Down Tenaya Canon. 



157 



ing so much as nearby field artillery at a sham battle, 

 followed by a rattle as of pistol shots. I stood up inter- 

 estedly and strained my eyes for sparks in the direction of 

 the uproar from this invisible conflict, but could see noth- 

 ing. I had noticed as I strolled along the banks of the 

 stream that the boulders looked strangely bruised as if a 

 giant blacksmith with a hundred-pound sledge-hammer 

 had struck them, not a million years ago or one year ago, 

 but an hour ago. The granite might be elsewhere almost 

 red from exposure to the weather, while the bruised 

 place, always facing the crumbling cliffs, was as fresh 

 and white as if a stone mason had just finished dressing 

 off the discoloration. After my night's entertainment I 

 guessed the cause. I found these disquieting evidences of 

 rock avalanches all along the canon on the west side. 



At the end of Glacial Valley the stream made on August 

 15th a steep Silver Apron about six hundred feet high. 

 In early spring, with bankful stream, this probably could 

 be called a "thousand-foot waterfall," the convexity of 

 the rocky surface being masked by the bounding water 

 and spray. With the help of their rope the young men of 

 1894 evidently went down the almost perpendicular wall 

 of the gorge on the west side of this fall. I reconnoitered 

 the situation here carefully and thought I preferred a 

 route on the less precipitous east side. The following 

 day I successfully went over this new route of mine with- 

 out a rope, one thousand feet down, and then tried to 

 climb the thousand feet up the steeper rope route, but 

 after reaching the level of the brink of the fall had to 

 give up on account of a nearly vertical, impassable gran- 

 ite surface of twenty feet. I descended a little and made 

 my way up through the great talus blocks and brush in 

 a side gorge and thence over the west spur at the portal 

 of the valley back to my camp. There are thus three 

 feasible ways of descending this the first great obstacle. 



The way that I prefer and used finally went up over a 

 mass of compacted snow about five hundred feet wide by 

 six hundred feet long, on the east side of the valley, to 



