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Sierra Club Bulletin 



of a thousand feet brought us to the shores of Evolution Lake (lo,- 

 990 ft.). With a cry of delight we located the alpine white-pine 

 clump close to the lake edge where Walter Huber and party camped 

 in 1920 before the first ascent of Mount Haeckel. A rock peninsula 

 jutting from the eastern shore of the lake nearly divides the latter in 

 twain. On the south shore of this peninsula, a hundred yards off the 

 trail, there is a good camping-spot that is fairly well sheltered and 

 with plenty of feed for a small pack-train, enough firewood, and a 

 commanding view of the lake. From atop the peninsula the alpen- 

 glow over the Evolution group and the dying sunset away down the 

 course of Evolution Creek beggar description. This in detail, be- 

 cause it was our experience that campers rushed through the Evolu- 

 tion Basin headed for a lower-altitude camp, thus missing the intri- 

 cate beauty that a two-day layover permitted us to enjoy. 



Solomons named the Evolution group in 1895. The U. S. Geo- 

 logical Survey map of later years erroneously locates Mount Wallace 

 on the same spur as Darwin, while, if the namer's record and map 

 are to be accepted, the true Mount Wallace is the peak now marked 

 on the Survey map as Fiske, and the true Mount Fiske is midway 

 between Mount Huxley and the Fiske of the present Survey map. 

 A twelve-hour trip around the north side of Darwin revealed a 

 chain of five lakes of an ethereal, milky blue, fed by the melting ice 

 of the Darwin glacier — lakes whose shores are so abrupt that the 

 underwater shore-line disappears two feet out from the water's edge. 

 They drain a cul-de-sac formed against the very Sierra Crest, which 

 in rugged steepness and hard grandeur is difficult to equal in the 

 Sierra. The view overlooking the Bishop Creek (Middle Fork) 

 watershed from the Sierra Crest near the Darwin glacier is appalling 

 in its sweeping magnificence. Here frozen lake, snow-massed cirque, 

 rampart, minaret, and peak vie with one another in commanding the 

 climber's attention. 



Solomons and his good friend Bonner, after their climb of Mount 

 Goddard, followed the Goddard Divide on its southern side east- 

 ward in the hope of locating the key to the coveted route from 

 Yosemite to the Kings. They chose a route down "Enchanted 

 Caflon," now called Disappearing Creek, and found it impractical 

 for animal use. Ten years later Le Conte, exploring farther than 

 Solomons above Evolution Lake, stood on the summit of the present 

 Muir Pass and, looking down the gorge leading to what is now 



