The lower end of the canyon is shut in by the sheer cliff walls, and by the rugged portals of the narrow entrance; the upper end is formed by the dividing ridge that separates the Clear Creek from the Cold Water country which opens out onto the Colorado Desert below San Gorgonio Pass and the peaks of the San Jacintos.

Perhaps two miles above the entrance the canyon widens to its greatest width; and in this portion of the little valley,--which extends some five miles to where the walls again draw close,--located on the benches above the boulder-strewn wash of Clear Creek, are the homes of several mountain ranchers, and the Government Forest Ranger Station.
At the Ranger Station, they stopped--Conrad Lagrange wishing to greet the mountaineer official, whom he had learned to know on his former trip.

But the Ranger was away somewhere, riding his lonely trails, and they did not tarry.
Just above the Station, they left the main road to follow the way that leads to the Morton Ranch in the mouth of Alder Canyon--a small side canyon leading steeply up to a low gap in the main range.

Beyond Morton's, there is only a narrow trail.

Three hundred yards above the ranch corral, where the road ends and the trail begins, the buildings of the mountaineer's home were lost to view.