Yosemite trails; camp and pack-train in the Yosemite region of the Sierra Nevada

Front matter

YOSEIilTE TRAILS

J ' SMEATONrCHASE

Class Book cui

Preface

THE following pages are the outcome of three journeys, two of them of considerable length, through the Yosemite region of the Sierra Nevada, and of a resulting desire to acquaint the nature-loving public with the attractions more particularly of the less known areas of the locality. The writer has preferred not to limit his work to the specific uses of a guide-book, but has allowed a natural propensity for a loose rein and discursive observation to dictate its range; with the result, he hopes, of a gain in variety and interest both to the general reader and to the prospective and retrospective wayfarer in the region. The volume will be found, however, to have also much of the value of a guide-book for the traveller on the ground, and with this point in view it is furnished with a map.

Especially it has been the design of the writer to direct the attention of mountaineers and lake-lovers to the fact, almost unknown even among devotees of the out-of-doors, that there exists in the Sierra Nevada a lake-land of incomparable richness and peculiar diversity of charm : where lakes are sprinkled like stars, exceeding the possibility of distinguishing them by name. The time is coming when the highlands of this via

PREFACE great Californian range, which it is not too grandiose to call the Alps of our country, with its superb features of mountain, forest, river, glacier, lake, and meadow, and lying under a climate of unequalled regularity and perfection, will be the playground of America. It is largely the purpose of this volume to expedite the day.

Los AxGELEs, California.

Part I : Yosemite And The Sequoias

I. A General Survey of the Yosemite Valley 3

II. The Principal Rock-Features of the Valley 15

III. Some Observations on the Nomenclature

OF THE Valley 27

IV. A Circuit of Yosemite Rim : Fort Monroe

TO the Little Yosemite 37

V. A Circuit of Yosemite Rim : The Little

Yosemite to the Tuolumne Meadows . 55

VI. A Circuit of Yosemite Rim : The Tuolumne

Meadows to Yosemite Falls .... 72

VII. A Circuit of Yosemite Rim : Yosemite

Falls to the Big Oak Flat Road . . 91

VIII. Th£ Forests of the Yosemite Region . .103

IX. The Great Sequoias 126

X. The Wawona Country 144

XI. Rafaelito : An Interlude 169

X CONTENTS

Part II : The High Sierra

XII. The High Sierra :,The Yosemite Valley

TO the Hetch-Hetchy 187

XIII. The High Sierra : The Hetch-Hetchy to

THE TiLL-TILL 211

XIV. The High Sierra : The Till-till to Lake

Benson 229

XV. The High Sierra : Lake Benson to Lake

Tenaya 246

XVI. Bodie: ''Well, Sir — " 264

XVII. The High Sierra : Lake Tenaya to Mono 282

XVIII. The High Sierra : Mono to Gem Lake . 306

XIX. The High Sierra: Gem Lake to the

Little Yosemite 326

Index 347

ILLUSTRATIONS

Half-Dome from the East (page 339) Froiitispiece^^

The Yosemite Falls 8«^

The Yosemite Valley 12^

The Sentinel 20*^

The Half-Dome 26 t^

Cathedral Peak 68 U-

A Mountain Meadow in the Forest Belt . . 94^/

The Great Seqtljoias 128*^

A Trail in the Wawona Forest 152 iX

El Capitan from the Big Oak Flat Road . . iSS*^

The Hetch-Hetchy 202 "^

Our Lake in Jack Main Canon 234 ^

Mount Dana and Jessie Lake 288 1^

Looking Eastward from Mount Dana, Mono

Lake in the Distance 292/^

Rush Creek and the Crest of the Sierra. . 314

Mount Lyell with its Glacier 320 -^

The illustrations are from photographs (most of which were made especially for this book) by the Pillsbury Picture Company, of San Francisco, California, with the exception of a few by the author.

PART I

YOSEMITE AND THE SEQUOIAS

''Mother of marvels, mysterious and tender Nature, why do we not live more in thee ? "

Amiel.

