THE 1920 OUTING 

 HEADWATERS OF THE SAN JOAQUIN AND THE KINGS 

 By Marion Randall Parsons 



IT was like old times in the Sierra Club — new trails to travel, new 

 peaks to climb, camp-sites of unknown possibilities, daily mile- 

 age estimated on a Colby-plus basis, more than an element of uncer- 

 tainty about the pack-train. Dear old dunnageless nights even were 

 not unknown. But let us do no injustice to the pack-train. The 

 mules left nothing to be desired. A little high-spirited and lively- 

 heeled at packing-time, they were none the less well-intentioned, 

 ambitious, hard-working mules. Render unto Csesar those kicks, 

 etc., as the Colonel would say. 



The Colonel himself was not of those old times. Successor to Toy 

 Gong and Charley Tuck, he marked a new era in our culinary his- 

 tory. The crowd appreciated his dinners, but at first did not quite 

 understand the Colonel. We have the Colonel's word for it that the 

 crowd "sure perplexed" him. It was too helpful, for one thing. He 

 wasn't used to having people really mean it when they offered help, 

 and it perplexed him, and perhaps he got irritable, so he said. We 

 do seem to remember a wordy barrage or two, even a barbed-wire 

 entanglement of cinch-ropes, from behind which the Colonel, de- 

 fended from encroaching, helpful womankind, dispensed his wares 

 of hot cakes and trout. But all such feelings passed, and in the end 

 the Colonel left us our friend as we were his. 



Huntington Lake, our first camp, was destined to become more 

 familiar than we had anticipated. For the first time in outing his- 

 tory we were on the ground ahead of the pack-train. The barges that 

 ferried us across the lake from the Lodge to our camp were uphol- 

 stered with bales of hay, in hopeful token that mulish co-operation 

 was at least expected ; but the pack-train itself was somewhere along 

 the trail betweei;! Dinkey and Shaver, five days behind its schedule. 

 Several thousand pounds of provisions which should have been 

 cached ahead of us in Evolution Basin were deposited in the snows 

 of Granite Pass, quite outside the range of our itinerary, while the 

 lesser amount destined for Mono Crossing was still at Huntington 



