Is there too much going on in this sentence?

[Author Pendragin]

San Lucas lay just beyond the pebbled inlet of Bison's bay, through a forest of towering evergreens, hemmed in by snow encrusted mountains.

[John Oberon]

San Lucas lay just beyond the pebbled inlet of Bison's bay, through a forest of towering evergreens, hemmed in by snow encrusted mountains.

I think it's just the structure. That last clause lays pretty far away from the subject, so I'd move it. Also, things don't typically lay "through" something, they lay beside, behind, beneath, on top of, or something like that:

Hemmed in by snow encrusted mountains, San Lucas lay just beyond the pebbled inlet of Bison's bay, behind a forest of towering evergreens.

[Author Pendragin]

Thanks John.

[Susan B]

Shouldn't 'snow encrusted' be hyphenated? Snow-encrusted

[jayce]

Good catch, Susan.

[Gary Kessler]

Beyond hyphenating "snow-encrusted," I'd just replace the comma between "evergreens" and "hemmed" with an "and." This is assuming you mean it's San Lucas that's hemmed in by the snow-encrusted mountains and not the towering evergreens that are hemmed in. That's the real problem with the sentence, I think. The antecedent of the "hemmed in" clause is unclear.

[simba major]

I, too, think that "beyond" is the problem: it dies not suggest an inland location to me as "behind" would. "Beyond" suggests the opposite perspective to me.