To our left is Fort Sumpter, to the right the Granite Chief, and between the two a stiff breeze is blowing.
Have you ever stood on a mountain ridge or divide when a fierce gale was blowing, so that you were unable to walk without staggering, and where it was hard to get your breath, much less speak, and where it seemed as if Nature herself had set herself the purpose of cleansing you through and through with her sweetening pneumatic processes?
If not, you have missed one of the blessed influences of life.
Rough?
harsh?
severe?
Of course, but what of that, compared with the blessings that result.

It is things like that that teach one to love Nature.

Read John Muir's account--in his _Mountains of California_--and see how he reveled in wind-storms, and even climbed into a tree and clung to its top "like a bobolink on a reed" in order to enjoy a storm to the full.
Immediately at our feet lie the various mazes of canyons and ravines that make the diverse forks of the American River.

In one place is a forbidding El Capitan, while in another we can clearly follow for miles the Royal Gorge of this many branched Sierran river.

To the right is Castle Peak (9139 feet) to the north and west of Donner Lake, while nearby is Tinker's Knob (9020 feet) leading the eye down to Hopkins' Soda Springs.