IDENTIFICATION OF THE GREAT PEAKS OF THE 

 SOUTHERN SIERRA 



By J. N. Le Conte 



AT the present time, when access to the High Sierra has been made 

 jLjLso easy, when we travel the splendid trails built by the Forest 

 Service, the national parks, or the state, or even ride through the 

 alpine passes in motor-cars, it is easy to forget the difficulties en- 

 countered by the pioneers in these regions who had neither map nor 

 even trail to guide them. Yet it was by these very pioneers that all 

 of the principal peaks were explored and named and many of the 

 first ascents were made. To Josiah D. Whitney and his co-workers 

 of the California Geological Survey, William H. Brewer, Clarence 

 King, Charles F. Hoffmann, and J. T. Gardner, belongs the credit 

 of first exploring and mapping the southern High Sierra in 1863 and 

 1864. And again in the seventies John Muir began his studies in the 

 Sierra which carried him over practically its entire extent. The origi- 

 nal naming of the great peaks has now become a matter of great in- 

 terest to those familiar with our mountains, for data in this connec- 

 tion are being rapidly lost sight of, original records on mountain-tops 

 are all lost, and even the identification of some of the peaks named 

 by the Whitney Survey is a matter of difficulty. 



The exploring party of the California Geological Survey entered 

 the Yosemite region in the summer of 1863, followed the Indian 

 trail past Lake Tenaya, and made headquarters in the Tuolumne 

 Meadows near Soda Springs. From that point the region from Lyell 

 to Conness was mapped. Lack of time prevented a southerly exten- 

 sion of the work, but the following year the party, in charge of Pro- 

 fessor Brewer, entered the Sierra by way of the divide between the 

 Kings and Kaweah rivers, pushed across the basin of Roaring River 

 to Mount Brewer, from which point Clarence King worked southeast 

 to Mount Tyndall. They then made their way into the Kings River 

 Canon, and, failing to cross the Granite Basin Divide to the Middle 

 Fork, they crossed the Kearsarge Pass to Independence. The moun- 

 tains were entered again at the head of Rock Creek and Mono Pass. 

 They made their way down Mono Creek to the South Fork of the 



