The Passes of the Sierra.

644 THE PASSES OF THE, SIERRA. — THE PASSES OF THE SIERRA. /The sustained grandeur of the California 1 iftips. is forcibly illustrated by the fact that, | \u27throughout their whole extent, there is not a single pass lower than\u27pooo feet above the ; level of the sea. In a distance of 140 miles, J between Latitude 360 20\u27 and 380, the low-\u27, ,, jest I have yet found exceeds 9,000 feet, and:, s~j\the average height of all that are in use is, I perhaps, not far from ii,ooo \j-ti-tA ~ THE PASSES OF THE SIERRA. 645 4 J his way across the range almost everywhere, -•and at any time of year To him nearly every notch between the peaks is a pass, though much patieiit step-cutting is at times required up and down steeply inclined glaciers, and cautious blimbing over precipices, that at first sight would seem hopelessly in- accessibte tef~trre4ow-tendi8r. /*XLrpursuing my studies dttwnjpthe last oight--years-, I -have crossed- from side to side of the range at intervals of a few miles j all along the highest portion-of the chain-, \-3wth -far-less -sl- danger* than one would naturally count on. And what fine wildness was thus developed—storms and avalanches, lak,es an/3 water-falls, gardens and meadows —only\u27those wtllever know who give the freest and most buoyant portion of their lives to climbing and seeing for themselves. All the passes of the alpine portion of the range make their steepest ascents on the eastern flank. On this side the average rise is not far from a thousand feet to the mile, while on the west it is about two hundred feet. Another marked difference be-\u27, tween the eastern and western portions of the passes is that the former begin at the very foot of the range, while the latter can hardly be said to begin until an elevation of from seven to ten thousand feet is reached. Approaching the range from the gray levels of Mono and Owen\u27s Valley on the east, the traveler sees before him the steep, short passes in full view, fenced in by rugged spurs that come plunging down from the shoulders of the peaks on either side, the courses of the more direct being disclosed from top to bottom without asin- gle interruption. But from the west one sees nothing of the pass he may be seeking until near the summit, after days have been spent in threading the forests growing on the main dividing ridges between the river canons. It is interesting to observe how surely : the ahcrossing animals f every kind fall\u27 into the same trails. The more rugged and inaccessible the general character of the topography of any particular region, the more surely will the trails of white men, Indians, bears, .deei*? wild sheep, etc., be found converging into the best passes. The Indians of the western slope venture cautiously over the passes in settled weather to attend dances, and obtain loads of pine- nuts and the larva? of a small fly that breeds in Mono and Owens lakes, which, when dried, forms an important article of food; while the Pah Utes cross over from the east to hunt the deer and obtain supplies of acorns, and it is truly astonishing to see what immense loads the haggard old squaws make out to carry . barefooted through these rough passes, oftentimes for a distance of sixty or seventy miles. They are always accompanied by the men, who stride on unburdened and erect a little in advance, stooping occasionally to pile stepping-stones for., them- against steep rocks, just as they would prepare the way in difficult places for theif ponies. Bears evince great sagacity as mountaineers, but although fond of traveling, they seldom cross the range. I have several times tracked them through the Mono Pass, but only in late years after cattle and sheep had passed that way, when they doubtless were following to feed on the stragglers and on those that had been killed by falling over the rocks. Even the wild sheep, the best mountaineers of all, choose regular passes in making journeys across the summits. Deer seldom pass frqm one side of the rangevto the other.., I have never yet observed\u27 a single specimen of the mule- deer of the Great Basin west of the summit, and rarely one of the black-tailed species on the eastern slope, notwithstanding many of the latter ascend the range nearly to the summit every summer, to feed-safely-in the wild gardens and bring forth their young. The glaciers are the pass-makers, and it is by them that the courses of all mountaineers are predestined. Every pass without exception in the Califor-iiian-JUps was created by them without the slightest aid or predetermining guidance from any of the cataclysmic agents. We have seen elaborate statements of the amount of drilling and blasting accomplished in the construction of the railroad across the Sierra, above Dormer Lake; but for every pound of rock moved in this way, the glaciers which descended east and west through this same pass, crushed and carried away more than a hundred tons. The so-called practicable road-passes are simply those portions of the range more degraded by glacial action than the adjacent portions, and degraded in such a way as to leave the summits rounded, instead of sharp and impracticable-; while the peaks, from the superior strength and. hardness of their rocks, or frem- more favorable position, having suffered less degradation, are left towering above the passes as if they had been heaved into the sky by some force acting from beneath. The scenery of all the passes, especially at the head, is of the very wildest and grand-. 