From the south base of the Obelisk a sharp mural ridge curves east, surrounding an amphitheatre whose sloping, rugged sides were picturesquely mottled in snow and stone. From the summit of this ridge we knew we should look over into the upper Merced basin, a great, billowy, granite depression lying between the Merced group and Mount Lyell; the birthplace of all those ice rivers and deep-cañoned torrents which join in the Little Yosemite and form the river Merced. Toward this we pressed, hurrying rapidly, as the sun declined, in hopes of making our point before darkness should obscure the terra incognita beyond.
It put us at our best to hasten over the rough, rudely piled blocks and up cracks among solid bluffs of granite, but with the sun fully half an hour high we reached the Obelisk foot and looked from our ridge-top eastward into the new land.
From our feet granite and ice in steep, roof-like curves fell abruptly down to the Merced Cañon brink, and beyond, over the great gulf, rose terraces and ridges of sculptured stone, dressed with snow-field, one above another, up to the eastern rank of peaks whose sharp, solid forms were still in full light.
From below, it is always a most interesting feature of the mountaineer’s daily life to watch fading sunlight upon the summit-rocks and snow. There is something peculiarly charming in the deep carmine flush and in the pale gradations of violet and cool blue-purple into which it successively fades. We were now in the very midst of this alpine glow. Our rocky amphitheatre, opening directly to the sun, was crowded full of this pure, red light; snow-fields warmed to deepest rose, gnarled stems of dead pines were dark vermilion, the rocks yellow, and the vast body of the Obelisk at our left one spire of gold piercing the sapphire zenith. Eastward, far below us, the Illilluette basin lay in a peculiarly mild haze, its deep carpet of forest warmed into faint bronze, and the bare domes and rounded, granite ridges which everywhere rise above the trees were yellow, of a soft, creamy tint. Farther down, every foothill was perceptibly reddened under the level beams. Sunlight reflecting from every object shot up to us, enriching the brightness of our amphitheatre.
We drank and breathed the light, its mellow warmth permeating every fibre. We spread our blankets under the lee of an overhanging rock, sheltered from the keen east wind, and in full view of the broad western horizon.
After a short half-hour of this wonderful light the sun rested for an instant upon the Coast ranges, and sank, leaving our mountains suddenly dead, as if the very breath of life had ebbed away, cold, gray shadows covering their rigid bodies, and pale sheets of snow half shrouding their forms.
For a full hour after the sun went down we did little else than study the western sky, watching with greatest interest a wonderful permanence and singular gradation of lingering light. Over two hundred miles of horizon a low stratum of pure orange covered the sky for seven or eight degrees; above that another narrow band of beryl-green, and then the cool, dark evening blue.
I always notice, whenever one gets a very wide view of remote horizon from some lofty mountain-top, the sky loses its high domed appearance, the gradations reaching but a few degrees upward from the earth, creating the general form of an inverted saucer. The orange and beryl bands occupied only about fifteen degrees in altitude, but swept around nearly from north to south. It was as if a wonderfully transparent and brilliant rainbow had been stretched along the sky line. At eleven the colors were still perceptible, and at midnight, when I rose to observe the thermometer, they were gone, but a low faint zone of light still lingered.
At gray dawn we were up and cooking our rasher of bacon, and soon had shouldered our instruments and started for the top.
The Obelisk is flattened, and expands its base into two sharp, serrated ridges, which form its north and south edges. The broad faces turned to the east and west are solid and utterly inaccessible, the latter being almost vertical, the former quite too steep to climb. We started, therefore, to work our way up the south edge, and, having crossed a little ravine from whose head we could look down eastward upon steep thousand-foot névé, and westward along the forest-covered ridge up which we had clambered, began in good earnest to mount rough blocks of granite.