Sierra Club Bulletin. 



meadow, about the size of Yosemite Valley floor, is not a 

 gorge with precipitous walls^ but an open smiling expanse, 

 surrounded by noble mountains, their snowy summits 

 reposing against the clear blue. We look right up to the 

 main crest of the Sierra, the lowest pass in the tremendous 

 line 10,600 feet high, dominated by peak after peak from 

 twelve thousand to over thirteen thousand feet in height. 

 Shutting in the sides of the valley are lesser peaks, snow- 

 tipped, of a striking variety of sculpture, as indicated 

 by their names — Cathedral Peak, Fairview Dome, Unicorn 

 Peak. Through the grove-bordered meadow of soft 

 grasses and flowers winds the noble Tuolumne River, its 

 clear water brimming to the brink, here in smooth full 

 flow, there in dashing rapids. And in the center of all 

 stands forth "Lambert's Dome," a towering granite 

 pyramid. It has one accessible side, by which you climb 

 to the summit, where you sit hour after hour, entranced by 

 the view of this tremendous amphitheater. 



Here was our glorious home for a week. The majority 

 of the party made, from this center, the ascent of either 

 Mt. Dana or Mt. Lyell, each requiring a two-days' trip 

 and a hard climb, more than recompensed by views over 

 California and Nevada from these sum.mits of the range. 

 For those who chose the meadow and nearer excursions, 

 the days were all too short. And what nights in this pure 

 upper air ! How searching the stars as from our beds on 

 the ground we looked up into the infinite ! What a new 

 divine restfulness after this revelation of the everlasting 

 arms around us ! 



Forty of the strongest and most adventurous of our 

 party, their beds and five days' provisions strapped to their 

 backs, made their way to the Hetch Hetchy down the 

 narrow gorge of the Tuolumne, deep as the Colorado 

 Cafion and slippery with glacier poHsh. The rest of us 

 were well content to swing around by the trail at several 

 miles' distance from the river. It led us over one divide 

 after another, down into and across the deep valleys of 

 the streams flowing into the Tuolumne. The second 



