The Book of the National ParksYard, Robert Sterling
History
The Book of the National Parks
Yard, Robert Sterling
National parks and reserves -- United States
Time will not dim my memory of Tehipite Dome, the august valley and the
leaping, singing river which it overlooks. Well short of the Yosemite
Valley in the kind of beauty that plunges the observer into silence,
the Tehipite Valley far excels it in bigness, power, and majesty.
Lookout Point on the north rim, a couple of miles south of the Dome,
gave us our first sensation. Three thousand feet above the river, it
offered by far the grandest valley view I have looked upon, for the rim
view into Yosemite by comparison is not so grand as it is beautiful.
The canyon revealed itself to the east as far as Mount Woodworth, its
lofty diversified walls lifting precipitously from the heavy forests of
the floor and sides, and yielding to still greater heights above.
Enormous cliffs abutted, Yosemite-like, at intervals. South of us,
directly across the canyon, rose the strenuous heights of the Monarch
Divide, Mount Harrington, towering a thousand feet higher above the
valley floor than Clouds Rest above the Yosemite. Down the slopes of the
Monarch Divide, seemingly from its turreted summits, cascaded many
frothing streams. The Eagle Peaks, Blue Canyon Falls, Silver Spur, the
Gorge of Despair, Lost Canyon--these were some of the romantic and
appropriate titles we found on the Geological Survey map.
And, close at hand, opposite Mount Harrington and just across Crown
Creek Canyon, rose mighty Tehipite. We stood level with its rounded
glistening dome. The Tehipite Dome is a true Yosemite feature. It
compares in height and prominence with El Capitan. In fact, it stands
higher above the valley floor and occupies a similar position at the
valley's western gate. It is not so massive as El Capitan, and therefore
not so impressive; but it is superb. It is better compared with Half
Dome, though again perhaps not so impressive. But it has its own august
personality, as notably so as either of these world-famed rocks; and, if
it stood in the Yosemite, would share with them the incomparable
valley's highest honors.
Descending to the floor, the whole aspect of the valley changed. Looking
up, Tehipite Dome, now outlined against the sky, and the neighboring
abrupt castellated walls, towered more hugely than ever. We did not need
the contour map to know that some of these heights exceeded Yosemite's.
The sky-line was fantastically carved into spires and domes, a
counterpart in gigantic miniature of the Great Sierra of which it was
the valley climax. The Yosemite measure of sublimity, perhaps, lacked,
but in its place was a more rugged grandeur, a certain suggestion of
vastness and power that I have not seen elsewhere.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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