Chapter I A General Survey Of The Yosemite Valley

THE YOSEMITE VALLEY is not, properly speaking, a valley. That word conveys the image of a gentle depression with sloping sides, which the patient fingers of Time have smoothed and rounded into quiet, compliant lines. The Yosemite is not in the least of that character. It is a great cleft, or chasm, which one might imagine to have been the work of some exasperated Titan who, standing with feet planted fifty miles apart lengthwise of the Sierra Nevada summit and facing westward, raised his hands palm to palm over his head, and struck upon the earth with such fury as to cleave a gap nearly a mile in depth ; then separating his hands he thrust back the sides of the fracture, leaving between them a narrow, precipice-walled plain.

The Act of Congress of 1864 by which the tract was granted to the State of California defined it as "the * cleft ^ or * gorge' in the granite peak of the Sierra Nevada mountain " ; and it would have been better if in the early descriptions of the spot it had been referred to as the Yosemite Gorge, which would have more properly described it and also would have been more stimulating to the imagination than the tamer designation which is now, no doubt, securely fixed upon it.

In what may be called its aesthetic sense, however, the word " valley" answers well enough ; for the level enclosed between the walls is a sheltered tract of the richest verdure, mixed of forest and meadow, watered by a wandering and placid river, starred with flowers, and the paradise of birds and friendly, harmless creatures.

It is greatly in this contrast between the grandeur and severity of the encircling walls and the sylvan charm of the protected enclosure that the unique character of Yosemite consists. It is as if Nature had here put herself to show a parable of contrasted excellences, setting the stern heights and solemn silences of the cliffs against the soft demeanor and gentle voices of trees and flowers, streams and heavenly meadows ; and to marry them together she pours the great waterfalls, in whose cloudy graces majesty and loveliness are so mingled that one cannot tell which of the two delights him the more.

The valley — I shall use the term which custom has fixed — may be said to begin, on the west, where the Bridal Veil Fall pours down over the southern cliff, and to end at the conspicuous pillar or buttress of the northern wall that is called the Washington Column ; at which point the cafions of the main Merced River and the Tenaya Creek converge. Within

SURVEY OF THE YOSEMITE VALLEY 5

these limits the valley is about six miles long and has an average width of about half a mile. Its general direction is east and west, crosswise to the axis of the mountain chain which it cleaves. The ** floor" is remarkably level, and lies at an elevation of almost exactly four thousand feet.

At the point where, in following upwards the course of the Merced River, this altitude is reached, the caiion opens, while at the same time the walls, which along the whole course of the river since leaving the plain of the San Joaquin have been first hilly and then mountainous, become high and precipitous cliffs, destitute of trees or brush except as regards the talus at their feet, the huge blocks and cubes of which give footing to a chaparral of flowering brush interspersed with oaks, maples, and platoons of indomitable pines. The level plain lies between, a long glade through which the quiet river makes its way, winding leisurely from side to side, more like some thoughtful lowland stream than what it is, — the nervous, quick-breathing child of glacier and mountain-chasm. A growth of willows and poplars marks its course, contrasting their summer green or winter lavender against the sombre richness of the evergreens.

Every observant person will be struck at first sight by what he will later find to be the salient geological feature of the whole Yosemite region, — the curved, rind-like forms of the layers of rock of which these mountains are built. A rough image of this can be made by placing the open hands one upon the other, the palms downward and considerably concaved ; or, if the reader will excuse the violence of the illustration, a granite onion of mountain size would well represent the formation. This peculiar structure is clearly seen in the domes of the upper plateau, while on the faces of the cliffs it is exhibited in arch-shaped recesses where masses of the lower strata have become detached and fallen away.

The most noticeable instance of this occurs on the northern face of the wall at a point just to the west of the Washington Column. Immense fractures and displacements of rock have there produced natural arches that are very remarkable in their vast span and deep recession. Another example, and one which I always found very impressive to the imagination, occurs in the southward-facing shoulder of the great rock that commands the entrance to the valley and is called El Capitan. When the afternoon light is reflected from that enormous polished curve, it is easy to imagine it to be the domed roof of some stupendous hall, whose door, like that of another Hall of Eblis, is that terrible half-mile cliff that faces the west.

