6 Ts HE) A-Uc DU BOING BPO Lehi 
Chinquapin where we saw handsome red firs and rugged sugar pines, their 
upper branches loaded with long cones, but two feet of snow on the ground 
gave us no chance to find any fallen ones. New birds were a singing 
hermit warbler and a spectacular red-breasted sapsucker. The Big Trees 
were a magnificent sight — their mighty red trunks, with the red of the 
incense cedars and yellow-red of the ponderosa pines, the grey of white 
firs and the yellow-green staghorn moss on trunks and dead twigs — all 
against the deep snow. The Grizzly Giant, massive and scarred by lightning 
and fire, is estimated to be 3,800 years old. 
The weather turned cold and rainy, so we sought the museum where we 
studied the tree and Indian exhibits and read in the library at John Muir’s 
desk. The naturalists are doing fine educational work while they struggle 
’ Photo by Ansel Adams 
Half Dome and Mirror Lake 
with multitudes of visitors and entirely inadequate appropriations; they 
put out excellent leaflets on the natural history of the park, that on the 
“Cone-bearing Trees” by James E. Cole being one of the best. 
On the evening of the 29th the robins were silent; my sister looked out 
of the cabin and said, “It’s snowing!” A large bear passed between us and 
the next cabin and what impressive tracks he left! About midnight we 
thought he was hitting the cabin to get at our cache of bacon and milk 
hung out of the highest window; it proved to be masses of snow and ice 
dropping from the ponderosa pines and incense cedars. Such buffets as our 
little house did receive! 
In the morning the valley was magical — the pines and incense cedars 
all snow-covered as were the mountains against the blue sky. Clouds 
