164 Sierra Club Bulletin. 



to the bed of the river for the night at the first available 

 point. 



The first encouraging place that I saw was at a great 

 ice bridge, where, sacrificing my laboriously-gained two 

 hundred feet of elevation, I recklessly waded down 

 through brush and dust to the brink of the final precip- 

 itous jagged side of the river's channel. Here I jumped 

 from crag to crag to the roof of the bridge, back to a still 

 lower ledge, to a boulder, to the stream, and I was at 

 least where I could drop my load and get some water for 

 my throat, parched by four hours of thirst-producing 

 physical effort on that sun-baked slope, even if I could 

 never climb out again. 



In the little pocket that I had dropped into, the floor of 

 the creek consisted only of cobbles varying from six 

 inches to ten feet in diameter. I quickly dug out a fairly 

 level place under the shelter of a great block of granite, 

 cut for a bed an armful of beautiful fingerferns, which 

 fortunately grew in great profusion in a damp niche here, 

 and luckily found enough vagrant twigs for a fire and my 

 supper. Just as darkness closed in I hastily completed 

 my domestic arrangements and, lying comfortably 

 stretched out under the stars, began to plan for the 

 morrow. 



I was in a sort of a well. On each side was an almost 

 vertical side of the gorge several hundred feet high. 

 Thirty feet below me was the ice bridge, three hundred 

 and fifty feet long by fifty feet high, spanning the sixty- 

 foot canon like a great flat arch, and eaten away under- 

 neath by melting so that it stood from ten to twenty feet 

 in the clear above the rocky bed of the boisterous stream. 

 Behind me stood a guard of enormous thirty-foot high 

 boulders forming crooked, concealed channels for the 

 water, but offering little encouragement for a climber. 



It would not have been so bad if it were not for the 

 fact that one side of the gorge at this point was about 

 three hundred feet high, perfectly vertical, and every once 

 in a while a missile from above would arrive in my small 



