up from "The Land of Little Rain!' 113 



Monday Evening. 



The storm with its rear guard of slowly passing clouds 

 has gone. Now we shall follow. A cold wind, however, 

 is on to-night. 



I went to Lone Pine Camp this afternoon to bring up 

 more flour and provisions, and a light tent. Our tracks 

 of yesterday were drifted over in many places. The 

 tracks of rabbits and squirrels were seen. Marsh says 

 that a large snowshoe rabbit lives in the hills near 

 Lone Pine. Their feet are covered with a mass of fur, 

 and fluffy fur covers their bodies. Nature seems to have 

 provided for them. I heard a bird to-day, but no more 

 drumming grouse. This seems to be their mating season. 

 As I was returning through Ibex Meadows, a faint halloo 

 came floating to me down the mountain. My two hours' 

 leave had elapsed, and Marsh was signaling. How weird 

 the sound of the distant voice is when nature is so silent 

 that the cracking of a twig sets the blood to surging. 



Despite my weariness, I ascended the palisade to 10,800 

 feet to obtain a photograph of Lone Pine Pass and Crag 

 Winchell. From this point the crag becomes a knife- 

 edged spur terminating in a slight pinnacle. The wind 

 had now risen and was sending the dry snow curling over 

 the faces of the granite domes of which the palisade con- 

 sists. The track of yesterday was covered, and I seemed 

 to be wading in a mass of meal grown treacherous by 

 concealing the icy, slanting granite surface beneath. The 

 rope mesh of my Bavarian snowshoes alone made my 

 footing at all secure. 



I finally waded through it all to where the last rugged 

 but battered tamarack defied the wind. Stout it was but 

 short, and its few limbs symmetrically grouped like an 

 umbrella top. Here on a boulder overhanging Mirror 

 Lake I placed my camera. There was small space to 

 work on, and the wind was stinging. Care had to be con- 

 stantly exercised not to step backward into the yawning 

 fissures nor slip forward into the amphitheatre below. I 

 finally sat down on the boulder with the tripod astride 



