Feather, 
which plunged through Delaney canyon be- 
tween solid walls of granite, twisting and 
turning like a serpent in its effort to get 
through the almost impassable barriers 
placed in its way. The boisterous little 
river eddied around the foot of cliffs and 
burrowed beneath their overhanging shad- 
ows; or rushed out into the light and went 
dancing and singing over boulders that its 
own gentle touch had worn smooth as glass; 
then lingered a moment in some quiet, 
shady pool, and again sprang forward, going 
onward, onward to the sea. 
A few hundred feet upward, the canyon 
walls were bare and brown. Starting at 
the edge of the true wall and. extending to 
the glittering peaks of ice 10,000 feet above 
the blue Pacific, was one unbroken field of 
snow. Was this California, “the land of 
flowers and eternal sunshine?” Yes, but 
the Sierra Nevadas are not the Santa Clara 
valley, nor yet the famous San Joaquin. 
There are numerous climates, both good and 
bad, in the Golden State. 
Breakfast over, there followed a_ hasty 
scramble for guns, cameras and field glasses. 
423 
Just as the sun began to light up the East- 
ern peaks, painting the ice caps with gold 
and saffron, and letting soft, checkered 
shadows fall through the green of the pines 
into the valley below, the climb to the sum- 
mit began. A dozen miles the way slopes 
upward through unbroken forests of pine 
and fir. 
At this early hour the denizens of the 
deep woods were beginning to wake into 
life. All about, on-fallen logs and broken 
rock, chipmunks, small striped and insolent 
of manners, were making their morning 
meal of pine nuts. They paused with heads 
acock and gleaming little eyes, and viewed 
our progress with lively interest, or scam- 
pering fcr cover, stopped every few feet 
to sit jauntily erect, with nervous, twitching 
tails, to stare us in the face like animated 
interrogation points. Big silver-gray squir- 
rels glided swiftly around the pines and 
were lost to sight in an instant. The great 
golden flicker and his brethren, the red- 
heads and sapsuckers, were waking the 
echoes in quest of food. Grouse were 
drumming everywhere on the slopes, but for 
this day, at least, they were to pursue their 
way unharmed, since our party was intent 
on climbing. 
We passed rapidly upward until, within 
a mile of the summit, we began to strike 
the true snowcap. There progress became 
slower and more laborious. Nearly all the 
way there had been a light coating of snow 
but here it was of varying depth. Every 
few rods some careless fellow stepped 
where the crust was thin and went down to 
his armpits, scraping sundry patches of 
skin from shins and wrists in the descent, 
and making side remarks as to the utter 
idiocy of mountaineering. 
At last, and without serious mishap, we 
arrived within a few hundred feet of the 
top. There was where the real fun of the 
trip began. From that point on to the very 
last peak there were cliffs, and they did not 
look as if designed for climbing, either. 
In fact, as an easy means of getting up in 
the world they were distinctly a failure. 
Fortunately the members of the party who 
were looking for ease had remained in 
camp, so up we went, clinging like flies to 
a ceiling, on those seamed and frost riven 
faces. After nearly 4 hours of hard climb- 
ing we stood at last on the uppermost point 
of stone. 
A panorama of valleys spread out before 
our greedy eyes. The picture was one not 
soon to be forgotten. We began to realize 
that the Sierras were 150 miles wide and 
