290 



Sierra Club Bulletin. 



THE MT. RITTER KNAPSACK TRIP. 



By Francis M. Fultz. 



Late in July seventy of the Sierra Club were camping 

 near Lake Merced, a mountain-hemmed stretch of the 

 Merced River some ten or twelve miles beyond the 

 Yosemite and about three thousand feet higher. They 

 had "hiked" from the main camp at the Tuolumne 

 Meadows over snowfields lying on the ten-thousand-foot 

 pass of Vogelsang and down the canon of the cataract 

 torrent of McClure's Fork. 



For all its altitude, they found the walled-in valley 

 around Lake Merced was summer-land. But the summer- 

 land was bordered by spring, for the mountain walls 

 still wore their crowns of snow, from which everywhere 

 silver streams dropped down in cascades and waterfalls. 

 Beneath the line of snow the bare granite walls glinted 

 in the sunlight, excepting where crack or crevice gave 

 scant opportunity for a dark evergreen to establish its 

 home and where some shelf or gentler slope furnished 

 space for a thin fringe of larger trees. The floor of 

 the valley is timbered. Some places the forest is open, 

 w4th great yellow pines and balsam firs stretching their 

 crowns high heavenward and having at their feet a carpet 

 of ferns and flowers. Along the streams are dense 

 thickets of young cedars and by the lake a fringe of 

 aspens. 



Truly Lake Merced is a glorious place to camp, and 

 the Sierra Club enjoyed it to the utmost. But they were 

 camping on schedule time, and the schedule called for 

 only three days at Merced. There were other scenes 

 to visit. Most of them first returned direct to the main 

 camp at Tuolumne Meadows. But fifteen of the hardier 

 ones, hearing the irresistible call of the mountains, put 

 their beds and five days' provisions on their backs and 



