You CAN See Half Dome from the Central Valley. But You Have to be in the Right Spot

A field in the Central Valley!

Living in California's Great Valley has moments. Some good, some bad. It's really flat, and that isn't of much interest to a geologist (except the drilling kind). But on some days, when the storms have blown through, and the wind has pushed all of the smog and dust to other places, the valley is beautiful. The best days are when the snow-covered Sierra Nevada are visible in the east.

Some intense contrast brings out the mountains in the distance. This is about how Half Dome appears to the naked eye

I live directly west of Yosemite Valley, and the question has come up now and then whether Half Dome, the iconic rock of Yosemite, is visible from the valley floor. Half Dome rises 4,000 feet above Yosemite Valley, dominating the local view. But it is surprising to some to find that it is surrounded by peaks of equal or greater elevation, and as such, it is not easy to see from the floor of the Great Valley. But it is possible, if you are in the right spot...and have binoculars or a camera with a good zoom lens.

We start zooming in...the snow covered dome of Half Dome is dead center.

That spot is a narrow corridor that runs southwest from Denair through Turlock to Patterson. It's in this location because Yosemite Valley is angled in a southwest direction, providing a gun-sight towards the Central Valley. There are a handful of other spots, but this is the easiest to find. I was out at the junction of Keyes and Hickman Roads this afternoon, and although it was hazy, I was able to pick out the dome from the surrounding peaks. To see it in these photos took a lot of contrast and manipulation (but not of the Photoshop kind!)

Half Dome at 120x zoom. Note the mountains behind Half Dome.

The issue arose today because of the absolutely glorious day we had yesterday. A sharp-eyed employee at StanEmergency in downtown Modesto took a photograph of the gorgeous skyline, and in the center of the photograph was a prominent peak that looked a heck of a lot like Half Dome. He or she posted the photo on Facebook (here), and it quickly garnered more than a thousand likes, 800 shares, and more than a hundred comments. I had to do a double take, because that peak was unusual looking. Very Half-Dome-like, so to speak.

Credit: https://www.facebook.com/StanEmergency/

I was a little surprised, because I knew the peaks behind Half Dome are much higher, and that Half Dome shouldn't be so prominent from this angle. I had managed to get a shot of the same peak from my neck of the woods in Waterford the same day. I hit the maps, and asked for suggestions from Geotripper readers in my last post (this one). I got a good tip from twoeightnine, who suggested it might be Mount Clark, which would be almost exactly behind Half Dome from the perspective of Modesto.(UPDATE: Almost immediately after I posted this, another commentator, Lucas Wilkinson, posted this from CalTopo that shows that the peak in question is Volunteer Peak, not Clark. I was looking in the wrong direction!)

Mount Clark is 11,522 feet (3,512 meters), almost 3,000 feet higher than Half Dome, and it has a steep northern flank that could easily mistaken for the shape of Yosemite's iconic rock (EDIT: Unfortunately I don't have any closeups of Volunteer Peak!).

Photographer: Greg Cope (Prints for sale here)

Visitors who get out of Yosemite Valley and travel to Glacier Point are treated to spectacular view of the peak. It is a spectacular mountain, a marvelous example of a glacially carved horn, surrounded by glacial cirques, the bowl shaped valleys where glaciers originated (EDIT: If only I'd been right! But Clark is a pretty mountain).

It's really something that so many people took an interest in their geologic surroundings. And it was so nice to have such a dramatically clear day. We could use more of them. And thanks to StanEmergency for posting a great picture and mystery project!

A Beautiful and Precious Day: Yosemite in Winter

As I noted in this morning's post, I needed to decide whether to be fully prepared for the new semester, or be irresponsible and let a few prep items wait until the weekend. Logic won out, so we headed up the road to get out of the fog for a few hours and see what winter in Yosemite could provide us. What a day!

