Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 136, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 June 1918 — High Sierra of the Yosemite [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

High Sierra of the Yosemite

IF you go to Yosemite tills summer, you should plan to visit the monster mountain climax of the national park of which Mount Lyell is the chief. This is nn one-day hike with a luxurious public camp at the other end of it. It means taking enough camping-out equipment along to enable you to spend three or four nights in the open. But after all that Is no great matter, for it so seldom rains in the Sierra that tents will not be necessary; comfortable sleeping bags,” a coffee pot, a few tins, and a plentiful supply of food will be all that is necessary—besides, of course, a good guide. AU equipment, including guide and horses, may be got in the valley. The first night out from the valley should be spent in the celebrated Tuolumne Meadows where you may have plenty of trout for supper for the catching; the Tuolumne is a capital trout stream. * Lyell’s Inner Shrine. After an early trout breakfast, your outfit will travel up the river to the mouth of Lyell Fork, and, swinging around Johnson peak, will follow that beautiful stream miles up its long scenic canyon. Past Rafferty peak and Parsons peak on your right, and skirting long Kuna Crest with its frothing cascades on your left, you will find yourself at lunch time at the head of the canyon facing lofty shelves of granite, far beyond which loom glaciershrouded peaks. These, as you will see presently, are Mount Lyell, 13,090 feet, and its flanking giants, McClure mountain on the north, and Rodgers peak on the south. Scrambling up the granite shelf and over Donohue pass, your horses carry you through a vast basin of tumbled granite encircled at its majestic climax by a titanic rampart of nine sharp glistening peaks and hundreds of spearlike points, the whole cloaked in enommous shrouds of snow. Presently—just how you do not know, so breathless is your gaze ahead —the granite spurs Inclose you. And presently your horses scrambling over impossible walls and shelves, looms above you, a mighty glistening wall which apparently forbids further approach to Lyell's inner shrine. But even this the agile horses surmount and you find yourself in the summit’s very embrace, facing glaciers and a lakelet of robln’s-egg blue. This is the Sierra’s climax! Thousand Island Lake. Passing south along the John Muir trail you cross the Yosemite boundary and in a couple of hours camp at Thousand Island lake in the shadow of Banner peak. Your day’s ride has been seventeen miles, and, at day’s close, you find yourself at a spot so extraordinarily wild and noble that you vote it worth the trip a thousand times had there been no Lyell on the way. For Banner peak, with its 12,975 feet of Altitude and its remarkcable beauty and personality, will remain a vivid memory to your dying day. Leaving Thousand Island lake the next morning you may return as you came —four days; three nights. f Or, far better, if you can spare the time, you will Unger an hour or .two in front of Banner before starting, and, again, an hour or two in Lyell’s inner shrine p you then may camp at the head of LyeU canyon, spend the next night at Tenaya lake for thte sunset and the early mornings and jog leisurely hack to the valley—five days; four nights.

Thus will you taste, in addition to the stirring beauty of the incomparable valley, the glory of the High Sierra in its noblest expression.

In the Yosemite.