Exploration of Mount Darwin 



285 



for several years and that the latter had been closed since the Camp- 

 bell-Abbot expedition of 1909, and we were therefore obliged to 

 deviate some distance to the south over Cottonwood Pass, locally 

 known as Chicken Spring Pass. Rumors reached us in Lone Pine 

 of a shorter route to Big Whitney Meadow, by King Pass, but, upon 

 the advice of our outfitter, Mr. Chrysler, we selected the southern 

 route. 



The closely cropped meadows at our first camp on Big Cotton- 

 wood Creek gave us some solicitation for our animals, but neither 

 that nor the weariness resulting from our hard day's work, the most 

 trying of the trip, seriously detracted from the keen enjoyment of 

 being free in the open or from the soundness of our sleep. It was a 

 great relief to be away from centers of civilization, or, as the cow- 

 boy poet expresses it, "I loved my fellow-man the best when he was 

 scattered some." 



Our route lay mostly over well-known trails, and I will only out- 

 line it to Rock Creek, Whitney Creek, Sandy Plateau, Tyndall 

 Creek, Shepard Pass, Junction Pass, Bubbs Creek, East Lake, 

 South Fork, Middle Fork, and so on to Muir Pass, but I must in 

 passing briefly mention our camp on Whitney Creek. Of all delight- 

 ful and ideal stopping-places, that on Whitney Creek was unrivaled. 

 We camped about three miles above Crabtree Meadows on high 

 ground near the timber-line, just above a little unnamed lake. Grass 

 was abundant and fuel readily at hand. Over the lake, framed by 

 the canon walls, the Kaweahs shone bright in the early morning 

 light or lowered darkly in the evening shadows, and just east of us 

 rose the majestic gothic slope of Mount Whitney, strikingly impres- 

 sive in the light of the setting sun. 



The trail from Tyndall Creek over Junction Pass is somewhat 

 disheartening. After ascending for miles along a gentle slope up 

 Tyndall Creek to Shepard Pass, it drops twelve hundred feet on the 

 east side, only to climb up again about twenty-two hundred feet to 

 the crest between Mount Keith and Junction Peak, over thirteen 

 thousand feet above sea-level, the highest pass in the Sierra. We ap- 

 proached the pass in a storm. Oceans of dark cumulus clouds were 

 drifting up from the southeast, but as we reached the summit the 

 never-to-be-forgotten view to the northwest burst upon us in a glory 

 of sunlight and shadow — canon after canon, peak upon peak, as far 

 as the eye could reach. 