646 THE PASSES OF THE SIERRA. est description,—lofty peaks massed together and laden around their bases with ice and snow; chains of glacier lakes; cascading streams in endless variety, with glorious views, westward over a sea of rocks and woods, and eastward over +fre strange ashy plains sd volcanoes and. mountain ranges ofjMono and Inyo. Every pass, however, possesses treasures of beauty all its own, and -the. finding of these is one of the mountaineer\u27s exceeding great rewards. Having thus -in. a comprehensive way , indicated the height and leading features and ttaegeogra-phieal distribution of the principal passes, I will now endeavor to g*re=!ft-pki-n- description of cthe Mono Pass in particular, which may, I think, be regarded as a fair . sample of the higher alpine passes in general. The, main portion of the Mono Pass is formed by Bloody Canon, which begins at the Vesy summit of the range, and runs in a general east-north-easterly direction to the edge of the Mono Plain. . The first grand.- rush—of white men that forced a way through its somber depths were, eager gold-seekers, during the exciting discoveries-made in the year 18587 But the canon was known and traveled as a pass by the Indians and mountain animals long V _ before its discovery by white men, as is t j-r-tt, yi/U*) shown by their numerous tributary trails ?** n~ which cMviM\u27gti at the head of the pass from every direction. Its name accords well with the character of the early times in California, and may perhaps have been suggested by the predominant color of the metamorphic slates in which it is in great part eroded; or more probably by blood-stains made by the unfortunate animals which were compelled to slip and shuffle awkwardly over its rough, cutting rocks. I have never knpwn an animal, either mule or horse, to make its way through the canon, either in going up or down, without losing- more or less blood from wounds on the legs. Occasionally one is killed outright—falling headlong and rolling over precipices like a bowlder. But such instances- are fes-rarer than from the terribte- appearance of the trail one would be led to expect; the more experienced when driven loose find their way over the -mest dangerous places with a caution and sagacity that is truly wonderful. During the gold excitement it was at times a matter of considerable pecuniary importance to force a way through the canon with pack-trains early in the spring, while it was yet heavily blocked toward, the head- with snow; and then the mules with their loads had sometimes to be let clown over the steepest drifts by means of ropes. A good bridle-path leads from Yosemite through many a grove and meadow up to the head of the canon, a distance of about thirty miles. Here the scenery undergoes a sudden and startling condensation. Mountains, red, gray and black, rise close at hand on the right, whitened around their bases with banks of enduring snow; on the left swells the huge red mass of Mount Gibbs, while in front the eye wanders down the shadowy canon, and out on the warm plain of Mono, where the lake is seen gleaming like a burnished metallic disk, and clusters of lofty volcanic cones,.,with blue mountain ranges in the distance. When at length we enter the mountain gate-way, the somber rocks seem conscious of our presence, and seem to come thronging close about us. Happily the ouzel and old familiar robin are here to sing us welcome, and azure daisies beaming with trustfulness and sympathy, enabling us to feel something of Nature\u27s love even here, beneath the gaze of her coldest rocks. The effect of this expressive outspokenness on the part of the canon-rocks is greatly enhanced by the quiet aspect of the alpine meadows through which we- pass \u27just before entering the narrow gate-way. The forests in which.Athey lie, and the mountain-tops rising beyond them, seem hushed and tranquil. We catch their restful spirit, yield to the soothing influences of the sunshine, and saunter dreamily on through flowers and bees, scarce touched by a definite thought, then suddenly find ourselves in the shadowy canon, closeted with Nature in one of her wildest and most secret strongholds. After the first bewildering impression begins to wear off, we perceive it is not altogether terrible; for, besides the re-assuring birds and flowers, we discover a chain of shining lakelets hanging down from the very summit of the pass, and linked together by a silvery stream 1 The highest -are set in bleak, rough bowls, scantily fringed with yellow sedges. Winter storms blow snow through the -pass, in blinding drifts, and avalanches shoot from the heights, rushing and booming like- water- fwis.. Then are these sparkling tarns filled and buried, leaving not a hint of their existence. In June and July they begin to blink and thaw out like sleepy eyes, the carices thrust up their short brown spikes, the daisies bloom in turn, and ..the most 1 THE PASSES OF THE SIERRA. 647 profoundly buried of them all is at length warmed and summered as if winter were only a dream. Red Lake is the lowest of the chain, and also the largest. It seems rather dull and forbidding at first sight, lying motionless in its deep, dark bed. Its real character, however, will not long be hidden from those who have the love to see it.