i6 



Sierra Club Bulletin. 



THE KERN RIVER OUTING OF 1912. 



By Frederic Bruce Johnstone and Elsie Leale Johnstone. 



On one of those delightful days in April which come even in 

 Chicago, we fell to talking of our plans for the summer. CaH- 

 fornia, the Maine coast, and the Wisconsin woods, each in turn 

 w^as debated, but without decision. Then in came a loyal son 

 of Berkeley, bringing maps of the Sierra Nevada and tales of 

 the trampers who thither made their annual pilgrimage. We 

 joined the Sierra Club by telegraph, and one week later, on 

 receipt of the preliminary announcement of the 19 12 Outing, 

 began our preparations by memorizing that document. 



On Sunday, the 23rd day of June, we arrived in San Fran- 

 cisco, and three days later boarded the Sierra Club special at 

 the Oakland Mole, and the Outing had begun. Springville was 

 reached at four o'clock the next morning. The bolder spirits 

 started bravely on foot, but by far the greater number preferred 

 to take advantage of the wagon road, the last we were to see for 

 many a day, and drive the first eight or nine miles to the forks 

 of the Tule River. It was a pretty drive into the foothill canon, 

 with its wooded sides, where the stately yuccas stood like 

 white-garbed sentries, but it was with eagerness that, about 

 eight o'clock, we climbed down from the stages and struck off 

 upon the trail. Our way wound up and up into the foothills, 

 hot and dusty enough, but not at all the unbearable ordeal that 

 had been promised, especially when relieved by little rests at 

 the crossings of the stream and by that cheering roadside hos- 

 pitality which we learned to associate with the members of the 

 Sierra Club, but which seemed on that first day, to a tenderfoot, 

 the work of ministering angels. At last, hot and dusty, footsore 

 and weary, after our nine-mile climb, we reached Nelsons, 

 where we were to camp for the night. Still it is not the dust 

 nor the blisters that linger in the mind, but the bath at the 

 running stream, the first line-up for camp supper, the first 

 camp-fire, when a letter of greeting from John Muir was read 

 which set us all in tune with the spirit of the mountains, and 

 at the end, that first wonderful night under the stars. 



