Home of the grizzly.
Up the faces of the spurs and thus by the backbones and saddles to the summit is not easy travelling. At first desert vegetation surrounds you, for the cacti and all their companions creep up the mountain-side as far as possible. The desert does not give up its dominion easily. Bowlders are everywhere, vines and grasses are growing under their shade; and, as you advance, the bushes arise and gradually thicken into brush, and the brush runs into a chaparral. The manzanita, the lavender, and white lilac, the buckthorn, the laurel, the sumac, all throw out stiff dry arms that tear at your clothing. The mountain-covering that from below looked an ankle-deep of grasses and weeds—a velvety carpet only—turns out to be a dense tangle of brush a dozen feet high. It is not an attractive place because the only successful method of locomotion through it is on the hands and knees. That method of moving is peculiar to the bear, and so for that matter is the chaparral through which you are tearing your way. It is one of the hiding-places of the grizzly. And there are plenty of grizzlies still left in the Sierra Madre. To avoid the chaparral (and also the bear) you would better keep on the sunny side of the spurs where the ground is more open.
Ridge trails and taluses.
You are at the top of one of the outlying spurs at last and you find there a dim trail made by deer and wolves leading along the ridge, across the saddle, and up to the next spur. As you follow this you presently emerge from the brush and come face to face with a declivity, covered by broken blocks of stone that seem to have been slipping down the mountain-side for centuries. It is an old talus of one of the spurs. You wind about it diagonally until different ground is reached, and then you are once more upon a ridge—higher by a spur than before.
Among the live-oaks.
Birds and deer.
Again the scene changes. An open park-like country appears covered with tall grass, the sunlight flickers on the shiny leaves of live-oaks, and dotted here and there are tall yuccas in bloom—the last of the desert growths to vanish from the scene. Flowers strange to the desert are growing in the grass—clumps of yellow violets, little fields of pink alfileria, purple lilies, purple nightshades, red paint-brushes, and flaming fire-rods. And there are birds in the trees that know the desert only as they fly—blue birds with red breasts as in New England, blue-jays with their chatter as in Minnesota, blue-backed woodpeckers with their tapping on dead limbs as in Pennsylvania. And here was once the stamping-ground of the mule-deer. Here in the old days under the shade of the live-oak he would drowse away the heat of the day and at night perhaps step down to the desert. He was safe then in the open country, but to-day he knows danger and skulks in the depths of the chaparral, from which a hound can scarcely drive him.
Yawning canyons.
The canyon stream.
Onward and upward through the oaks until you are on the top of another ridge. Did you think it was the top because it hid the peak? Ah no; the granite crags are still far above you. And there, yawning at your very feet, is another canyon whose existence you never suspected. How steep and broad and ragged the walls look to you! And down in the bottom of the canyon—almost a mile down it seems—are huge masses of rock, fallen towers and ledges, great frost-heaved strata lying piled in confusion among trees and vines and heavy brush. Here and there down the canyon’s length appear disconnected flashes of silvery light showing where a stream is dashing its way under rocks and through tangled brush down to the sandy sea. And far above you to the right where the canyon heads is a streak of dirty-looking snow. There is nothing for it but to get around the head of the canyon above the snow-streak, for crossing the canyon itself is unprofitable, not to say impossible.