The Grand Circuit of the Yosemite. 



149 



THE GRAND CIRCUIT OF THE YOSEMITE 

 NATIONAL PARK 



By Lucy Washburn. 



As the American people know little of the value of one 

 of their greatest national parks, those persons who have 

 had the privilege of visiting it owe their fellow-citizens 

 such report as they can give. The want of roads has 

 hitherto kept out the general public, but the Sierra Club 

 of mountain lovers waits not for roads and wagons. With 

 food, minimum clothing, and light down "sleeping-bags," 

 carried on pack animals, the Sierrans tramp freely up and 

 down the mountain trails from camp to camp. 



Behold us, then, filing up out of Yosemite Valley past 

 the famous Vernal and Nevada Falls to the upper canon 

 of Yosemite's river, the Merced, and two or three days 

 later crossing at an altitude of 10,500 feet the pass from 

 the basin of the Merced to that of the Tuolumne. These 

 two parallel river basins and their accompanying heights 

 make up the Yosemite National Park. When our Gov- 

 ernment shall have built a road over this pass, as is per- 

 fectly feasible, and some hostelry shall perch among its 

 beetling snowy crags, the thousands who now see only the 

 Yosemite Valley below it will never fail to see this wild 

 Alpine glory. 



Making our way down the northern slope, the grand 

 upper basin of the Tuolumne River was spread before us, 

 many square miles in extent — the bed of an enormous 

 glacier of old, now taken possession of by a wide forest, 

 thinning as it climbs the granite slopes to bare rock and 

 snow. Before sunset we were camped beside the river in 

 the "Tuolumne Meadows," finest of all Sierra camping- 

 grounds, says John Muir, who knows the Sierras best. 

 Here the uniting branches of the glacier had furrowed 

 widest, and succeeding ages of deposit have produced a 

 level floor, over eight thousand feet above the sea. The 



