From Kern Canon to Giant Forest. 99 



FROM KERN CANON TO GIANT FOREST. 



THE CHRONICLE OF A KNAPSACK TRIP. 

 By Wm. Conger Morgan. 



When the Sierra Club left the Kern Canon last summer, 

 the main party, with the pack animals, climbed the steep 

 trail up Coyote Creek, rambled through the alpine mead- 

 ows at Farewell Gap, made camp in the shadow of Saw 

 Tooth Peak and again at Redwood Meadows. But two 

 score of us trampers took the short-cut up over the 

 Chagoopa Plateau, across the Big Arroyo and up Lost 

 Canon, over Black Rock Pass and down Cliff Creek 

 Canon to the Giant Forest, where, joining with the main 

 party, we heard for the last time that season the ''call of 

 the wild." It is the log-book of this latter journey which 

 is appended here, for brief and simple as was the trip, yet 

 it was replete with the pleasure that dwells beneath the 

 evergreen shade of the mountain-sides. 



The excitement began some time before the start was 

 made when the captains of the four parties were sum- 

 moned before the commissary general to receive their 

 allotted provisions, for on a knapsack trip, ten is about all 

 that can be accommodated in one mess. Every member 

 of each party was present for the apportionment of pro- 

 visions and outfit among the individual members, the 

 packs were made up, and all was ready for the start. 



The pack-train put us up the first steep fifteen hundred 

 feet of the trail leading up Funston Creek to the Cha- 

 goopa Plateau, and late in the afternoon of July 21st we 

 shouldered our burdens and the trip began. There was 

 much shifting of packs and adjusting of straps as we 

 ascended to the Upper Funston Meadow, and to some of 

 us the first three hours' tramp seemed longer than any 

 of the succeeding days, lovely as it was in the evening 



