THE YOSEMITE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 150, 26 June 1937, Page 25 (Supplement)

THE YOSEMITE.

A TOURIST PLAYGROUND.

WHERE SUPERLATIVES FAIL.

(By D.U.)

Had an immense subterranean upheaval not occurred countless ages ago on the Xorth American continent, millions of beauty-loving people would have been denied the delight of witnessing one of Nature's most spectacular freaks —the Yosemite Valley, in the Sierra Nevada mountains. After a monotonous, dusty drive through the hot orchard lands fringing the Californian coast and later the arid, mesa-covered inland deserts of the Merced and San Joaquin valleys, the dishevelled tourist is apt to be disappointed by his first view, from the outside, of this much-heralded national park. Swinging cautiously along the serpentine Approach, he is encompassed on all sides by barren, slatey cliffs almost bereft of big timber. Probably the water in his radiator has already boiled twice, and he is in no mood to exchange pleasantries with the forest ranger who stops him at El Portal, the entrance to the valley.

Grumpily acknowledging that he carries no guns, dogs or cats secreted under the seat of his car, he proceeds. He has not gone far, however, when, without any warning, the full beauty of the valley in its awe-inspiring majesty is flung at him. Sheer from the cool green valley floor opening before him, soar, for thousands of feet, magnificent precipices of basalt rock. Along the base are splendid, stately trees, while flanking the paved highway in an aspenetudded gulch murmurs sweetly a dancing mountain tarn.

"Say! This is swell. It's—it's colossal." Forgotten now is the soggy collar drooping limply about his neck and the saturated shirt clinging clammily to his perspiring back. Forgotten, too, is his chagrin at leaving the "doggone" beer •can opener on top of the refrigerator at home. Even little Johnnie's incessant grizzling from the rumble seat is silenced. Here is Nature in the raw.

The High Sierras. The tourist (in his own country the American tourist is a type) automatically stops iiis car. He has ceased to chew the unrecognisable mess that once deserved the title of cigar. Now it droops dejectedly from a gaping mouth that for once cannot find adjectives to describe the enchantment of the view. His fertile, up-to-the-minute brain refuses to function. The florid sun that goaded him so mercilessly during the day is sinking discreetly into the west, throwing into bold relief the smooth, dome-like ridges of the High Sierras. Time to get a move on and find a camp. In a fog, half of incredulity, half of delicious restfulness, the bewildered tourist rolls on. An ever-changing panorama glides past; each turn unfolds a peerless glimpse of sylvan forest glades and silky lawns. Another neatly uniformed ranger allocates him a camp, and as the day changes into night he pitches tent beneath the fragrant pines along with hundreds of other identical tents and hundreds of other identical harassed husbands and tired-looking wives. As the rashers of bacon and eggs from anaemic San Francisco hens sizzle invitingly over the blazing log fire (the 15-dollar gasoline stove would make its public appearance on the morrow), the happy campers discuss plans for the next day.

"Mum, I guess I'll hike up the crik to-morrow and bag a mess of fish. The guy in the next camp told me just the spot." Dad is the compleat angler and it is his secret ambition to return from hie vacation with a photograph of himself exhibiting the mythical mess of fish "to show those mugs at the office." **You can take the kids down the stream for a swim." "But I wanna climb the Half Dome/' wails Johnnie. In the evening the family pile into the automobile, no longer shamelessly vaunting to the world a motley collection of mattresses, blankets and sundry camping accoutrements, and set off for Camp Curry. Here they "take in" the performance given nightly by a troupe of radio cowboys and they see the firefall. \

Indian Call. High up on Glacier Point, etched blackly against the starlit heavens, stands a ranger, but from the valley floor he is invisible. Eerily, on the clear night air floats down a mysterious, pulse-quickening Indian call. A fellow ranger at the camp base answers, and on the brink of the chasm appears a pin-point of light. The light grows into a molten glow, and then slowly, ever so slowly, a fall of fire cascades down the mountain side; crimson and gold stars glide earthwards in a blazing ribbon of splendour to come to rest on a rocky ledge thousands of feet below, harmless, helpless little fragments of ash, to be washed down to the broad Pacific by the melting winter snow. The spellbound watchers below are silent; they are breathless with awe.

Still silent, they file out of the camp and swing into line with the apparently endless phalanx of cars bound for the bear feeding grounds. Here, in the glow of a hujre spotlight, they see perhaps ten or fifteen grotesquely coated brown bears enjoy an unappetising repast of scraps collected from the various camp grounds. A naturalist ranger delivers a short address on the habits, instincts and peculiar attributes of bruin, and the tourists haprily return to their individual camps.