When the fracture and subsidence which formed the valley took place, the two principal streams that flow into the Merced River at this point, Yosemite Creek from the north and Bridal Veil Creek from the south, became at a stroke the waterfalls which are known by those names. The Yosemite Creek, originating on Mount Hoffman and flowing southwesterly over a high granite plateau, makes in three steps a

SURVEY OF THE YOSEMITE VALLEY 7

fall of twenty-five hundred feet, which places it, on the score of height, at the head of the considerable waterfalls of the world. The Bridal Veil Creek runs northwesterly and leaps over a sheer cliff of six hundred and twenty feet at the lowest point of the valley wall, where the upper course of the stream has followed a deep trough which may have been formed when the general subsidence took place. The other two great waterfalls, Vernal, of three hundred and twenty feet, and Nevada, of six hundred feet, occur near together on the course of the Merced River itself, in the narrow cafion which leads up to another and smaller valley known as the Little Yosemite.

These four waterfalls, with their various actions and charms of manner, appear to form the preeminent attraction of the valley to the great majority of people who come to view its scenery. That this should be so is not surprising, for a waterfall is like a hot-house flower of Nature, a kind of rarity for exhibition ; and there is good reason for enthusiasm in the wonderful and changing beauty of the falls. But a great many people are captured by mere novelty, and I venture to think that this trifling feature is a main factor in the judgment which places second, or disregards altogether, the unequalled majesty of the cliffs.

The human palate is, in fact, strangely dead to the majestic ingredient. How often, when I have been passing along a city street while some gorgeous solemnity of cloud-scenery has been offered to the gaze, have I marvelled to see that hardly one out of hundreds or thousands of passers-by has bestowed even a casual glance upon it, but that their attention has been given entirely to the store-windows, the pavement, or the hats. There is something rather awful about this insensibility : what can it mean ? No doubt in the case of many of these oblivious ones it means that they are engrossed with an invisible companion, him whom the ceremonious Spaniards name Don Dinero. But I am afraid it means also that most people are bored by anything great, unless it is also novel. As for the sky, that is an every-day afTair, and they do not account anything that is to be seen there to be worth attention. These are the people who are given to stage-drivers for a prey, and who find happiness in tracing those zoological resemblances which that valuable body of men, whose fertility of fancy would scarcely be inferred from a demeanor often of singular stolidity, have discovered to exist in the cliffscenery of the great valley.

The luxuriant forest that occupies the greater part of the valley floor, broken here and there by meadows, also is worth some share of the admiration which too many people reserve exclusively for the waterfalls. Companies of pines from one hundred to two hundred feet high, straight, smooth, and taper as ever tree grew, ought not to be commonplace to most of us. (Certainly the birds and squirrels do not find them so, or they themselves could not remain so interesting and individual, but would tend, like us, to become dull and uniform. I have known a parrot who has

THE YOSEMITE FALLS

SURVEY OF THE YOSEMITE VALLEY 9

lived with people, and been "taught," to be dull, even dreadfully dull ; but I do not suppose you find them so on the Orinoco.)

If it were only for the perfection of their types, these valley-sheltered trees, which have grown to the completest stature of their kind in this sunny nursery, are full of value and interest. The yellow pine {Piiius ponderosa) especially shows here its finest traits, spiring up for the skies with a fervor of tree-desire that is indescribably stimulating, and dressed complete with branches that sweep in loveliness to the very ground. In the shadow of the south wall grows the Douglas spruce {Pseudotsuga taxifolia\ a Nestor among trees, great, strong, and wise in counsel, plated with dark and rugged bark, and waving plumes of sombre splendor in the cool wind that draws along the face of the cliffs. With him stands here and there the white silver fir {Abies concolor), tall, straight, and of admirable symmetry. If the Douglas is Nestor the white fir is Paris.

The cedar (Libocedrus decurrens) also reaches here the perfect dignity of its race, and mixing everywhere freely among the pines brightens their dark richness with pyramids of ferny olive. The old trees of this species, fulfilling the characteristics of their type, are nearly always dead in their tops though in full career of life. They rise solemnly amid the forest like many-branched candlesticks, and enforce by their shape the vague idea of a religious association which is suggested by their common name lo YOSEMITE TRAILS

of " incense cedar," and by the many allusions in the Book of Psalms to their brethren of the Lebanon forests. It is pleasant to know that the great Israelitish king was a man of trees as well as of war, and loved the merry greenwood heartily.

