Here
Come The Gabriel Lads And Lassies From The Commonplace Orange Groves,
To Make Love And Gather Ferns And Dabble Away Their Hot Holidays In
The Cool Pool.
They are fortunate in finding so fresh a retreat so
near their homes.
It is the Yosemite of San Gabriel. The walls,
though not of the true Yosemite type either in form or sculpture, rise
to a height of nearly two thousand feet. Ferns are abundant on all
the rocks within reach of the spray, and picturesque maples and
sycamores spread a grateful shade over a rich profusion of wild
flowers that grow among the boulders, from the edge of the pool a mile
or more down the dell-like bottom of the valley, the whole forming a
charming little poem of wildness - the vestibule of these shaggy
mountain temples.
The foot of the fall is about a thousand feet above the level of the
sea, and here climbing begins. I made my way out of the valley on the
west side, followed the ridge that forms the western rim of the Eaton
Basin to the summit of one of the principal peaks, thence crossed the
middle of the basin, forcing a way over its many subordinate ridges,
and out over the eastern rim, and from first to last during three days
spent in this excursion, I had to contend with the richest, most self-possessed and uncompromising chaparral I have every enjoyed since
first my mountaineering began.
For a hundred feet or so the ascent was practicable only by means of
bosses of the club moss that clings to the rock.
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