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Sierra Club Bulletin 



his boat against its gently sloping sides. Humphreys is worthy of a 

 Whymper or a King. 



The stream that drains Desolation Lake empties into Piute Creek 

 through an unnamed lake, popularly called "Golden Trout" Lake, 

 three miles west of Piute Pass. It is a beautiful sheet of water, much 

 resembling the main Kearsarge (or Sunset) Lake, with the added 

 and unusual effect given by the cataract of the Piute tumbling into 

 the lake, with a resulting foaming and rippling current visible a 

 hundred yards out from shore. The alpine trees furnish some shelter 

 and ample firewood. Campers will find the headland directly east of 

 the mouth of Desolation Creek an admirable camping-spot and 

 viewpoint. Fifteen-inch golden trout abound, responding readily to 

 the lure of the black gnat and brown or gray hackle. In fishing the 

 creeks the advice of Emerson Hough was safely ignored ; in the lake 

 trout refused to become educated even after the third "kill." 



Piute Creek was called the North Branch of the South Fork of the 

 San Joaquin by the sheepmen of early days. How continuously are 

 we reminded of the apathy shown toward the mountains of Califor- 

 nia between the sixties and the nineties — between the days of Whit- 

 ney, King, and Brewer and the days of Le Conte, Solomons, Coit- 

 Brown, and Colby ! That apathy was due to the refusal of the state 

 legislature to continue the work of the California Geological Survey. 

 It was left to the sheepherder to first thread a considerable part of 

 the High Sierra. During this period, and in mighty protest against 

 the indifference of government and the neglect of the Sierra, stands 

 the rugged figure and the thorough work of Muir. Le Conte, in his 

 map published in the Sierra Club Bulletin,* to clear away con- 

 fusion, named the creek Piute Branch. 



As the traveler proceeds down Piute he glimpses through tama- 

 rack forests the half-dozen snow-covered residual glaciers of Glacier 

 Divide. The tamaracks plant feet in granite detritus or granite solid 

 and, battered by Sierra winters, still defy the elements that gave 

 them birth and continue to give them life. Along the course of the 

 stream lay here a meadow circlet of empurpled lupines, there a fallen 

 forest, avalanched from the canonside and scourged with fire. Down 

 the canon the eye picks out the course of the rollicking, happy Piute, 

 the stream ultimately forced to turn southward by the bulk of the 

 many-fingered Pinnacles standing in blockade across its course. 



*See volume V, No. i, p, 18. 



