A Visit to Yosemite

There is a place here on planet Earth that is so amazingly beautiful, a visit there feels like one has entered the heavenly realm and the senses are so stimulated one is left almost speechless with awe at the incredible beauty. A week camping in the high country of Yosemite National Park barely touched upon the wonders to be seen there, but I'll try to share a few highlights with the next few postings here.

The most amazing thing about Yosemite is its geology, the shape of the land. It is a place of granite rocks, forests, meadows, lakes, streams and all sorts of fauna and flora. The land is granite, like much of the rest of Earth, but the way the granite has been uplifted by tectonic forces,carved by ice, and exfoliated by weathering and fractures, has resulted in a landscape that is incredibly fascinating.


When you see images of Yosemite in magazines, typical scenes are of Yosemite Valley, with its 3,000+ high cliffs and amazing waterfalls. But most of this National Park is remote, rugged wilderness, criss-crossed with hiking trails and inaccessible except by hiking. Roads do wind through the park, and one crosses it up above 9,000 feet at Tioga Pass. Near the pass is a most wonderful meadowy area, Tuolomne (Too all oh me) Meadows, which has a 3 mile long meadow surrounded by granite domes, and beyond the domes, tall mountain peaks.

We camped in a forested campground next to Tuolomne Meadows for a week, going off on day adventures to explore the park. Just to the west of the meadows is a small dome, rising a couple hundred feet above the meadow and offering fantastic views of the glacially carved landscape. From the dome, looking east, in the first image you see part of Tuolomne Meadow, and the surrounding mountainous landscape. In the second image you see the view from on top of the dome, looking northwest across rolling granite. Glaciers helped to round things, but the nature of granite played part of the role too, as granite tends to break off in a curving manner, similar to the way an onion can be peeled apart in sections. With time, the granite becomes rounded into domes, and the movement of glaciers most likely sped up this exfoliation process.


The granite has obviously been smoothed by the polishing action of glaciers, as the striations are still visible on many sections of the rock, and gigantic boulders have been left behind, rocks which are called "glacial erratics". Scientists say only the very tip tops of some of the higher peaks in this part of the Sierra Nevada were untouched by glaciers.



I've done a lot of backpacking in the Sierras, and one of the most incredible sights is that of a lake that is hanging above the valley below, held in by bedrock that was carved by the action of a long ago glacier. Tenaya Lake is one such lake, accessible by vehicle right along the Tioga Pass road. When a glacier encounters extra hard rock, sometimes it carves out a depression, which becomes a lake. The beauty of the smoothed granite with its striations and curves, ending in a huge pool of emerald green or deep blue water is amazing. This particular lake was blue when we arrived there, but as the afternoon sun lowered in the sky, green from the surrounding forest reflecting off the lake turned it into an intense green.