Though the special glory of this forest belt lies in the conifers, the Yosemite is splendid in oaks also. There are many magnificent specimens of both evergreen and deciduous oak in the valley, where the balanced beauty of their shapes is heightened by contrast with the straight-pillared pines and cedars. Far up Indian Caiion, on the north side of the valley, there is growing an oak that I believe would out-oak every oak that grows on California mountain, foothill, or plain, if it could be brought to the proof. Very few people see it, for the caiion is narrow, gloomy, and difficult to climb. I viewed with amazement the great walllike trunk of this solitary monster. A kind of octopus in shape, his long grey arms go searching up and down the cafion as though he were feeling for a way out, and might presently lift his splayed foot and drag his Cyclopean deformity down to the plain, to affright the puny sons of men.

In luxuriance of flowers the valley in spring and summer is notable even beyond the measure of the plain and foothill regions of the state. Chief in brilliance, and in novelty as regards most people, of the spring flowers is the snow-plant {Sarcodes saitguinea)^ which begins to appear on the floor of the valley soon after the snow has melted, and astonishes the early

SURVEY OF THE YOSEMITE VALLEY ii

visitor with its unexpected blood-red apparition. An unflower-like flower, it is attractive only for its glaring violence of color. Every fibre is red, the red of Burgundy wine. It is a Mephistopheles among plants, a kind of diabolical asparagus.

While the snow-plant still blazes on the brown floor, the forest begins to be lighted up along every watercourse with the six-inch blossoms of the dogwood, gleaming like candle-flames down the dark aisles of the pines, or flickering in the breeze that follows the flowing river. Then the violets enter, white and blue, and the meadows stand thick with purple cyclamens. Next comes on the procession of lilies, that will last all through the summer ; and with them arrives the mountain-lilac {Ceanothus) in clouds of azure and white that emulate the very sky. Then the azaleas, whose sheathed leaf-buds, like spurts of green flame, have waited impatiendy for the flower-buds to join them, break into leaf and blossom together, and every land-path and water-path is bordered with their tropical beauty and rich, exotic perfume. Wild roses mingle with them, delightful beyond all the rest with their rustic associations and wholesome daintiness of air: a very epitome of country delights in every breath of their frank, simple fragrance.

As midsummer comes on. Nature takes up the full burden of her labor of love. Grasses grow knee-high, and, ripening their humble fruitage, roll in russet tides over the meadows and surge against the forest wall. Brakes stand thickly in every opening, their cathedral richness of tracery matching the cedarsprays that fleck them with playful shadows. Oakleaves gleam with a dull, healthy polish. The birds that have been rehearsing all the spring now give their full concert, and the squirrel rejoices volubly in the multitude of cones, which he can hardly suffer to ripen before he must begin to harvest them. Hummingbirds dash and whir about like little thunderbolts of flaming energy, and butterflies drowse on drooping tassels of goldenrod.

So, in a riot of godetia, columbine, mimulus, pentstemon, lupine, and a score of others, the summer passes by, and autumn, when it comes, comes in such a rush and tumult of massed and gorgeous color that one never thinks to mourn for summer, dead and gone. Dogwood blooms again, crimson for white; willows and poplars are all of paly gold ; the oaks bum rusty-red, as befits their iron strength ; only the pines and cedars, of a higher breed than the rest, stand disdaining change and defying times and seasons. Slow lichens, purple, grey, and " melancholy gold '* (Ruskin's fine expression), creep like the tears of Time over cold granite of cliff and earthquaketalus, to find their summer in the yellow autumn sunlight that only reaches them when maple and mountain-lilac have begun to shed their leaves.

