Milestone Mountain md a New Kings-Kern Pass. 3 



narrow lake which fills up the canon below on the Kings 

 River side.* 



The feasibility of a route around the lake and down this 

 canon to a point of juncture with the trail that now follows 

 up the easterly branch of the Roaring River needs to be 

 thoroughly investigated. After our Outing was over, Mr. 

 Abernathey, of Porterville, at my suggestion, visited it, tak- 

 ing burros from the Kern side up the Kern-Kaweah to the 

 very summit of the pass. He examined a route down the 

 Kings side and reported it feasible to build a trail with the 

 expenditure of considerable money. Our trail-building 

 crew, which traveled in advance of the main party this 

 year, made quite a beginning on a trail from Junction 

 Meadow on the Kern up into the Kern-Kaweah. A trail 

 through this pass would bring Mount Whitney two days 

 nearer Kings River Canon and open up a magnificent -'^gion 

 along the Kings-Kern divide. ^ 



I had always been attracted to the Kern-Kaweah and 

 Milestone Bow region ever since reading the late Professor 

 Dudley's account of his visit there,f and our view that day 

 of Milestone Mountain from the summit of the unnamed 

 peak which forms a portion of the westerly wall of the 

 cirque of Milestone Bow, stimulated my desire to attempt 

 its ascent. On returning to our Kern-Kaweah camp that 

 afternoon I persuaded Mr. Robert M. Price and Mr. Francis 

 P. Farquhar to remain there overnight with me and start 

 out early the next morning with Milestone as our goal. 



The early dawn found us climbing up out of the Kern- 

 Kaweah Canon, following close to the stream which tumbles 

 down from Milestone Basin. After the first steep ascent 

 the stream flows for some distance along the nearly level 

 floor of a ''hanging valley" carpeted with thick plushy 

 alpine sedge grass. Passing up this valley some distance, 

 we looked back over its level floor and winding stream with 

 striking groiips of foxtail pines standing guard on each side. 

 The foreground furnished a picturesque setting for the dark 



* This lake does not appear on the United States topographical sheet, 

 t "The Kaweah Group," Vol, II, p. 185, Sierra Club Bulletin. 



