The Book of the National ParksYard, Robert Sterling
History
The Book of the National Parks
Yard, Robert Sterling
National parks and reserves -- United States
As for the field, there is none nobler or more varied in the world.
There are dozens of divides, scores of towering, snow-splashed peaks,
hundreds of noble valleys and shining lakes, thousands of cascading
streams, great and small, from whose depths fighting trout rise to the
cast fly. There are passes to be crossed which carry one through
concentric cirques of toothed granite to ridges from which the High
Sierra spreads before the eye a frothing sea of snowy peaks.
Such a trip is that through Tuolumne Meadows up Lyell Canyon to its
headwaters, over the Sierra at Donohue Pass, and up into the birth
chambers of rivers among the summit glaciers of Lyell and McClure--a
never-to-be-forgotten journey, which may be continued, if one has time
and equipment, down the John Muir Trail to Mount Whitney and the Sequoia
National Park. Or one may return to the park by way of Banner Peak and
Thousand Island Lake, a wonder spot, and thence north over Parker and
Mono Passes; trips like these produce views as magnificent as the land
possesses.
Space does not permit even the suggestion of the possibilities to the
trail traveller of this wonderland above the rim. It is the summer
playground for a nation.
Second in magnificence among the park valleys is Hetch Hetchy, the
Yosemite of the north. Both are broad, flowered and forested levels
between lofty granite walls. Both are accented by gigantic rock
personalities. Kolana Rock, which guards Hetch Hetchy at its western
gateway as El Capitan guards Yosemite, must be ranked in the same class.
Were there no Yosemite Valley, Hetch Hetchy, though it lacks the
distinction which gives Yosemite Valley its world-wide fame, would be
much better known than it now is--a statement also true about other
features of the national park.
Hetch Hetchy is now being dammed below Kolana Rock to supply water for
San Francisco. The dam will be hidden from common observation, and the
timber lands to be flooded will be cut so as to avoid the unsightliness
usual with artificial reservoirs in forested areas. The reservoir will
cover one of the most beautiful bottoms in America. It will destroy
forests of luxuriance. It will replace these with a long sinuous lake,
from which sheer Yosemite-like granite walls will rise abruptly two or
three thousand feet. There will be places where the edges are forested.
Down into this lake from the high rim will cascade many roaring streams.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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