Bishop, Piute f Evolution, and Dusy Creeks via Muir Pass 281 



Le Conte Canon, declared it impractical as a pass. But further 

 exploration, perseverance, and money have carried Muir National 

 Trail up the gently sloping western side of Muir and down the 

 rugged gorges of the eastern watershed. In one place the trail has 

 been blasted and chiseled, not out of, but into, the native rock, leav- 

 ing a granite roof over the traveler's path. 



Muir (12,059 ft.) is not a high pass, comparatively speaking. 

 But altitude alone does not always make for scenic grandeur of a 

 pass. Muir is more than commanding. It is the culminating charm 

 of the magic circle. It is the prince of Sierra passes. Any doubting 

 mountaineer needs but face the four points of the compass atop of 

 Muir. Westward above the shores of Wanda Lake rises the black 

 pugnacious head of Mount McGee. Directly south of McGee the 

 Goddard Divide, which runs from the observer's feet west by slightly 

 south, has ended in the final black sawtooth that is Goddard. At the 

 feet of Goddard abrupt cirques, which have eaten into the divide 

 from the north, shelter their perpetual snows. The Goddard Divide 

 between the peak and Muir is granite in substance and is reddened 

 at the crest by iron. South from Muir runs a "series of parallel 

 gorges separated by crested divides, the whole black as night and 

 formed of slate, through which run dikes of a very old lava." South- 

 easterly the Black Divide leaves Muir and becomes the western bul- 

 wark of Le Conte Canon. Looking eastward across the head of 

 Le Conte, the eye meets the Sierra backbone running diagonally 

 across the line of vision. Due north the Goddard Divide continues 

 from Muir Pass to a junction with the Sierra Crest at Mount Fiske« 

 Here, then, is a combination of five massive ramparts and divides 

 centering on or near a pass and radiating in diverse directions. 

 Nature has not here created a masterly surprise for the mountaineer 

 only. The geologist is delightfully mystified by the records of "lavas^ 

 basalts, and other volcanic materials erupted not by volcanic action, 

 but through fissures and in granite and aqueous formation." Here 

 he finds "granites, basalts, slates, and lavas overlying, underlying, 

 and horizontally contiguous with one another, in obvious non- 

 conformity with theory and precedent." 



On the western side little snow was encountered. On the eastern 

 a wide bank was fairly well packed and easily negotiated. A snow- 

 bridge crossed the gorge in the upper part of Le Conte Canon, just 

 below Helen Lake. A hoof -hole through which one could see turbu- 



