Down the Kern-Kaweah. 



35 



Supper eaten, we spread our sleeping-bags near the 

 fire, and before the last glow had left the western sky- 

 were far away in the land of dreams, climbing fairy 

 mountains. 



If the night was cold, the morning was colder. First 

 daylight, at ten thousand feet altitude, in an exposed 

 camping-place is no time for loafing. Once mentally 

 persuaded that it will be more comfortable to get up and 

 ''hustle" than to lie shivering in the sleeping-bags, there 

 is no other way but to get the fire started and the coifee 

 boiling — and the quicker the better! In civilization we 

 are sometimes told that coffee is bad for us. Would 

 that the critics could be present at such times as these 

 morning awakenings to watch us while they contentedly 

 sip their cold water! 



The upper reaches of the Big Arroyo lay before us — 

 barren, glacier-swept fields of rock, here a polished, sea- 

 like floor, there dotted with great isolated blocks or 

 mounting upward in giant steps, as if hewn out by some 

 colossal builder. On the right the Black Kaweahs pressed 

 in more closely, until but a narrow chasm-like valley 

 lay between them and the opposing walls of the Western 

 Divide. Triple Divide Peak rose to the northwest, and 

 from it a transverse mountain-wall brought the Big 

 Arroyo to an abrupt end. This rock-bound cup, bare of 

 all vegetation, hemmed in on three sides by the precipitous 

 mountain-walls, was Nine Lake Basin. A number (pre- 

 sumably nine) of lakes nestled in the chilled embrace 

 of the rock floor, fed from the snow-banks that gleamed 

 on every side, and these were wonderfully colored with 

 ever-changing hues as we skirted them — deep purple 

 blues, pure tones of the reflected sky, greens dark as 

 ocean green, and browns as rich as they were unex- 

 plainable. 



But soon we abandoned our enjoyment of the scene 

 and concentrated our attention upon the task of finding 

 a way across the divide into the Kern-Kaweah country. 

 Apparently there were three possible methods of scaling 