\u27 The canon wall rises sheer from the water\u27s edge on the south, but on the opposite side there is sufficient space and sunshine for a fine sedgy garden. Daisies star the sod around the margin, and the center is brilliantly lighted with lilies, castilleias, larkspurs and columbines, while broad, leafy willows shelter them from the wind, the whole forming a -most joyful outburst of plant-life keenly emphasized by the chill baldness oi the on-looking cliffs. After indulging here in a dozing, shimmering lake-rest, the happy stream sets forth again, warbling and trilling like an ouzel, ever delightfully, confiding, no matter how dark the way, leaping, gliding, hither, thither, clear or foamy,, manifesting the ravishing beauty of its -lyetmg virgin wildness in every sound and gesture. One of its most beautiful developments is the Diamond Cascade, situated a short distance below Red Lake. In the formation of this charming fall, the tense, crystalline water is first dashed into a mass-.£)f coarse, granular spray mixed with dusty foam, and then divided into a diamond pattern by following the diagonal cleavage planes that intersect the face of the precipice over which it pours. Viewed in front, it resembles a strip of.embroidery, varying through the seasons with the temperature and the volume of water. Scarce a flower-may be seen along its snowy border. A few bent pines look on from a distance, and small fringes of cassiope and rock-ferns are growing in fissures near the head, but these are so lowly and undemonstrative that only the attentive observer will be likely to notice them. On the north wall of the canon, a little below the Diamond Cascade, a glittering side stream makes its appearance, seeming to leap directly out of the -deep sky. It first resembles a crinkled ribbon of silver hanging loosely down the wall, but grows wider as it descends, and dashes the dull rock with foam. A long-rough talus curves up against this part of the cliff, overgrown with snow-pressed willows, in which the fall disappears with many an eager surge and swirl and plashing leap, and finally beats its way down to its confluence with the main canon stream. Below this point the climate is no longer arctic. Butterflies become larger and more abundant, grasses with imposing spread of panicle wave above your shoulders, and the warm summery drone of the bumble-bee thickens the air. Biuus-ailmaulis, the tree- mountaineer that climbs highest, and braves the coldest blasts, is found scattered in dwarfed wind-bent clumps from the summit of the pass about half-way down the canon. Here—it. is succeeded by the hardy two-leafed pine, which.is speedily joined by the taller yellow and mountain pines. These, with the burly juniper, and shimmering aspen, rapidly grow larger as the sunshine becomes richer, forming groves that block the view; or they stand more v apart here and there in picturesque groups, that make, beautiful and obvious harmony with the rocks and with one another. • Blooming underbrush becomes abundant, \u27 azalea, spiraea, and the brier-rose,-weaving rich fringes for the streams, and shaggy rugs to relieve the stern, unflinching rock-bosses. Through this delightful wilderness, Canon Creek roves like an Arab without any „ constraining channel, throbbing and wavering, now in sunshine, now in thoughtful shade;,, flashing from side to side in weariless exuberance of energy. A glorious rhilky-way of cascades is thus developed,: whose individual beauties might well call: forth, volumes .of description ; but to those already described we have space here fort only one more, the BOWER CASCADE, \u27 which, though comparatively inconspicuous, ranking among the smallest as to size, is yet perhaps the most .surpassingly beautiful of them all. It is situated in the lower region of the pass, just where the sunshine begins to mellow between the cold and warm climates. Here the glad creek, grown strong with tribute gathered from many a snowy- fountain, sings richer strains, and be- . comes more human and lovable at every , step. Now you may find the rose anchyarrow . by its side, and small meadows filled with grasses and clover. At the head of a lowbrowed rock, luxuriant dogwood bushes and willows arch over from bank to bank, embowering the stream with their leafy branches; and waving plumes, kept in motion by the current, fringe the brow of the cascade in front. From this leafy covert the stream leaps vigorously out into the MJhh ocr/% 648 THE PASSES OF THE SIERRA. light in a fluted curve thick sown with sparkling crystals, and falls into a pool filled with brown bowlders, out of which it creeps gray with foam-bells and disappears in a tangle of verdure like that from which it came. Hence, to the foot of the canon, the meta- morphic slates give place to granite, whose nobler sculpture calls forth expressions of corresponding beauty from. the stream in passing over it,—brighttrills of rapids, booming notes of falls, solemn hushes of smooth- gliding sheets, all chanting and blending in glorious harmony. When, at length, its impetuous alpine life is done, it slips through a meadow with scarce an audible whisper -and falls asleep in Moraine Lake. This water-bed is one of the finest I ever beheld; The azure sky makes its canopy, evergreens wave soothingly at head and foot, and the breath of flowers floats over it like incense. Here our blessed stream rests from its rocky wanderings,-afr its mountaineering done,—no more foaming rock- leaping, no more loud-resounding song. It