"On Donner Pass “It was bitterly cold, but from the almost pointed summit, the desolation…was sublime indeed. North, east and south, peak rose beyond peak in endless succession while in the west the eye looked far down into a chasm where very ravine and gorge shone and glistened with the spotless white of vase snow fields. Beyond, instead of the expected Sacramento Valley, nothing broke the magnificent expanse of the mountain chains.”
Isaac Wister, 1849
from With Golden Visions... page 177 on getting up Roller Pass or Coldstream Pass
