Grand Canons of Tuolumne and Merced. 235 



THE GRAND CANONS OF THE TUOLUMNE AND 

 THE MERCED. 



By Marion Randall Parsons. 



The Sierra Club camp for the Outing of 1907 had 

 been estabHshed in the Tuolumne Meadows more than 

 a week before we started, seventy strong, on the trip 

 into the canon of the Merced, a region which none of us 

 had ever visited before. With a pack-train of twenty 

 animals we left camp early one morning, taking the 

 Lyell trail as far as Rafferty Creek, and there leaving 

 it to follow an old sheep trail leading up its west bank 

 to Tuolumne Pass. Near the top of the pass the trail 

 emerges from the scattering forest of tamaracks into a 

 broad meadow-land, walled on either side with snow- 

 streaked mountains. Half a mile of boulder-strewn coun- 

 try, still partly covered with snow, brought us to the base 

 of Vogelsang Peak, where the trail turns, crossing the 

 divide to the north of the peak and striking down the 

 canon of the McQure Fork. 



The McClure Fork rises in a grim, desolate cirque 

 between McClure, Vogelsang, and Florence. Passing 

 rapidly through the alpine meadow region and the rocky 

 home of the juniper, it races down to meet the madcap 

 companions that join it among the hemlocks and tall 

 firs that border its lower reaches. A long zigzag brought 

 us down at last to the Merced Canon, here a level floor 

 covered with a thick growth of conifers and aspens. 

 The fir grove where camp was established was full of 

 dusky shadows, but the blazing camp-fires, the merry 

 voices, and the moving figures with their barbaric touches 

 of red and green made a busy scene, full of life and stir, 

 in strange contrast to the twilight stillness of the woods. 

 A sub-forest of brakes stretched beneath the tall shafts 

 of the firs, and a tangle of willows and aspens bordered 

 the river, a quiet, dark, smoothly flowing stream that 



