up from ''Tlie Land of Little Rain'' 105 



UP FROM ''THE LAND OF LITTLE RAIN" 

 TO THE LAND OF SNOWS 



BEING THE JOURNAL OF A SLEDGING TRIP UP 

 MOUNT WHITNEY IN WINTER. 



By J. E. Church, Jr. 



Hunter's Camp, 8050 Feet, 

 Thursday, March 2, 1905. 



We are sitting by the campfire after sunset in a gorge 

 on the eastern flank of Mount Whitney at the meeting 

 of the desert and the snows. Huge pines form our can- 

 opy, while the ground is 'covered with pine needles and 

 enormous boulders. The walls of the gorge rise three 

 thousand feet above our heads. How ambitiously that 

 bit of tree life is cHnging beneath a pinnacle to catch 

 the last glint of the western sun! A trout stream is 

 brawling through the snow down in the brush. A large 

 trout was seen to-day vainly attempting to surmount a 

 cascade. A strenuous trip he must have had from the 

 valley five thousand feet below. 



The temperature of 42° F. is refreshing after the jour- 

 ney through the desert. Only yesterday I started south- 

 ward with the argonauts of the twentieth century. They 

 were setting forth to penetrate the depths of the torrid 

 Death Valley, I to scale the frigid mountain-tops. As 

 twilight deepened we parted company. They sped east- 

 ward to the mining camps, I journeyed southward 

 through the night down the long trough of Owens Valley 

 where my companion awaited me. As the waning moon 

 was rising over the high wall of the Inyo we met and 

 journeyed to his home in the little oasis of Lone Pine 

 nestled at the base of Mount Whitney. 



As day dawned, the granite walls of the High Sierra 

 slowly emerged from the shadows. A thin wisp of cloud 

 floated away from the point of Whitney as the sunlight 



