Yosemite National Park, California
Yosemite National Park
My sister and her husband (Nancy and Ronnie), and my brother and his wife (Ted and Suzy), joined us at the motel in Fresno because they were also going to be in Yosemite for the next three nights before driving us to the west side of Lake Tahoe for a two-day orienteering event. We entered the park from the southwest and first visited the Mariposa Grove of giant Sequoias (which differs from the coastal redwoods in that they are older and wider and not quite as tall). This tree had toppled fairly recently and will take 25 years to start decomposing! The picture shows the wide root system of the Sequoias - they don't go deep into the soil but spread out as far as they can. While my siblings rode a tram to the far end of the park and rode back, we decided on a shorter hike that took us to some of the highlights. The Grizzly Giant is one of the world's largest trees and believed to be the oldest Sequoia (approximately 2,700 years old!). The diameter at the base is 29 feet. That large limb near the bottom on the right side of the picture is between 6 and 7 FEET in diameter. Very humbling to be near it. And
here we are next to another Sequoia, almost as big as Grizzly Giant.
Driving from the southwest, you approach the Yosemite Valley through a tunnel and then, "wham," you are hit with the most beautiful sight of the valley. El Capitan stands at left, Half Dome is in the distance at center, and Bridalveil Falls is barely visible falling from a hanging valley at the right. We found our accomodations in the Lodge quite comfortable (although it was warm and there was no air conditioning and we had to ask for a fan to circulate the air better), and went out to hike to the base of Yosemite Falls, which has more volume after the spring snow melts than at the beginning of August.
Although we were warned of the presence of black bears and told severely not to leave any sign of food in our car (no coolers, plastic shopping bags or anything resembling food or food containers because the bears recognize them), we saw no bears; we did see a number of mule deer and chickarees (a type of squirrel) and beautiful wildflowers. We hiked along Tenaya Creek to Mirror Lake which is in the process of being turned into a meadow because of sediments dumped there continually by the creek...what little "lake" we did see was also home to varied wildlife (we even saw a snake swim across this part!). Mt Watkins is in the distance beyond the trees. This is what we saw as we turned south to look up the flat (glacially carved) side of Half Dome. It doesn't look so big in the picture, but the top of it is almost 5000 feet above the valley floor - that's just under a mile! The kids and I rented bikes and rode around the valley later in the day, then went swimming in the pool near the lodge, while Glen hiked/ran up to an overlook of the upper Yosemite Falls. From his viewpoint he took this picture showing much of the meadow in the valley, with Half Dome in the center.
The next day we took a tour bus up to Glacier Point overlooking the valley, and hiked back down via Nevada Falls and Vernal Falls which are where the Merced River flows over the granite into the valley below. Glacier Point is about 3,200 feet above the valley and gives you a great view of the higher Sierras surrounding the valley. The clouds you might be able to see in the distance (sitting on "Clouds Rest," by the way) brought a bit of lightning, which started a small wildfire practically before our eyes, and dumped hail in the Tuolumne Meadows which we drove through the next day and thought it was snow! Can you believe there was once a glacier here that not only filled the valley but even covered most of the mountains shown here (except the very top of Half Dome)? Here are Ronnie, Nancy and Ted at Glacier Point before we started our hike down...Half Dome to the left, Nevada Falls to the right. To give you an idea of size, Nevada Falls drops almost 600 feet.
The trail we followed dipped from Glacier Point to Illilouette Falls then climbed about 750 feet again up along the top of the Panorama cliffs visible in the right foreground of this picture; Nevada Falls are at left, smoke from the wildfire is visible behind the next ridge at center. At several points along the Panorama trail we could see both Nevada and Vernal Falls (Vernal "only" drops 317 feet). Nevada Falls can also be reached from the valley and can be stop along the hike up Half Dome, so there were quite a lot of people there when we arrived at the top. Some of them were wading or swimming in the water as well, though signs warned against such practices. We rested here a while and also went to the overlook on the north side of the falls. The hike to the bottom went alongside the falls on "steps" made from blocks of granite which were a challenge for some of us and our older legs. Once we finally reached the bottom, we looked back up and couldn't believe how high it really was! It wasn't a steady stream of water, either, but rather seemed like "clumps" of water falling at different times, some of them rather comet-shaped... Because it hit a slope of rock partway down, it didn't send up as much spray as did Vernal Falls which only drops about half as far as Nevada. It was much greener and more rainforest-like at the bottom of Vernal Falls. And finally we were down and we caught the shuttle bus to dinner and back to the lodge. The bus driver stopped at one point because in the meadow next to the road stood five bucks, grazing away as unaffected as could be.
After our three nights in Yosemite, it was time to head towards Lake Tahoe and the two-day orienteering event there. We left the valley and headed out to cross the rest of the Park through Tuolumne Meadows (about 45 miles) and climb through Tioga Pass (at about 9900') before dropping down out of the Sierra Nevadas through Lee Vining Canyon. We stopped briefly at Mono Lake's visitor's center and looked around. Mono Lake has no outlet and is therefore 3 times a salty as the ocean! Only a few species of living things survive there, and there are visible craters and cinder cones. Most surprising are the columns of tufa which look like stalagmites that you'd see in limestone caverns. As we headed toward the Nevada state line, my husband's comment was, "I bet the first building we see over the state line is a casino," and sure enough it was :-) It was also the last building as we crossed back into California on the north side of Lake Tahoe.
In the Lake Tahoe area, we orienteered at Burton Creek State Park (contact the Bay Area Orienteering Club for more information about events at the park). This was an adventure, as I sprained my ankle on a dusty, pitted trail in the park 2 days before flying back home to the East Coast. The drive down I-80 to Sacramento the night before we left was an adventure as well, with heavy traffic and lots of trucks so that we went from 70 mph to 15 mph and occasionally a dead stop. You really needed to pay attention! But we enjoyed our visit to California and will definitely return someday, at least to some of the places we visited.