Sierra Club Bulletin 



Vol. IX San Francisco, January, 1913 No. 1 



MILESTONE MOUNTAIN AND A NEW 

 KINGS-KERN PASS. 



By William Edward Colby. 



Milestone Mountain (13,643 feet) as seen at a distance 

 from many viewpoints of the Upper Kern basin stands out 

 from the sky Hne of the jagged Kings-Kern crest as if it 

 were but a single splinter or spire pointing skyward. To all 

 appearances it would seem unclimbable, and for this reason, 

 I suppose, all the more attractive to the mountaineer. 



We had awakened with the early dawn on a beautiful 

 July day and the rising call announcing that this was the 

 day appointed by the Sierra Club to climb the main Kaweah 

 peak (13,816 feet), was prolonged in an amusing way, for 

 before the chorus of human shouts had died out, it was taken 

 up and continued for several minutes by the coyote inhabi- 

 tants of Chagoopa Plateau, who must have howled them- 

 selves hoarse in their consternation over the unusual pro- 

 ceedings going on in this far-away wilderness. 



Buckling on our armor, which consisted mainly of lunches 

 and knapsacks, we strode out into the dense forest of fox- 

 tail pine and, with considerable regret over our all too short 

 stay, left behind the beautiful campsite beneath the thick 

 shelter of trees beside the shores of Moraine Lake, for many 

 of us upon our descent from the summit were to knapsack 

 on up to the head of the Big Arroyo and cross into the 

 Kern-Kaweah. More than a hundred members of our party 

 registered at the top that day. Others have described in 

 these pages the glorious and commanding view to be ob- 

 tained from this peak, towering as it does so centrally in the 

 Upper Kern basin.* That night we camped in the last 

 straggling grove of pines near the head of the Big Arroyo, 

 just opposite where a deep notch in the canon wall indicates 

 the head of Deer Creek of the Kaweah watershed. Polished 



*See "The Kaweah Group," by the late Prof. Wm. R. Dudley, Vol. II, p. 185, 

 and "With the Sierra Club in the Kern Canon," by M. R, Parsons, Vol. VII, p. 

 23 of the Sierra Club Bulletin. 