"Wal, this sure is the life. Yes, siree! This-k-the-life," cries father, emitting a prodigious, contented yawn as long fingers of warming sunlight caress the crisp, pine-scented morning air. In a hundred other beds a hundred other vacationists are making the same observation.

The leisurely breakfast over, and their food supplies suspended in a box between two trees, out of reach of the bears which prowl around the park, the campers set off on a sightseeing tour. Feeling at peace with the world, father climbs in behind the wheel.

"Sa-ay!" he ejaculates, "can you beat that? Some miserable hound has swiped my gas!" Sure enough, the gauge points to zero. Happily, the engine starts, and they arrive at the service

station without mishap. From nowhere a host of neatly attired attendants pounce on the car. One washes the windshield, another fills the radiator, the oil is attended to by a third, while a fourth operates the bowser. They are college boys working during vacation. /

"Better give me ten gallons," says the camper; "someone played a dirty trick on—" he glances again at the offending gauge. "Well, I'll be hornswogglcd!" Mockingly, the little ribbon of red has. crept up unobserved.

The Phenomenon. "You folks are new here, I guess?" queries the attendant with a grin. "That is rather a peculiar phenomenon in the valley. Y'see, the atmosphere is so rarefied owing to the altitude—it's over 4000 ft above sea level right here—that the gauge fails to register while the engine is cold. Until people become acquainted with that fact they are liable to say things a little hastily. It's an amusing, but quite condonable, mistake anyone can make. There.'s another thing," he continues chattily. "The valley is dead for radio reception. Some say the mineral content of the ground accounts for it, and others say the walls are too sheer for radio waves to penetrate. Two dollars sixty, please." The succeeding days speed by all too quickly. In their own car (if they belong to the microscopic proportion of Americans not possessing one, they patronise a "rubberneck" wagon") a tour is made up the magnificent 28-mile mountain highway to Glacier Point, from which it is possible to gaze directly down for more than 3000 ft into their own camp. Twenty-eight miles round the mountain to gain half a mile in altitude! A never-to-be-forgotten view' is obtained from the craggy rock promontory of the lumpy, verdurecoated, bald-topped Sierras stretching into the distance. The air has a fresh, invigorating tang, and the tinkling murmur of a nearby mountain stream sings in their ears. Down the opposite wall of the ravine, in three spectacular leaps, hurtle the famed Yosemite Falls, but the panoramic patchwork of the canyon below defies all superlatives. Mighty pines stud the valley floor like minute green pepper pots, and russet tints are lent by the pigmy log cabins, while the sparkling Merced Kiver, a silvery, silken ribbon, insinuates itself lazily over its vagrant course. At irregular intervals are huge chasm-like fissures gouged from solid rock many centuries ago by the sluggish action of rivers of ice.

Arduous Ascent. Unmatchable beauty, the tourists declare in awe struck tones, but they "ain't seen nothin' yet." Trips are taken to the graceful, symmetric 'Bridal Veil Falls, the Happy Isles and along the Wawona Road, to the Mariposa Grove of Big Trees. An excursion is made on patient burros up the base of the Half Dome, the remainder of the arduous ascent being made on foot, the last 900 ft with the aid of a stout steel cable bracketed to the rock face. They see the Nevada Falls, climb El Capitan and Inspiration Eock. At the village they see inscrutable Yosemite Indians performing rituals and doing the handicrafts of their forefathers. They see the numerous fascinating spectacles that some cataclysmic natural force untold ages before gave to a not unappreciative world. They "do" Yosemite.

Regretfully the car is repacked, and, after several days of delightful sightseeing, the family "hits the homeward trail." Over miles of tortuous icontrolled road they climb the valley face and out on to the Big Oak Flat Road. In the space of a few more miles the car rises and drops many thousands of feet, in places approaching an altitude of 10,000 feet, passing places with romantic sounding names such as Aspen Valley, Long Gulch, White Wolf, Porcupine Flat, right through the heart of the coyote and rattlesnake haunts. Except for an occasional ambling bear, there is little more to be seen in the tourist season than friendly squirrels and chipmunks, but the "rattlers" are an ever-present menace lurking by the wayside. At dusk they have not completely traversed the park, which is nearly 1200 square miles in area.

At length, through the fertile pastoral lands of torrid Sacramento Valley the travel-stained car rolls on to Vallejo at the base of San Francisco Bay, where the tourists gladly swing aboard a broadbeamed auto ferry.

"Wal, home at last, mum. It's sure been a swell vacation. Perfect. But," father's face drops suddenly, "durned if I didn't clean forget that doggone mess of fish."