Eureka!

Leonard's journal of this period of the exploration is a moving account of men who were terrified they wouldn't get out alive from this "awfully sublime" place.  Day by day, they continued trying, calling on final reserves of strength, courage and cunning.  

They reached what we believe was Tuolumne Canyon and turned south, traveling

8-10 miles a day.  On October 20, 1833 they became the first white men to reach the brink and look down at Yosemite Valley.  Walker remembered it to the day he died and Leonard's account is next...

"Here we began to encounter in our path many small streams which would shoot out from under these high snow banks and after running a short distance in deep chasms which they have, through the ages, cut into the rocks, precipitate themselves from one lofty precipice to another, until they are exhausted in rain below.  Some of these precipices appeared to us to be more than a mile high.  Some men thought that if we could succeed in descending one of these precipices to the bottom we might thus work our way into the valley below - but making several attempts we found it untterly inpossible for a man to descend to say nothing of our horses."  

Next time - Real Meat!