Snow rarely falls in the valley before Christmas, although the trails of the upper levels may have been closed two months before, and the passes of the High Sierra are often sealed as early as mid-September. In

THE YOSE

:e valley

SURVEY OF THE YOSEMITE VALLEY 13

the deep hollow of the valley a long Indian summer holds the field with an ardor of color that is like a mediaeval pageant. A sky of Prussian blue enhances the creamy white of the cliffs and is deeply reflected in the calm river that now saunters and hesitates among shallows of sand. At night the cold leaps down from the upper plateaus, and the meadows are frosted to sallow tones of grey and drab ; but by midday the sun burns as if through glass with a sharp, parching fervor. Under it acorns ripen suddenly, falling in showers at every push of wind like raindrops rattling on a roof ; and men themselves would cure into a sort of raisins if there were but enough sugar in them. A dry electric energy is in the air, and trees and animals charge themselves to saturation point. As for the squirrels, I believe one might draw sparks from them by applying a knuckle.

At last the weather breaks and the snow falls. In some winters only a few inches of snow may lie on the valley floor ; in others, many feet. But it is always the winter of the mountains, vivifying and kindly. The habitants of the valley bring out ski, sleds, and snow-shoes, and the hardy Norse and Saxon strain revives and strikes a blow for freedom. The pines stand as it were with folded arms, resolute and enduring, and rejoice in the Spartan severity. The waterfalls shroud themselves in bewildering phantasmagorias of ice, and act again the glacial age in little. Yosemite builds up a huge white cone five hundred feet in height ; a volcano, but of ice instead of fire.

Vernal and Nevada array themselves with giant icicles, and thunder through reverberating caverns of blue and green splendor.

Gradually the balance of power reverses. The sun strengthens and the snows recede. The rush of falling water pulsates through the valley, and the river runs strong and dark. Somewhere the great word is spoken; and the old, strange striving begins once more in herb and bush and tree.

Chapter II The Principal Rock-features Of The Valley

WHEN one looks down into the Yosemite from a comprehensive vantage-ground such as Inspiration Point, it is seen that the cross-section shape of the valley is somewhat like the letter U. The walls are in general effect vertical ; the floor is smooth, level, and as a whole narrow relatively to the height of the walls, sweeping up at the sides to meet them in a natural curve formed by the debris of the cliffs. This debris is irregularly disposed, there being in some places vast accumulations and in others surprisingly little of the rock-wastage. Although enormous in total amount it is yet so little in view of the great height of the walls that have contributed it that its scantiness is regarded by geologists as remarkable. An average cross-section drawing of the valley would show the debris-angle as a mere trace, hardly easing the abruptness of the sheer plunge of the cliffs to the level of the floor. The greater part of the wreckage is supposed to have fallen in some momentous earthquake that occurred not less than three hundred years ago, the period being determined by the age of trees at present growing upon the talus-slope. Evidences of the cataclysm are strewn thickly all up and down the canon of the Merced River, which owes much of its picturesque character to the huge obstructions over and between which the rapid stream pours and pushes its way in mile upon mile of foaming cascades. The additions made during later centuries are so trifling in comparison as to be hardly distinguishable, though the slow, steadfast processes of wind and rain, heat and frost, topple down every year many tons of freshly shattered granite to add to the grey and lichened masses that stretch far out across the valley floor.

At intervals along the face of the walls the timedarkened rock is seen to be scarred to its original color, and has very much the appearance of being whitened by frost. These scars mark the paths of rock-slides of recent years. To witness one such avalanche stimulates the spectator to a vivid impression of the majestic uproar involved in Nature's greater coups de maiuy such as that must have been which, perhaps at one blow, flung almost the whole of this incalculable weight of rock down into the gulf.

Standing one day of late autumn about the middle of the valley, I was startled by a report like a cannon-shot, which filled the whole valley with echoes that roared and boomed, replied and multiplied, in a long-continued, glorious tumult. As the deafening sound died away in sullen mutterings under the vizor of El Capitan, I was able to distinguish the point of attack by the long, clattering descent of a vast quantity of rock. The night had^been a cold one in the valley, while on the seven to eight thousand foot levels of the upper rim the temperature must have dropped almost to zero. Frost, working quietly with his Archimedean lever, had just succeeded in shifting from the shoulder of The Sentinel a trifle of fifty tons or so of granite. For near a thousand feet the boulder fell sheer, swift and silent ; then striking the cliff it burst like a bomb, shattering into a myriad flying shards and splinters, and dislodging a smother of fragments that trickled down to the valley in a stream that lasted for minutes. Then, from the spot where the boulder had struck, dust began to rise into the sunny air, slowly building up and burgeoning like a summer cloud, and every whit as snowy. It was the flour of granite, powdered instantaneously by the terrific shock.

