Archive for category: Western Sierra

Cook’s Meadow, Yosemite Valley (10/29/21) Elliot McGucken

Yosemite locals are often asked, “Do you ever get tired of the beauty?” I would answer when living in the Valley for nearly a decade, “When you stop looking up, you’ve been here too long.”

I never tired of looking up.

Tunnel View, Yosemite Valley (10/30/21) Steve Arita

Yosemite Valley is the most beautiful 2.12 square miles on Earth. Everything about it is perfection.

Elliot McGucken and Steve Arita visited this weekend and each said three words, “Peak, GO NOW!”

Their words may remain good for another day or two, but not much longer. Beyond that, you’ll miss the “at peak” visceral context expressed within America the Beautiful.

Steve noted that the bomb cyclone has “definitely brought back to life the famous waterfalls at Yosemite…the water was just thundering across the valley floor…and not obviously just the waterfalls, but the Merced river and all areas throughout the valley there was water, that combined with the gorgeous fall colors at peak…just made for a beautiful place to be.”

Upper Yosemite Fall (10/30/21) Steve Arita

1. The parking area near Yosemite Falls “was simply gorgeous, very bright and intense, more than I’ve seen in past years, so definitely a place folks may want to take time to see.” A forest of black oak extends from the base of Yosemite Falls, east to the Yosemite School and can frame the falls beautifully with orange and black.

Black oak, Upper Yosemite Fall (10/30/21) Steve Arita

 

4. The trail to Mirror Lake along the river is at peak all the way to the lake, with the river running fast and high.  The lake (more correctly called a lagoon) was high. One of the few disappointments park visitors have in visiting Mirror Lake is that the mirror, which used to reflect Half Dome, is no longer seen. It was manmade. The marsh would be dredged by park settlers to create the mirror reflection, and since this was not a natural process, the National Park Service stopped the practice and the lake has succeeded to meadow. Steve got to experience “Mirror Meadow” as a lake, and one whose trail is now peppered with bright fall color.

Gates of the Valley (10/29/21) Elliot McGucken

Dogwood, Yosemite Valley (10/30/21) Steve Arita

Bigleaf maple, Southside Drive, Yosemite Valley (10/30/21) Steve Arita

Cook’s Meadow (10/30/21) Steve Arita

Merced River (10/30/21) Steve Arita

Sentinel Meadow (10/30/21) Steve Arita

Merced River (10/30/21) Steve Arita

Three Brothers, Merced River (10/30/21) Steve Arita

El Capitan, Merced River (10/30/21) Steve Arita

Happy Isles, Merced River (10/30/21) Steve Arita

Mist Trail (10/30/21) Steve Arita

Meadow Loop Trail (10/30/21) Steve Arita

Dogwood, Yosemite Valley (10/30/21) Steve Arita

Gates of the Valley (10/30/21) Steve Arita

Gates of the Valley (10/29/21) Elliot McGucken

El Capitan, Merced River (10/29/21) Elliot McGucken

Black oak, Cook’s Meadow (10/29/21) Elliot McGucken

Cook’s Meadow (10/29/21) Elliot McGucken

Cook’s Meadow (10/29/21) Elliot McGucken

• Yosemite Valley (4,000′) – Peak (75 – 100%) GO NOW!

It’s time. The Vermont sugar maple (Acer Saccharum) planted by Yosemite residents in 1903 is Near Peak. This tree has a very short peak, so haste is required to see it at its best. If you’ve ever wanted to see/photograph it, GO NOW!

Julie Kirby visited the Valley on Oct. 7 and was taken by the “torch red maple” but missed stopping in time on South Side Drive, so had to make a loop to come back to it. She photographed it each day she was there, once in the afternoon and again in morning light.

If you plan to scout for fall color while viewing the sugar maple, you’ll be disappointed. As, Steve Arita reports everything else remains green in Yosemite Valley. Plus, smoky haze clouds the view.

• Sugar Maple, Yosemite Chapel, Yosemite Valley (4,000′) – Near Peak (50 – 75%) Go Now!
• Yosemite Valley (4,000′) – Just Starting (0 – 10%)

California black oak (Quercus kelloggi) are decorating the American River Canyon along US 50 with russet, orange, gold and green. November is their time to show their best. California black oak grow from 200′ to 7,000′ in elevation throughout the Sierra Nevada.

The black oak acorn, high in fat and nutrition, was the gourmet nut that western slope native villages would gather and trade with other tribes. Sierra Miwok villages had many granaries storing hundreds of pounds of black oak acorns. The acorns were later ground and leached to remove tannic acid, making a flour that was used to make mush.

California Indians made amazing baskets, but they did not make pottery. The mush was cooked by filling a tightly woven basket with the mush. Red hot rocks would be picked up with sticks (much like chop sticks), cleaned of ash in baskets filled with cleansing water, then dropped – one at a time – into the mush which would bubble and cook. It took three rocks to finish the mush, so the resulting meal was called “three rock soup.”

To our tastes today, acorn mush would be considered to be bland, but it was prized nourishment for native people and was a basic element of a diet comprised of game (mainly rabbits and deer), nuts, fish, insects, roots, berries, bulbs and tubers.

At one time, the black oak was the most important tree in the Sierra Nevada. Today, it is appreciated for its dark forked trunks, upwardly spreading branches and late fall color.

• American black oak, US 50 (4,000′) – Peak to Past Peak, GO NOW, You Almost Missed It.

Adarsh Dattani visited the most beautiful place on Earth, this past weekend … Yosemite National Park.

He arrived, expecting to find ice, but instead found fire in the forest. The snow that had been predicted to arrive as early as Friday held off until Sunday. It rained, instead.

“Dogwoods, cottonwoods, and black oaks were at their peak and they looked like they were on fire when backlit,” he wrote.

It finally snowed Sunday, “and boy was it worth the wait?!” He described it as one of “the most special days I witnessed in Yosemite. It was a winter wonderland, The combination of snow dusting, fall color, and the light was incredible and as if that was not enough there was a spectacular sunset!”

• Yosemite Valley (4,000′) – Peak to Past Peak, GO NOW You Almost Missed It.