With the Sierra Club in the Kern Canon. 27 



brethren, the rainbow trout, went timidly, and as long as 

 we watched them kept near the bank, swimming close 

 together in a school. 



From the camp on the Big Arroyo a party of forty-six 

 started for the climb of the South, or Red Kaweah Peak. 

 About a mile north of camp the trail led up the canon 

 w^all to the high country to the west known as the Cha- 

 goopa Plateau. The sky was overcast when we started 

 and we had not been long on the trail before the rain 

 overtook us, light, grateful showers that hung sparkling 

 drops in the firs and washed the dust of the trail from 

 the delicate pink pentstemon and purple daisies that 

 brushed against us as we passed. Now the clouds would 

 part, showing a distant snow-capped peak or a patch of 

 brilliant sky ; or again a downpour of heavy drops would 

 drive us to the shelter of a friendly yellow pine or a 

 canopy of tamaracks. 



Our trail, after leading us across the wooded plateau 

 for several miles, all at once emerged from the shadow 

 into the wide, level stretch of country named the Upper 

 Funston Meadow. It was as if the gate to the High 

 Sierra had suddenly been thrown open, for beyond the 

 green meadow with its little meandering stream and its 

 gay carpet of flowers rose the nearby western peaks 

 which the trees had hitherto concealed from us, the Red 

 Kaweah, gray Needham with its steep eastern preci- 

 pice, and the square-topped, unnamed ridge to the south. 



At the ranger's cabin near the southern end of the 

 meadow (a spot endeared by the memory of a fruitful 

 strawberry bed) the trail became quite indistinct. We 

 passed from one flower-studded meadow to another and 

 beyond the third one climbed the roclcy moraine that 

 gives its name to Moraine Lake. As this was our ren- 

 dezvous with the pack train, and as the weather was still 

 inhospitable, we built a great camp fire on the lake shore 

 where, contentedly enough, w^e turned now a wet side 

 to the fire and now a dry side to the rain until we reached 

 a condition of moist steaminess rather suggestive of 

 Turkish baths. 



