54 



Sierra Club Bulletin 



On the occasion of another trip to the region, taken early in 

 April, several members of the Sierra Club climbed San Gor- 

 gonio by the Vivian Trail when a large part of the way was 

 under snow. They found the weather conditions of wind and 

 snow so severe at the top that it was with the utmost difficulty 

 they made their way along the summit ridge to the cairn at the 

 highest point. 



We of the Sierra Club in the south consider the trip to Mount 

 San Jacinto the ne plus ultra of our outings. It is one of the 

 hardest — all best things are hardest to obtain — ^yet the crowd 

 usually numbers about fifty, and the entire trip is almost always 

 made without anyone falling behind. (This statement applies to 

 persons, and not to the pack-train carrying dunnage and commis- 

 sary, which on one occasion got lost, leaving the crowd supper- 

 less and bedless one cold night far up on the mountain — for all 

 the world like an experience I once went through on one of the 

 ''big trips" up in the Kern region.) The full account of the 

 trip just parenthetically alluded to would make an interesting 

 article by itself. Here I shall have to forego more than the 

 briefest outline. 



The first night's camp was in Strawberry Valley, one of the 

 most beautiful mountain parks in the world, surrounded by a 

 two-thousand-foot mountain wall, bordered and sprinkled over 

 with Coulter pines, and set with a succession of flowers that 

 runs to a glorious finish in the fall with a display of goldenrod 

 and scarlet-hued zauschnerias. The next day we followed the 

 long trail that goes by the way of Tahquitz Peak, then on to the 

 sky-perched valley of the samie name. There two or three 

 whispering rills gather, joining their forces in an aster-embroi- 

 dered mountain meadow where some lover of solitude, in a 

 year now long away in the past, took up a homestead, built a 

 small cabin, and lived the simple life. The early settler has 

 not lived there for many years, and the cabin is now tumbling 

 to its fall ; but the Httle mountain park is still there in its prim- 

 itive beauty, the asters still sprinkle the meadow, and the mur- 

 muring rills still gather for their journey to the desert sands. 



Beyond Tahquitz Valley the trail led us through a forest of 

 yellow and sugar pines, incense cedars, and white firs, with very 

 little or no grade for a few miles. Then it started upward, and 



