With the Sierra Club in 1.914 



253 



foot deep and a foot and a half across. This and its soft- 

 ness made travel hard enough for those in front, and the 

 leaders sometimes sank knee deep; those in the rear found 

 merely a hard-beaten boulevard for their feet. The sun was 

 blazing, and we were almost too warm, save for toes refrig- 

 erated by waits while we gathered breath for the long 

 ascent in the thin air. 



At last, after a more or less cautious scramble on hands 

 and knees over the loose rock chimney, we were at the 

 top, 13,090 feet above sea-level. There was no sea in sight, 

 but everything else in geography seemed to be there; vast 

 snow fields, desert, lakes, the huge red bulk of Dana, 

 wicked-looking Ritter, and everywhere a wilderness of 

 jagged peaks. At first, however, we seemed less absorbed 

 in these wonders than in the joyous chopping together 

 in our tin cups of snow and several gallons of strawberry 

 jam, and the subsequent consumption of this "Sierra sun- 

 dae." Of the seventy-nine who left the base camp, sev- 

 enty-eight reached the top, and this language does not in- 

 dicate a casualty, but a mere decision to halt by the way- 

 side. 



Our perfect man-behind-man formation on the way up the 

 mountain was utterly abandoned on the way down, perhaps 

 on the assumption that the main object in life was to ascend 

 Lyell and that one's after career could be of little conse- 

 quence. In spite of a certain regrettable damp softness of 

 the snow, the party slid with whoops of joy, down what- 

 ever slope they might find, by a simple, untrammeled 

 method for which they would unfailingly have been spanked 

 by their mothers in years agone. But Sierra suiting is 

 stout, and we risked all at a plunge, as it were, and did not 

 mind a resultant cool freshness attendant on the rest of our 

 journey. And we had to wade through torrents, in any case. 

 By two o'clock we were eating luncheon at the base camp, 

 and we had a real supper — think of exotic clam chowder in 

 the meadows — with the main party. 



The acme of our dramatic season was the vaudeville per- 

 formance given towards the end of our stay in Tuolumne 

 Meadows, and the acme of this performance was the origi- 