As I gazed, I reflected upon the spectacular features of the catastrophe which we have seen discussed in magazines as a physical possibility, — the collision of our planet with another stellar body. This proved soon to be too serious a matter for my unscientific mind to contemplate calmly, and it was a relief to turn to the past, and admire the simple effectiveness of the device employed by men besieged in castles and walled cities, who rolled down rocks and other objects of useful specific gravity upon the heads of the obstinate persons who were coming upstairs on scaling-ladders.

The southern wall is noticeably darker in its general color than the northern, probably for the reason that the greater degree of shade encourages a stronger growth of mosses and lichens, both which flourish extravagantly in many places. On the great boulders near the foot of the little Sentinel Fall, thick sheets of moss hang like mantles, embroidered with disks of lichen and distilling slow diamonds from their ragged edges. This side of the walls shows also more of those avalanche - tracks of which I have spoken, and more of the rock-flour of recent manufacture, which, it occurred to me, might well provide the bread of that race of earth-giants whom one may imagine as inhabiting some spacious hall under the arched roof of El Capitan.

I do not know of any place where the tranquil beauty of shadow can be so well seen and felt and studied as in this deep, serene valley. On this unlimited canvas light paints with a mighty brush, in broad half-miles of cobalt and purple and gold and grey. There is continual variety in noting the daylong, quiet changes ; continual variety and continual discovery. One may have studied El Capitan and The Sentinel and Half-Dome a score of times, and think that one knows them through and through and yard by yard ; but the next observation will show some clouding of color or massing of shadow that quite alters your conception. Even the solid outlines seem to change, and a slant of sunlight or skein of mist will upset the most fixed topographical conclusions. Details even of great extent may easily be overlooked on these huge walls, and such are apt to be suddenly projected into visibility by some chance arrangement of light and shade. For instance, I thus became aware of a vast concavity in the face of El Capitan which I had never suspected, and which was revealed by a particular obliquity of early morning light in a deep, shell-like bowl of shadow. The Three Brothers, again, seen from the southwest soon after sunrise, show magnificent tone effects, light and shadow being regularly laid in broad, alternate bands of such massiveness and strength as to give a new characteristic to this, as I feel, somewhat formal and uninteresting group.

The Sentinel, that perpendicular elliptical column which stands about midway of the southern wall, is perhaps the least variable in expression of all the notable cliffs of the valley, standing resolutely muffled in shadows until the sun begins to sink to its eclipse behind the high promontory of El Capitan. Then his face glitters with fine Plutonian lines, hard and grim as steel on iron. To me this superb obelisk is, next to the Half-Dome and El Capitan, the dominant point of the valley ; and when I have lain awake at night with that tall grey spectre impending over me and obscuring a tenth of the host of heaven, I have been an Egyptian in Thebes, an Assyrian in Nineveh, a Martian or Saturnian for all I knew, under the spell of his solemn enchantment.

At such times, also, I have tried to imagine what would be the sensations of a person who should be transported unawares to this valley, and set down at night among- these dimly seen shapes of rock and water. It would be all the better if it happened to be one of those moonlit but partly cloudy nights, when the light comes and goes here and there in sudden gleams and fadings. Here he would see, or doubt whether he saw, close beside and crowding against him, this perpendicular wall, which his eye would follow up and up, until he wondered where the top might be. Over there would be some incomprehensible shape which must surely be a delusion of his own senses. Yonder where the pale column of Yosemite Fall glimmered in the peering light, he would see what might be the straight ascending camp-fire smoke of the departed Indian genius of the place, or perhaps the reek of some weird sacrifice. The falling waters filling the valley with hollow voices and echoes would confuse instead of enlightening him, and the subtle forest-sounds, intricate and perplexing even by day, would add a thousand small mysteries to his bewilderment.