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Sierra Club Bulletin 



that day when 260 human beings, 100 animals, and 18,000 pounds 

 of supplies crossed Muir Pass without one mishap. 



The deepest snow lay on the Kings River side, and the whole 

 party waited to see the first string of mules safely across the pass. 

 From the summit down for more than a mile below Lake Helen the 

 trail was for the most part hidden. The approach on this side was 

 steeper, more abrupt ; the mountains pressed more closely and grim- 

 ly about the carton's head. But once below the first struggling out- 

 posts of albicaulis pines conditions more favorable to plant and ani- 

 mal life quickly reappeared. The dark Palisades on the horizon 

 line, the looming cliffs of Mount Goode and the Black Divide, were 

 softened by the flowers and meadows and beautifully colored tarns 

 of the canon bottom. In spite of its ruggedness there was a warmth, 

 a brightness about this canon in striking contrast to the desolate 

 grandeur of Evolution Lake. Still farther down, looking past the 

 sheer white cliff of Mount Langille and the broad swale of Little 

 Pete Meadow, the long caiion vista, ending in a line of shining 

 peaks, brought to mind the Sierra paintings of William Keith. 



Among all the days that we have experienced in our Sierra sum- 

 mers none is more wonderful than this one, when we crossed Muir 

 Pass. The region is the climax of Sierra grandeur — a region of 

 canons rich in vegetation and in wonderfully sculptured walls, of 

 peaks more ruggedly and superbly fashioned even than their gigantic 

 neighbors of the Kern. 



The Sierra Club day that is richest in beauty sometimes proves 

 rich in humor too. Camp in Little Pete Meadow that night is indel- 

 ibly engraved upon some two hundred and sixty memories by the 

 drolleries of its epoch-making feast. Dunnage arrived promptly, but 

 dinner, had it not been for the thousand pounds of provisions and 

 the large dishpans carried down by hand from the cache, might have 

 been both scant and late. But soup, hot corn, and cold corned beef 

 were tonight supplemented by plum pudding, served hot in the can. 

 Serving that pudding indeed, without knives, large spoons, forks, or 

 plates, might have proved a problem had not the fertile brain that 

 guides commissary destinies devised the scheme of counting out the 

 line into groups of ten, giving the head man the can and the rear 

 guard the key and letting them solve the problem for themselves. In 

 spite of the darkness there was no difficulty about keeping these 

 groups of ten together. They hummed away toward the firelight like 



