Down Tenaya Canon. 



159 



Backward from this outlook referred to the view is 

 unobstructed to the first long Silver Apron of Tenaya 

 Creek at the head of Glacial Valley and up to Colum- 

 bia Finger, 10,700 feet high. To the west are seen the 

 peaks, the chimneys and the snows of Mount Hoffman 

 that I had climbed a few days before — 10,921 feet high — 

 looming up above the fringe of glacier, denuded and 

 polished domes that line the rim of this amphitheater, 

 while to the east, right beside and almost overhanging 

 you, twenty-five hundred feet above, are the scarred and 

 riven cliffs and cirques of Clouds Rest, 9925 feet, and its 

 adjacent bald, granite domes. These latter stand like 

 gigantic, silent, unchanging monuments of the passage 

 of some prodigious ice-cap that gave them their final 

 polish thousands of years ago. Beyond, the tall trees of 

 Yosemite Valley at the foot of Glacier Point can be 

 plainly seen, apparently a few hours away instead of 

 four days' travel as it took me. 



The barren field of great unstable fragments of shim- 

 mering granite that must be traversed here is directly 

 under these peaks from whose surfaces occasional masses 

 are so recklessly hurled, to lie piled about in promiscuous 

 and treacherous confusion below. If one is familiar with 

 the Theory of Probabilities he can cross here in mental 

 comfort, but one not so sure of the soundness of that 

 theory may wonder how it will feel to be struck in the 

 ribs or the nape of the neck by one of those slabs of 

 granite, twenty feet square by two feet thick, diabolically 

 caroming along at about a hundred miles an hour. 



Passing this boulder referred to it seems to be all 

 trouble. When I got below the band of bare granite 

 and felt myself safely into the brush again I found my- 

 self in the midst of the worst talus I ever saw — great mon- 

 oliths among whose arches and arcades I wandered like 

 a lost soul, looking for a way to another great mass of 

 snow that I wanted to reach for a cooling meal. I had 

 to give up my frozen entree for lunch that day, however, 

 and continued my scramble through the thick brush to 



