cursions into the mountain regions whose scope would be beyond
the individual means of many who join forces with the club on these
community outings. Hundreds of miles of new trails are laid out and
old ones improved, peaks are climbed and records left, often trout are
planted in barren lakes, and everyone is given an educational experience
in the ways of the Open. Also--and primarily--all hands have a royal
good time.

[Illustration: The Government road that leads to Mount Rainier]

[Illustration: Sunrise at Hetch-Hetchy]

At Tracy, in the San Joaquin Valley, where the Sierra Club special train
stopped for supper, I joined the party. That night I felt conspicuous,
for six weeks of tramping in the Yosemite had removed the last traces of
presentability from my costume; however, when at dawn the hikers of the
morrow emerged from the sleeping-cars at Porterville, white collars, low
shoes, long skirts, and all the other impedimenta of civilized apparel
were replaced by workaday garments, while khaki and flannel shirts were
much in evidence.

For two days the long line struggled along the trail leading into the
canyon of the Kern. From oak and chaparral to pines and bear clover,
silver fir, and nature-made gardens of columbine, red snow plant, and
cyclamen we mounted, and then still higher to a silent tamarack country.
Then down interminably to Fish Creek, and camp, and Charlie Tuck, who
was--and no doubt still is--the Celestial ruler of the club's
all-important culinary department.

Fishing, minor side trips, some fish-planting, and all the attractions
of outdoor camp life occupied a week in the lower Kern Valley. Then camp
was removed ten miles up the canyon to the junction of the Big Arroya
and the Kern, whence were engineered ascents of the Red Kaweah and of
Whitney, highest of all the mountains in the United States, each reached
through side trips of several days' duration, and each opening up a
fresh, new field of highland delights.

The trails of the Sierra, like trails the world over, are endlessly
appealing--only the Sierran footways seem somehow richer in variety than
others known to me. The entire mountain world unfolds from the shifting
vantage points of these ribbons, threading its most sacred temples,
clear and strong through the valleys, distinguishable only by the
presence of many blazes upon the tree trunks where pine needles plot
their obliteration, zigzagging dizzily up steep slopes, crossing rivers