The Lake of the Sky Part 22

To those who come early in the season tobogganing and snow shoeing are not unusual experiences. The shady sides of the mountains offer these winter sports as late as June and early July, and many Californians who have never enjoyed the frolic of snow-balling come here to gain their first experience in this common eastern enjoyment.

Elsewhere I have referred to the many evidences of glacial action found about a mile above Deer Park Inn. Still further up the canyon, on the trail going to Five Lakes, are interesting deposits of volcanic rock--andeside--so that these two geological phenomena may be studied close at hand.

Having its own rich meadows on Bear Creek, the Deer Park Spring tables are always supplied with good milk and cream from its own dairies, while fresh fruit and vegetables are supplied daily. Fish and game in season are frequent, and the table being under the direct and personal supervision of the management has gained an enviable reputation.

Living water flows in marvelous abundance through Deer Park all throughout the year. Springs and melting snow send four different streams, tributary to Bear Creek, coursing across the property.

The domestic water supply of the Inn is gained from springs on the mountain side, 800 feet above the Inn, and it is piped all over the place and to every cottage.

There has been some talk, recently, of converting Deer Park into a private park. There is no better location for such a purpose in the whole Tahoe region. Situated as it is in the heart of a canyon it is readily isolated and thus kept entirely secluded and free from intrusion. While such a procedure would be a great advantage to any individual or club who might purchase the estate, it would be a decided loss to the general public who for so many years have enjoyed the charms and delights of this earliest of Sierran mountain resorts.

CHAPTER XX

RUBICON SPRINGS

One of the oldest and most famous resorts of the High Sierras is Rubicon Springs. It is nine miles from Lake Tahoe, at McKinney's, over a mountain road built many years ago, engineered so as to afford marvelously entrancing glimpses of the Lake and of the mountain scenery on either hand. Here are primeval forest, flower-strewn meadows of emerald, crystal streams and placid-faced glacial lakes in which snow-clad mountain summits are mirrored in quiet glory. The Rubicon River is one of the feeders of the American River, and the springs are located not far from its head waters.

The Rubicon Springs were originally discovered and located upon by the Hunsaker brothers, two genuine explorers and adventurers whose names deserve to be preserved in connection with the Tahoe region. They were originally from the Hoosier state, coming to California in 1849, across the plains, by Fort Hall, the sink of the Humboldt, Ragtown, and by Carson Canyon to old Hangtown (now Placerville). They mined for several years. Then came the Comstock excitement. They joined the exodus of miners for the Nevada mountains and were among the earliest to help to construct the Georgetown trail. Thus it was they discovered Rubicon. In 1869 they located upon 160 acres, built a log-house and established a stopping station which they called Hunsaker Springs. In the winter they rested or returned to Georgetown, making occasional trapping trips, hunting bear and deer, and the meat of which they sold. In those days deer used to winter in large numbers almost as far down as Georgetown (some fifteen miles or so), so that hunting them for market was a profitable undertaking in the hands of experts.

They and John McKinney, the founder of McKinney's, were great friends, having worked together in the Georgetown mines. They soon made their places famous. Their mining friends came over from Virginia City, Gold Hill, Carson, etc., by way of Glenbrook, where they were ferried across Lake Tahoe by the old side-wheel steamer, _Governor Stanford_, to McKinney's. Then by pack trail over to Hunsakers.

For many years they used to cut a great deal of hay from the nearby meadows. A natural timothy grows, sometimes fully four feet high.

A year's yield would often total fully thirty tons, for which the highest price was paid at the mines.

There was another spring, beside Hunsakers', about a mile higher up, owned by a friend of the Hunsakers, named Potter. In time he sold this spring to a Mrs. Clark, who finally sold it back to him, when it was bought by Mr. R. Colwell, of Moana Villa. When the Hunsakers grew too old to run their place they sold it to a man named Abbott, who, in due time wished to sell out. But, in the meantime the railroad had surveyed their land, granted by Congress, and found that the springs and part of the hotel building were on their land, so that while Abbott sold all his holdings to Mr. Colwell, he could not sell the main objects of the purchaser's desire. An amicable arrangement, however, was made between all the parties at interest.

Mr. Colwell is now the owner of all the property.

