l82 



Sierra Club Bulletin 



The view southward from the colossal summit of Mount Hum- 

 phreys is indescribably sublime. Innumerable gray peaks crowd 



loftily into the keen azure, in- 

 finitely adorned with light and 

 shade; lakes glow in lavish 

 abundance around their bases; 

 torrents whiten their denuded 

 gorges; while many a glacier 

 and bank of fountain ^^ez/e leans 

 back in their dark recesses. 

 Awe-inspiring, however, as 

 these vast mountain assemblies 

 are, and incomprehensible as they may at first seem, their origin and 

 the principal facts of their individual histories are problems easily 

 solved by the patient student. 



Beginning with pinnacles, which are the smallest of the suromit 

 mountainets: no geologist will claim that these were formed by 

 special upheavals, nor that the little chasms which separated them 

 were formed by special subsidences or rivings asunder of the rock; 

 because many of these chasms are as wide at the bottom as at the 

 top, and scarcely exceed a foot in depth ; and many may be formed 

 artificially by simply removing a few blocks that have been loosened. 



The Sierra pinnacles are from less than a foot to nearly a thou- 

 sand feet in height, and in all the cases that have come under my 

 observation their forms and 

 dimensions have been deter- 

 mined, not by cataclysmic fis- 

 sures, but by the gradual de- 

 velopment of orderly joints and 

 cleavage planes, which gave 

 rise to leaning forms where the 

 divisional planes are inclined, 

 as in Figure i, or to vertical 

 where the planes are vertical, 

 as in Figure 2. Magnificent crests tipped with leaning pinnacles 

 adorn the jagged flanks of Mount Ritter, and majestic examples of 

 vertical pinnacle architecture abound among the lofty mountain 

 cathedrals on the heads of Kings and Kern rivers. The minarets 

 to the south of Mount Ritter are an imposing series of partially 



Fig. 2 



