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Sierra Club Bulletin 



effort as Rancheria Mountain. Climbing up a gradual slope 

 through a stately forest of silver fir, one comes suddenly 

 upon rocky crags. From the crest of these the very earth 

 opens up into one vast blue abyss — Tuolumne Gorge. 

 Swinging one's feet over a 5,000-foot drop one looks across 

 to a mighty wall, itself more than a mile high, moulded in 

 huge relief by the purple ravines, and decorated with irreg- 

 ular and vari-colored patterns of shrubbery and forest. Still 

 farther beyond loom the cruel spiked peaks of the Merced 

 and Lyell groups. Up the cafion Lambert's Dome gleams 

 as an inconsequential lump in an ocean of huge peaks. To 

 the northeast Conness heaves a vast, forbidding bulk against 

 a billowy sky, while further westward the jagged Saw Tooth 

 stands ferocious and defiant. Rancheria Mountain is prac- 

 tically the box seat to the entire Sierra display. 



And now the end of the trip seemed in sight. We were 

 to have but one more real camp, that at Hetch Hetchy. 

 From this point on, people seemed more keenly appreciative 

 of each bright hour, began to speak of the end, and of 

 work, and of what they would order if they should find 

 themselves with unlimited means in a good restaurant. The 

 evening campfires became even more spontaneous, infor- 

 mal, with just that shade of regret, that sense of imminent 

 end that makes happiness keener. 



And all too soon, after a trembling moment of hope and 

 fear on the automatic (sic) ferry, we were in our last camp 

 in Hetch Hetchy, in that marvelous little valley, not so 

 grand as Yosemite, but more luxuriant and quite as beauti- 

 ful, with a gentler loveliness; there were reaches of wide 

 green river overhung with trees, where a cataract foams 

 with crashing laughter into a round emerald pool, set about 

 with luminous azaleas, and where great falls plunge down 

 from lofty cliffs above wide meadows. That our feet walked 

 these paths and our eyes saw these things, we specially 

 thank the gods, for much of this glory is soon to be "erased 

 like an error and cancelled," offered up a living sacrifice 

 on Utility's already prosperous altars. 



Time speeds fast now. The last campfire comes, and we 

 lie about it among old companions and new-made friends; 



