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Sierra Club Bulletin. 



men of the party — had been deliberating and holding a 

 council in the interim, and had decided that they had 

 no right to take the risks which appeared necessary to 

 complete the climb. Instead of attempting to follow us, 

 they climbed a prominence which formed the summit 

 of the eastern wall of the gorge. This they said was 

 " Married Men's Peak," and jokingly called themselves 

 " moral heroes." 



Finally, at 1 1 o'clock, my brother and I scrambled on 

 the summit (14,055 feet), and no longer looked on things 

 above, but rather on things beneath — and far beneath. 

 Circling all about us, three thousand feet below us, west 

 of the main crest, lay the great granite amphitheater 

 four miles in diameter, covered with large patches of 

 snow and lakes of various sizes and shapes. Lake Deso- 

 lation was just below us. This amphitheater is bounded 

 on the south and southwest by the snow-tongue ridge 

 over which we had passed, on the west by the Pinnacles, 

 and on the northwest by a range midway between us and 

 the Abbott group. These form an inner semicircle, beyond 

 which is another concentric one, inclosed by the Evolution 

 Group, the Goddard Divide, the divide between the South 

 Fork of the San Joaquin and the King's River, the Seven 

 Gables, and the Abbott Group, commencing on the south 

 and extending far around to the north. Beyond the Abbott 

 Group lay Red Slate and Red-and- White peaks. To the 

 eastward the mountain dropped off a sheer precipice for 

 two thousand feet or more into a huge snow amphitheater. 

 From there the snow slopes at a steep angle several thou- 

 sand feet further, and then a rolling volcanic country 

 completes the balance of the distance down to the town of 

 Bishop, more than ten thousand feet below us and about 



