6o 



Sierra Club Bulletin. 



merits of Tower Rock, with ever-changing play of 

 opalescent light softening its hard, bold countenance into 

 gentle though magnificent repose! Nor did moonless 

 nights leave a slighter impression, for then the lesser 

 lights, in lone possession of the sky, wheeled their blazing 

 constellations among scintillating galaxies of thickly- 

 strewn stars such as dwellers in the lowlands never see. 

 New glories came with the morning, when the Steller 

 jays, self-appointed alarm-clocks, called the sleepers to 

 witness the first rosy shafts of the dawn striking the gray 

 minarets of rock; to watch unseen hands weaving a 

 tapestry of silver and gold down their scarred sides until, 

 amid a rapid and elusive play of spectrum colors, irre- 

 pressible waves of light poured over the eastern ramparts, 

 sifted through the trembUng pines, and started a new day 

 of joyous life in the Kern Canon. But one might as 

 well try to paint the sun with charcoal as attempt to 

 describe adequately the beauty and grandeur that filled 

 those charmed Sierran days and nights. 



One of the motives of the Club's officers in selecting 

 the Kern Canon for last summer's outing was the desire 

 to give mountain-climbers a chance to make the ascent 

 of Mt. Whitney. The second party had arrived at the 

 camp soon after the first, swelling its population to over 

 two hundred. Many had come expressly to join in the 

 dash to " the top of the United States." The distance 

 from the camp to the mountain was about eighteen miles 

 as the crow flies when he has not too much distracting 

 business on the way. But a trail over the extremely 

 corrugated surface of the Sierra Nevada easily doubles 

 an air-line measurement, for it must follow the line of 

 least resistance along the path of rivers, circumvent 



