We took a pack-horse well laden with grub, utensils for cooking and our sleeping bags.

Riding down the Truckee, up Bear Creek, past Deer Park Springs, I was struck more forcibly than ever before by the marvelous glacial phenomena in the amphitheater at the head of the canyon through a portion of which the trail passes, and also with the volcanic masses that rest upon the granite, mainly on the right hand side of the pass.

Its first appearance shows a cap of from two hundred to three hundred feet in thickness; later on two other patches of it appear, the upper one presenting the granite and superposed granite on the same level, clearly indicating a channel of early erosion filled up by the later flow of volcanic matter.
Passing by Five Lakes and down Five Lake Creek to its junction with the canyon down which we had come from the Little American Valley, we were soon headed down the creek for the Rubicon.

To the right towered Mt.

Mildred (8400 feet), on the other side of which is Shank's Cove.
Shank was a sheep-man who for years ran his sheep here during the summer, taking them down to the Sacramento Valley in winter.