l62 



Sierra Club Bulletin. 



go straight ahead seemed out of the question." It certainly 

 did look discouraging for a while. With a fall of about 

 fifty or sixty feet, the stream dropped into a narrow, 

 barren gorge about twenty feet wide. At the brink of the 

 fall the canon was about fifty feet wide, with nearly 

 vertical bare walls about two hundred feet high, sloping 

 off then for several thousand feet to the domes on either 

 side. At first as my only escape I planned with my fifty- 

 foot rope and extensions to lower my traps to the dry 

 rocks in the gloomy lower gorge and then descend beside 

 the falls as far as the jagged edges of the horizontal, 

 broken-off strata would permit, jumping the last ten or 

 fifteen feet into the black pool seen below and swimming 

 out. Danger of striking a hidden rock in the pool, 

 getting a cramp in the icy water or not being able to 

 continue down the narrow gorge after all made me hesi- 

 tate. I then reverted to my original idea that the wild 

 animals had a trail down this canon and I ought to find 

 it. I went higher up on the right or west side of the 

 cafion, where a little vegetation in an apparent crevice 

 masked the surface of the rock and found the trail that I 

 had expected. There were two ticklish places where the 

 narrow footway on the sheer wall of the gorge was a 

 smooth, bear-poHshed granite shelf less than a foot wide, 

 with a ledge about six inches thick only four feet above 

 a bunch of scrubby live oak. One had to bend low and 

 secure a very insecure hand-hold on the thick, smooth 

 stratum overhead. A hundred feet directly below the 

 torrent roared angrily over its steep, uneven, barren 

 course. These two points passed and the '']u.m^mg-o^^ 

 Place" or second of the three obstacles was conquered. I 

 then returned, monumented the trail plainly through here 

 and found unmistakable evidence that Mr. John Bear had 

 used this shelf trail to pass by, and not more than one 

 day before. 



The scenery here with its colossal rock effects is always 

 fascinating. One could admire the silent, overpowering 

 majesty of it all, or he could expect his head to be knocked 