For countless centuries the Indians of both west and east of Tahoe were used to congregate in the Rubicon country. They came to drink the medicinal waters, fish, catch deer and game birds, and also gather acorns and pine nuts. How well I remember my own visit to the Springs in the fall of 1913. Watson and I had had three delightful days on the trail and in h.e.l.l Hole, and had come, without a trail, from Little h.e.l.l Hole up to Rubicon. The quaking aspens were dropping their leaves, the tang of coming winter was in the air, mornings and evenings, yet the middle of the day was so warm that we drank deeply of the waters of the naturally carbonated springs. No, this statement is scarcely one of fact. It was warm, but had it been cold, we, or, at least, I should have drank heartily of the waters because I liked them. They are really delicious, and thousands have testified to their healthfulness.

We saw the station of the water company, where a man remains through the year to register the river's flow and the snowfall. Then we pa.s.sed a large lily lake to the left,--a once bold glacial lake now rapidly nearing the filled-up stage ere it becomes a mountain meadow--and were fairly on the Georgetown grade, the sixty mile road that reaches from McKinney's to Georgetown. It is a stern road, that would make the "rocky road to Dublin" look like a "flowery bed of ease," though we followed it only a mile and a half to leave it for the steep trail that reaches Rock Bound Lake. This is one of the larger of the small glacial lakes of the Tahoe Region, and is near enough to Rubicon Springs to be reached easily on foot.

From a knoll close by one gains an excellent panorama of d.i.c.k's, Jack's and Ralston's Peaks. Tallac and Pyramid are not in sight. The fis.h.i.+ng here is excellent, the water deep and cold and the lake large enough to give one all the exercise he needs in rowing.

On the summit of the Georgetown road one looks down upon the nearby placid bosom of Buck Island Lake. It received this name from Hunsaker.

The lake is very irregular in shape, about a third of a mile long, and a quarter of a mile wide in its widest part. Near one end is a small island. Hunsaker found the deer swam over to this island to rest and sleep during the heat of the day, hence the name.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Angora Lakes, Fallen Leaf Lake and Lake Tahoe ]

[Ill.u.s.tration: White Cloud Falls, Cascade Lake]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Upper Eagle Falls, Emerald Bay, Lake Tahoe]

The Little Rubicon river flows into Buck Island Lake and out again, and about two miles below Rubicon Springs the Georgetown road crosses the river at the foot of the lake.

With these two lakes, and others not far away, fine hunting and fis.h.i.+ng, with several mountains nearby for climbing, the hotsprings, a fine table and good horses to ride it can well be understood that Rubicon Springs makes a delightful summer stopping-place. One great advantage that it possesses, under its present proprietors.h.i.+p is that guests may alternate between Moana Villa and the Springs and thus spend part of their time on the Lake and the other part in the heart of the mountains. The Colwells are hearty and homelike hosts, and are devoted to giving their many guests the greatest possible enjoyment, pleasure and health that a summer's vacation can contain.

CHAPTER XXI

EMERALD BAY AND CAMP

Situated near the southwest corner of Lake Tahoe is Emerald Bay, by many thousands regarded as the choicest portion of Lake Tahoe.

Surrounded by so many wonderful scenes, as one is at Tahoe, it is difficult to decide which possesses surpa.s.sing power, but few there are who see Emerald Bay without at once succ.u.mbing to its allurement.

Its geological history has already been given in Chapter VIII, in which it is clearly shown by Dr. Joseph Le Conte that it was once a glacial lake, and that the entrance to the main lake used to be the terminal moraine that separated the two bodies of water. As a natural consequence, therefore, visitors may expect to find evidences of glacial action on every hand. They are not disappointed. The walls of the Bay, on both north and south, are composed of glacial detritus, that of the south being a pure moraine, separating the once glacial lake of Emerald Bay from Cascade Lake.

Emerald Bay is about three miles in length, with a southwesterly trend, and half a mile wide. The entrance is perhaps a quarter of a mile wide and is formed by a triangular spit of sand, on which grows a lone pine, on the one side, and a green chaparral-clad slope, known as Eagle Point, on the other. The Bay opens and widens a little immediately the entrance is joined. The mountains at the head of the Bay form a majestic background. To the southwest (the left) is Mount Tallac, with a rugged, jagged and irregular ridge leading to the west, disappearing behind two tree-clad sister peaks, which dominate the southern side of the Bay's head. These are known as Maggie's Peaks (8540 and 8725 feet respectively, that to the south being the higher), though originally their name, like that of so many rounded, shapely, twin peaks in the western world gained by the white man from the Indian, signified the well-developed b.r.e.a.s.t.s of the healthy and vigorous maiden. Emerging from behind these the further ridge again appears with a nearer and smoother ridge, leading up to a broken and jagged crest that pierces the sky in rugged outline. A deep gorge is clearly suggested in front of this ridge, in which Eagle Lake nestles, and the granite ma.s.s which forms the eastern wall of this gorge towers up, apparently higher than the nearer of Maggie's peaks, and is known as Phipps' Peak (9000 feet). This is followed by still another peak, nearer and equally as high, leading the eye further to the north, where its pine-clad ridge merges into more ridges striking northward.

