And it is all the
more interesting since it is the highest and most enduring remnant of
the great Tuolumne Glacier, whose traces are still distinct fifty miles
away, and whose influence on the landscape was so profound. The McClure
Glacier, once a tributary of the Lyell, is smaller. Thirty-eight years
ago I set a series of stakes in it to determine its rate of motion.
Towards the end of summer in the middle of the glacier it was only a
little over an inch in twenty-four hours.
The trip to Mono from the Soda Springs can be made in a day, but many
days may profitably be spent near the shores of the lake, out on its
islands and about the volcanoes.
In making the trip down the Big Tuolumne Canyon, animals may be led as
far as a small, grassy, forested lake-basin that lies below the crossing
of the Virginia Creek trail. And from this point any one accustomed to
walking on earthquake boulders, carpeted with canyon chaparral, can
easily go down as far as the big cascades and return to camp in one day.
Many, however, are not able to do his, and it is better to go leisurely,
prepared to camp anywhere, and enjoy the marvelous grandeur of the
place.
The canyon begins near the lower end of the meadows and extends to the
Hetch Hetchy Valley, a distance of about eighteen miles, though it will
seem much longer to any one who scrambles through it.
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