Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 220, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 September 1915 — Climbing in June Snows [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Climbing in June Snows

By MARION RANDALL PARSONS,

Treasurer of the Sierra Club. IN JUNE, Yosemite valley is at the very height of its beauty. The deciduous trees are in new leaf, maples and dogwood in tenderest, brightest green, oaks tipped with pastel shades of pink and red In prophecy of their autumn glory, azaleas in full bloom, and the meadows a rippling mass of exquisite grass brightened with flowers. After a week or more In the valley, following the better-known trails, get; ting muscles in condition again after city-bound days, we were anxious to see what spring was like in the snowy upper country. Accordingly, as pack animals were not to be obtained for love or money, we prepared to make pack animals of ourselves, and knapsack over to Mount Clark (11,509 feet) on the southwestern boundary of the park, the most prominent peak of the Merced group. There were four of us in the party, two men and two women, and we planned to be out two nights with a comfortable margin of provisions for a third night, if necessary. Bacon, hardtack and that blessing to mountaineers, soup, made up the bulk of our commissary, re-enforced, however, by raisins, choocolate, dried fruit, beans, spaghetti and cheese. Our. personal outfits,, of course, were reduced to bare essentials. Share Alike With the Men. We women who “knapsack" pride ourselves on being able to do our share, so, while we do not pretend to carry such heavy packs as the men, we carry our own outfits and a part, at least, of the general commissary supplies. Short-skirted, flannel-shirt-ed, with hobnailed boots to the knee and "shocking bad hats,” we are as easy in our own clothing and as regardless of wind or weather as the men themselves. In Little Yosemite we made a camp beside the smoothly flowing Merced, and after lunch set out on a ramble

up toward the base of Half Dome. Up Cloud’s Rest trail we climbed, and then pushed through the forest to the brink of Tenaya canyon, a gorge almost as deep as Yosemite valley itpeK, inaccessible to all but the hardiest mountaineers. The great chasm, more than 2,000 feet deep, lay at our feet Half Dome towered majestically against the sky. and still farther we could see the shadowed cliffs of El Capitan and the Cathedral Rocks. A Bock In Velvet.

My companion on this ramble elected to climb Cloud’s Rest before returning to camp, so I made my way back to Little Yosemite alone. Near the foot of the trail, in a glorious little mountain meadow, I surprised a beautiful buck, the largest I have ever seen In the Sierra. His horns were in velvet, and he stood so near me that I could see the quick, nervous movement of his nostrils as he watched me. For two or three minutes we stood there regarding one another. Then, with a nonchalant wag of his funny little tail, he turned and made off through the woods, aS unhurriedly and Indifferently as if I, too, had been a woodland creature. Perhaps I looked It After his departure I examined the meadow more closely. It was a little gem of its kind, sloping from a ledge of granite that was cohered with gnarled and crooked junipers. At the first glimpse I thought it an unbroken sheet of the tiniest blossoms of yellow mimulus, but on kneeling down, 11 species of flowers revealed themselves, all the daintiest and most dellcate of their kind —yellow violets, white forget-me-nots, gilias, white saxifrage and the smallest pink pea I have ever seen. A knapsacker’s camp is a simple affUir—a. bed ot pine needles, a few stones rolled together to make a fireplace, a pile of firewood gathered together; and there is home. By five o’clock next morning we were astir. ’ Where one’s possessions are so few, washing dishes and packing is a matter of scant ceremony. In less than an hour we were ready for the trail, or for

the march, rather, as we expected to leave trails behind us and strike across country to the base of Mount Clark.

Hot Rockg.to Warm Cold Beds.

We held it to be but a tribute to our skill as mountaineers, however, when we found an old sheep trail following the very route we had planned to take. For many miles we followed it through the rolling forest east of Mount Starr King, through Starr King meadow, and out near the crest of a granite ridge near Clark Fork. Here we left it behind and struck across the open country, over ridge after ridge, across stream after stream, until we came to the northerly fork of Gray creek, where we made a camp. We had reached the altitude of about 8,500 feet, and snowdrifts lay deep all about us. But firewood was abundant and our little nook among the tall firs promised every comfort that a knapsacker need expect.

In default of extra bedding we took hot rocks to bed with us.

The night passed comfortably and we were up at dawn ready for the assault on Mount Clark, confident also of success. As we climbed the snow lay even deeper about us. The forest of fir and mountain pine gave way to the hardier white-bark pine, the tree of timberline. Up to the top of the ridge it crept, at the top a mere shrub, bent and twisted beneath the winter’s weight of snow. As we climbed, our horizon to the south and west widened. We were looking across the valley of the Illilouette toward the snowy divide separating us from the south fork of the Merced where lies Wawona and the splendid Mariposa grove of sequoias. Yosemite valley was but a blue rift in the forest with only its great domes, Half Dome, Sentinel Dome and Starr King, rising into any prominence. Far different was our view to eastward from the crest. Our ridge ended on the east in an abrupt precipice. Through a broken "chimney" or windowlike aperture in the rocks, we

looked down 500 feet into a great snew field filling all the eastern basin, and beyond this lay the cleft of the Merced canyon, and, still beyond, the magnificent snowy peaks of the summit crest, Lyell, McClure, Ritter, Dana, a host of others, all above 13,000 feet, all shining and gleaming in the brilliant sunshine with a radiance that hardly seemed to belong to this world. Couldn't Get Up Clark.

Well for us that this glorious vision was compensation for all the many miles we had climbed, for we got no farther that day—and-Clark still remained unconquered. For we had anticipated the season for mountain climbing by a fortnight or more, and the slope that should have offered an easy rock climb to the summit was now a precipitous wall of treacherous snow. We had no rope, no ice ax, not even a knife with which we might have cut steps, and the icy edge where rock and snow met proved an invincible barrier to the summit. Up and down the ridge we proWied, over every ledge, into every chimney, only to admit ourselves defeated in the etod.

For an hour or more we remained upon the ridge feasting our eyes on the marvelous panorama—a hundred miles of snowy range, a magnificent alpine region, the greater part of which is now almost inaccessible, soon to be opened to travel by the construction of the John Muir traiL After luncheon in camp a 15-mlle walk back still lay ahead of us. Our defeat lay lightly upon us, for many mountain summits have been ours in the past, and we had had, after all, the inspiration and the uplift of the glorious upper regions of snow even if the exhilaration of the summit had been lacking. Down among the great below of yellow pines, under the spreading arms of sugar pines and out upon open crests covered with manzenita and chinquapin we hastened past Nevada and Vernal and down through the Happy Isles where thrushes sang their evening songs, and into our Yosemite valley camp.

YOSEMITE VALLEY