52 



Sierra Club Bulletin 



There we get away from the crowd, the automobile, the tele- 

 phone, and the newspaper. It may be for a few days only — it 

 seems like a very few days — but it is away. We can forget 

 everything, do forget everything many of us, and revel in the 

 joy of being free among the mountains ! 



On our last trip to San Gorgonio, the club camped two nights 

 at Barton Flats, on the north slope of the mountain, in the up- 

 per Santa Ana Valley. The forest there reminds me of the 

 moist woods of the Sierra Nevada. There are great silver firs, 

 immense incense cedars, and sugars and yellow pines in pro- 

 fusion, among which Barton Creek seeks a tortuous course, 

 spreading here and there into separate rills, only to unite again 

 farther down the slope. The spot is a greenery, a fernery, a 

 forest retreat ! But I'm afraid it is not for long; an automobile 

 road now runs into its very depths ! 



The third night vv^as spent at Dry Lake, eight miles nearer 

 the mountain-top than Barton Flats, from which it is reached 

 by an indifferent, elusive trail — indeed, so elusive in places as to 

 allow its would-be followers to wander off through marshy 

 cienagas, or to wander along rocky ridges, which nearly all of 

 us proceeded to do, each after his own separate, independent, 

 and self-willed opinion of what was the best way. So in due 

 time — that is to say, from about noon until after nightfall — we 

 all arrived at the camp among the lodgepole pines on the shore 

 of Dry Lake, some three thousand feet below the crown of old 

 San Gorgonio. 



When Dry Lake was given its name it no doubt deserved it ; 

 but a levee thrown up across its outlet has converted it into a 

 lake in fact as well as in name. Its setting is beautiful, lying 

 as it does at the foot of the last steep rise of San Gorgonio and 

 solidly framed by the forest of lodgepole pines. The long 

 crowning ridge of the mountain rises on the southeast, across 

 the lake from where our camp was located, and the picture it 

 made in the evening glow, with its reflection in the lake, be- 

 came one of the most vivid and enduring images that are stored 

 away in my memory. Patches of snow on the long gray ridge 

 and the dark-green forest belt at the base furnished contrasts 

 to further enhance the scene. A pink-flowered knotweed, 

 growing in solid masses, covered large patches of the shallower 



