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Muir's "First Summer" Route?

Posted: Sun Aug 21, 2011 3:47 am
by BSquared
On our recent southern-Yosemite trip, one of our party brought along a Kindle that had "My First Summer in the Sierra" loaded on it, so of course we passed it around each evening and read a few paragraphs before going to bed. Great read -- I hadn't been through it in years, but it's vintage Muir: everything is glorious, fascinating, and exhilarating. What a guy!

Anyway, we got to wondering about his route. He describes the trip as starting at Coulterville, wandering among the foothills through the digger pines, visiting a cave with trees in it (!), and then getting to Crane Flat. After that, he just gets higher and higher (we didn't read much farther than the Crane Flat passages on that trip). Has anyone seen a map (or perhaps constructed a map from his descriptions) that shows his route on that trip? We wandered about in the car on our way to the Bay Area, idly looking for this cave, but by the time we found a brochure (somewhere near Angel's Camp, I think) that made it clear that everyone (besides us!) knew where it was, we were out of time. But it seemed awfully round-about to go from Coulterville to Crane Flat. But back then the route up the Merced hadn't been constructed, had it? Anyway, a map would be nice, if anyone knows where to find one.