falls into a smooth, glassy sleep, stirred only by the night wind, which, coming down the canon, makes it croon and mutter in ripples along its broidered shores. Leaving the lake, it glides quietly through the rushes, destined never more to touch the living rock. Henceforth its path lies through ancient moraines and reaches of ashy sage-plain, which nowhere afford rocks Suitable for the development of cascades or :sheer falls. Yet this beauty of maturity, though less striking, is of a still higher order, enticing us lovingly on through gentian meadows and groves of rustling aspen to Lake Mono, where, spirit-like, our happy stream vanishes in vapor, and floats free .again in the sky. Bloody Canon, like every other ca&en in the California Alps, was recently occupied by a glacier, which derived its fountain snows from the adjacent summits, and descended into Mono Lake, at a time when its waters stood at a much higher level than now. The principal characters in which the history of the ancient glaciers is preserved are displayed alLthrougtuthe-Garften in marvelous freshness and simplicity, furnishing the student with extraordinary advantages for the acquisition of knowledge of this sort. The most striking passages are polished and striated surfaces, which in many places reflect the rays of the sun like smooth water. The dam of Red Lake is an elegantly modeled rib of metamorphic slate, brought into relief because of its superior strength, and because of the greater intensity of the glacial erosion of the rock immediately above it, caused by a steeply inclined tributary glacier, which entered the main trunk with a heavy down-thrust at the head of the lake. Moraine Lake furnishes an equally interesting example of a basin formed wholly, or in part, by a terminal moraine dam curved across the path of a stream between two lateral moraines. At Moraine Lake the canon proper terminates, although apparently continued by the two lateral moraines of the vanished glacier. These morainesrextend unbrokenly from the sides of the canon into the plain, a distance Of about five miles; curving and tapering-in lines of exquisite beauty; while in magnitude they are truly sublime, being over three hundred feet in height where they arejoined to the mountain. Their sunward sides are gardens, their shady sides are groves; the former;devoted chiefly to erio- gonse, compositse, -and graminse; a square rod containing five or six profusely flowered eriogonums of several species, \u27about the same number of bahias and linosyris, and a few grass tufts; each species planted trimly apart, with bare gravel between, as if cultivated artificially. . My first visit to Bloody Canon was made in the summer of 1869, under circumstances well calculated to heighten the impressions that are the peculiar offspring of mountains. I came from the blooming tangles of Florida, and waded out into the plant-gold of the great central plain of California, when its flora was as yet untrodden. Never before had I beheld congregations of social flowers half so extensive or half so glorious. Golden composita? covered all the ground from the coast range to the Sierra like a stratum of curdled sunshine, in which I reveled for weeks, watching the rising and setting of their innumerable suns; then gave myself up to be borne forward on the crest of the summer wave that sweeps annually up the Sierra flank and spends itself on the snowy -Alps-.- /\u27.)./,: ,, At the Big Tuolumne Meadows I remained more than a month, sketching, botanizing, and climbing among the surrounding mountains. The mountaineer with whom I was campingii one of those remarkable men one so frequently meets in California, the hard angles and bosses of whose characters have been brought into striking relief by the grinding excitements of the gold period, until they come to resemble glacial landscapes. But at this late day, my friend\u27s / \u27 41 THE PASSES OF THE SIERRA. 649 PASS THROUGH THE MmARITOS. activities had subsided, and his craving for rest caused him to become a gentle shepherd and literally to lie down with the lamb. Recognizing the unsatisfiable longings of my Scotch Highland instincts, he threw out some hints concerning Bloody Canon, and advised me to explore it. I have never seen it myself he said, for I never was so unfortunate as to pass that way. But I have heard many a strange story about it, and I warrant you will at least find it wild enough. . , Next-day I made up a bundle of bread, tied my note-book to my belt, and strode away in the bracing air, full of eager, indefinite hope. The plushy lawns that lay in my path served to soothe my morning haste. The sod in many places was starred with daisies and blue gentians, over which I lingered. I traced the paths of the ancient Vol. XVII.—51. glaciers over many a shining pavement, and marked the gaps in the upper forests that told the power of the winter avalanches. Climbing higher, I saw for the first time the gradual dwarfing of the pines in compliance with climate, and on the summit discovered creeping mats of the Arctic willow overgrown with silky catkins, and patches of the dwarf vaccinium with its round .flowers sprinkled in the grass like purple hail; while in every direction the landscape stretched sublimely away in fresh wildness—a manuscript written by the hand of Nature alone. At length, as I entered the pass, the huge rocks began to close around in all their wild mysterious impressi