CHARM OF THE SCENIC WILD

UMMER in the Yosemite is unreal. The Valley, with its foaming falls dissolving into mists, its calm forests hiding the singing river, its enormous granites peaked and domed against the sky, its inspiring silence haunted by distant water, suggests a dream. One has a sense of fairyland and the awe of infinity.

Imagine Cathedral Rocks rising twenty-six hundred feet above the wild flowers, El Capitan thirty-six hundred feet, Sentinel Dome four thousand feet, Half Dome five thousand feet, and Cloud's Rest six thousand feet! And among them the waterfalls!

Even the weather appears impossible; the summers are warm, but not too warm; dry, but not too dry; the nights cold and marvellously starry.

A few miles away are the Big Trees, not the greatest groves nor the greatest trees, for those are in the Sequoia National Park, a hundred miles south, but three groves containing monsters which, next to Sequoia's, are the hugest and the oldest living things. Of these the Grizzly Giant is king—whose diameter is nearly thirty feet, whose girth is over ninety-nine, and whose height is more than two hundred. Their presence commands the silence due to worship.

Winter is becoming a feature in the life of the Valley. Hotels are open to accommodate an increasing flow of visitors. The falls are still and frozen, the trees laden with snowy burdens. The greens have vanished; the winter sun shines upon a glory of gray and white.

Winter sports are rapidly becoming popular on the floor of the Valley.

THE GRIZZLY GIANT, THE BIGGEST YOSEMITE SEQUOIA Photograph by H. T. Cowling

WINTER IN THE YOSEMITE VALLEY Photograph by H. C. Tibbitts

SKIING IN THE YOSEMITE VALLEY Winter sports are rapidly becoming popular on the floor of the Valley Photograph by H. C. Tibbitts