Lawson.] 



The Upper Kern Basin . 



817 



among the party of mountaineers, with whom the writer was 

 assoeiated, than any other piece of mountain landscape except 

 the view from the summit of Mt. Whitney. The cause of this 

 astonishment lay undoubtedly in the startling' contrast which the 

 plain presents to the steeper slopes both above and below it; for 

 it was reached by an arduous, though short, climb from the 

 headwaters of Volcano Creek. This plain has a length of about 

 three miles and is nearly as wide. Its rear is eight miles from 

 Kern Canon. Here it has an altitude of about 11,000 feet. 

 From this level there is a continuous slope by way of a dis- 

 sected, but perfectly distinct, terrace on the north side of the 

 main branch of Rock Creek, and the plateau-like ridge between 

 the North and South Forks of Rock Creek, to the lower edge of 

 the Chagoopa Plateau at the brink of Kern Canon. (Plate 82 b) . 

 The slope is about the same as that on the west of the Kern 

 from the upper part of the Big Arroyo to the western brink of 

 the canon. 



Looking north and northwest from Mt. Guyot a magnificent 

 view is obtained of the northern extension of the Chagoopa 

 Plateau. (Plate 34b). The steep eastern slopes of Red Spur 

 immediately opposite Mt. Guyot are nearly coincident with the 

 steeper cliffs of Kern Canon, and the plateau is not repre- 

 sented on that side, at the eastern revetment of the great Kaweah 

 ridge. In consequence of the elimination of the plateau at this 

 point, the southern area, thus far described, is connected with 

 the northern area by a terrace, at the western base of Mt. Guyot, 

 which is not much more than a mile wide. North of Mt. 

 Guyot and the Kaweah ridge, however, this terrace expands into 

 a broad sloping plain quite analogous in extent and in general 

 characters so that traversed by the Big Arroyo. In this northern 

 expansion of the High Valley land, its best development is on 

 the east side of the Kern, where it extends as a broad terrace 

 about three miles wide, for a distance of about ten miles to the 

 steep glaciated southern slopes of the divide at the head of the 

 Upper Kern Basin ; it even appears to have once been a continu- 

 ous slope to the pass at the head of Tyndall Creek, which looks 

 out over the Great Basin. This broad terrace borders the western 

 flank of the high mountains of the summit divide and grades 