Between Maggie's and Phipps' Peaks the rocky ma.s.ses are broken down into irregular, half rolling, half rugged foothills, where pines, firs, tamaracks and cedars send their pointed spires upwards from varying levels. In the morning hours, or in the afternoon up to sunset, when the shadows reveal the differing layers, rows, and levels of the trees, they stand out with remarkable distinctness, each tree possessing its own perfectly discernible individuality, yet each contributing to the richness of the clothing of the mountainside, as a whole.

Down across the lower portion of Maggie's Peaks, too to 200 feet above the level of the Bay, the new automobile road has ruled its sloping line down to the cut, where a st.u.r.dy rustic bridge takes it over the stream which conveys the surplus waters from Eagle Lake to the Bay. On the other side it is lost in the rolling foothills and the tree-lined lower slopes of Cathedral Peak from whence it winds and hugs the Lake sh.o.r.e, over Rubicon Point to Tahoe Tavern.

But Emerald Bay has other romantic attractions besides its scenery.

In the early 'sixties Ben Holladay, one of the founders of the great Overland Stage system that reached from the Pacific Coast to the Missouri River, built a pretentious house at the head of the Bay.

Naturally it was occupied by the family only part of the time, and in 1879, a tramp, finding it unoccupied, took up his lodgings therein, and, as a mark of his royal departure, the structure burned down the next morning. The site was then bought by the well-known capitalist, Lux, of the great cattle firm of Miller & Lux, and is now owned by Mrs. Armstrong.

As the steamer slowly and easily glides down the Bay, it circles around a rocky islet, on which a number of trees find shelter. This island was inhabited at one time by an eccentric Englishman, known as Captain d.i.c.k, who, after having completed a cottage to live in, carried out the serious idea of erecting a morgue, or a mausoleum, as a means of final earthly deposit upon dissolution. This queer-looking dog-house might have become a sarcophagus had it not been for one thing, viz., Captain d.i.c.k, one dark and stormy night, having visited one of the neighboring resorts where he had pressed his cordial intemperately, determined to return to his solitary home. In vain the danger was urged upon him. With characteristic obstinacy, enforced by the false courage and destruction of his ordinarily keen perception by the d.a.m.nable liquor that had "stolen away his brains," he refused to listen, pushed his sail-boat from the wharf and was never seen again.

His overturned boat was afterwards found, blown ash.o.r.e.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The marble tablet on one of Maggie's Peaks, bearing the inscription: "FLEETWOOD PEAK, ASCENDED BY MISS MARY McCONNELL, SEPT. 12, 1869."]

[Ill.u.s.tration: The island in Emerald Bay, Lake Tahoe]

[Ill.u.s.tration: 'Whispering Pines', Al Tahoe, on Lake Tahoe]

EMERALD BAY CAMP

Emerald Bay is made accessible to regular summer guests by Emerald Bay Camp, one of the choice and highly commendable resorts of the Tahoe region. The Camp is located snugly among the pines of the north side of the Bay, and consists of the usual hotel, with nearby cottages and tents.

Less than five minutes' walk connects it with the picturesque Automobile Boulevard, which is now connected with the Camp by an automobile road. The distance is four-fifths of a mile and hundreds of people now enjoy the hospitality of Emerald Bay Camp who come directly to it in their own machines.

Its location suggests many advantages for the angler, the famous Indian fis.h.i.+ng grounds being located at the mouth of the bay. Cascade, Eagle, and the unfished Velma Lakes are easily accessible to trampers, the outlets from these furnis.h.i.+ng sporty brook trout fis.h.i.+ng. These streams and lakes are all stocked with Eastern brook, Loch Levin and cutthroat. The protected waters of the bay make boating safe and bathing a comfortable delight.

But not all the beauty of nature and the advantages of excellent location can make a popular camp. There is much in the individuality of those who own or "run" it. Emerald Bay Camp is owned by Mr. Nelson L. Salter, for many years so favorably known in the Yosemite Valley.

Such is its growing popularity that Mr. Salter has recently (1921) purchased another ten acres of adjoining land, thus enlarging his frontage on the Bay to about 1000 feet, and giving him many more cottages for the entertainment of his guests.

EAGLE LAKE

From Emerald Bay Camp there are quite a number of interesting trail and climbing trips, one of the commonest of which is that to Eagle Lake.