: The Sierra Club 26. The Sierra Club The geographical position of the city is delectable. On one side is the Pacific, with a gentle range of hills running along its shore; on the other a lush and friendly plain leads away to the Sierra Nevada, one of the noblest mountain ranges in the world. The Sierra is a playground for San Francisco, for it is not far away by car, and it contains a multitude of wonderful things. There is Mount Whitney, the highest peak in the United States, a stately mountain always flecked with snow, overlooking the dusty expanses of eastern California and Nevada: from its summit, 14,495 feet high, you can all but see Death Valley, 280 feet below sea level, the lowest and hottest place on the American continent. There are splendid forests in the Sierra, some of them given added magnificence by the presence of the Giant Sequoia, greatest of trees. There are innumerable limpid lakes, high among the mountains, and many savage and inaccessible canyons.
