Democratic Sentinel, Volume 9, Number 21, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 June 1885 — The Bloody Canyon. [ARTICLE]

The Bloody Canyon.

A correspondent of the San Francisco Chronicle , who has been exploring the Sierras in the vicinity of the Yosemite, thus describes the “Bloody Canyon,” which lies about forty miles from the valley: Toward evening we neared the head of the Bloody Canyon, at what is known as the Mono Pass. Never before had we gazed on such a scene of barrenness and utter desolation as that which was now open before us. Being so near night the effect was doubly enhanced. To the west the sun was yet an hour high, and was tingeing here and there the snow-covered granite with blood-red spots, while the shadow intervals were of the color of blued steel, but to the east and below us it was to all intents and purposes night. An occasional sparkle at onr feet, very far below, denoted the presence of a lake, and the muffled roar and hiss also told of waterfalls, probably cascades in the outlets of the various lakes, which, from description, we knew existed in this canyon, but now could not see. The canyon is the usual Y-shaped gorge of all the California canyons. But this one is a giant among pygmies. The northern slope is at least 8,000 feet deep, and the southern one fully 7,000 feet in depth. And we find from sketches made at the time that the angle of the slopes is as sharp as sixty or seventy degrees, with many perpendicular faces of 800 or 1,000 feet. Now, in this evening light, the top of the great cliffs was of a deep with black-purple shadows; the face to the north was a series of great ridges, running vertically in parallel lines to the slant of the rock, and each ridge notched and broken up into a series of saw-like indentations. The shadows of the Sierra were projected below far out on to the broken plain, hut ceased at the foot of a volcanic-looking mountain on the edge of Mono Lake. The lake and the distance were in a beautiful rosy light where the sun struck the ground beyond the shadows. The general eftect was grand beyond description.