Have I ever mentioned that I drive a Subaru? With the all-wheel drive that I am really happy with? I passed everyone putting on their snow chains and took the Big Oak Flat Entrance road to Crane Flat, which at 6,200 feet was beneath several feet of fresh new snow. The trees were weighted down, and there was a constant rain of snow chunks off the branches and onto the ground (and cars) below. My car didn't crash into anything or spin out (possibly because I was going about 12 mph...). That's one of the nice things about California: we get to visit the snow if we want to, but we don't have to live in it unless we want to.
So many of the usual wonderful sights in Yosemite Valley take on a completely different aspect under a mantle of snow and ice. Bridalveil Fall (above) and Cloud's Rest were coated with ice, looking most unlike their summer selves. The furrows on the northern slope of Cloud's Rest are avalanche chutes, and several fresh slides can be seen in the photo (click on the photo to enlarge and check below the two barren spots).

Upper Yosemite Fall had a special treat for us, an afternoon rainbow...

One of the most beautiful trees in the world had barren snow-covered branches, and a few broken ones, but it will be back in the spring. I'll have to take a closer look on a warmer day; I always assumed it was an oak of some kind, but I've heard it called an elm tree (I'm open to corrections, I'm a geologist, not a botanist!).

The snowdrifts melt into ponds in places that are normally meadows during warmer seasons. The Cathedral Rocks were nicely reflected on the water in the meadow below.

The days are certainly shorter, and our few hours were used up quickly. We needed to leave before the ice on the roads froze, but we couldn't resist the sunset, so we stopped at Valley View and enjoyed the late afternoon sunshine on the granite cliffs....

...and the rising mist on the Bridalveil Meadow, with the face of El Capitan in the distance. Funny how someone's like or dislike of fog can be highly dependent on the setting in which it occurs...

The last gift of our journey was one of the locals hanging out along the highway near the park exit. I know the coyote looks like he is thinking deep carnivorous philosophy, but he was mostly asking for a handout. We waved and moved on, back down the hill into the valley fog and darkness.
Our national parks are precious places.

Yosemite as an Open Air Classroom: Olmsted Point

At the height of the ice ages in the high Sierra Nevada, an ice cap 2,000 feet deep covered the Tuolumne Meadows region. A massive 40-mile long glacier flowed down the Tuolumne River gorge, the largest in the Sierra, but tongues of ice crept over some drainage divides and flowed elsewhere. At Tenaya Creek, the glacier made a path into Yosemite Valley. Along the way, the glacial scouring smoothed over domes, ripped up boulders, and tore rocks from the base of cliffs, steepening them, most spectacularly at Half Dome.

One of Yosemite's finest vistas can be had from Olmsted Point, up the Tuolumne Road about eight miles southwest of Tuolumne Meadows. If Yosemite Valley lacks easily accessible features of glaciation, Olmsted Point has an embarrassment of riches. To the north (top photo), Tenaya Lake and Mt. Conness provide a nice example of a glacial tarn (lake) and a horn (a mountain peak "sharpened" by having rock plucked from the base of the cliffs below). The valley containing the lake has a broad U-shaped profile.

To the south, Tenaya Creek plunges deep into the gorge below Clouds Rest and Half Dome. The vast granitic face of Clouds Rest (center of second photo) is scored by dozens of avalanche chutes where masses of snow constantly clear off the rock and prevent trees from gaining root. Farther downstream, Half Dome looms over Yosemite Valley. Glaciers never covered the dome. It took its shape instead from the expansion of the granitic rock as it was exposed by erosion. The expansion took the form of fractures that ran parallel to the surface of the rock (exfoliation), which tends to remove corners and edges. Massive vertical fractures called joints allowed the glaciers below the dome to quarry the rocks from below, forming the stunning vertical face of the dome.

Up close, the evidence of the passage of glaciers is plentiful. Hundreds of large boulders, derived from somewhere upstream, litter the landscape (glacial erratics). The surface of the granitic rock has been scraped and scoured to produce glacial polish, striations, grooves and chatter marks (third photo). If you are more interested in the petrology, the glacial polish reveals incredible details in the granite: flow patterns, dikes, and pegmatite veins are visible everywhere, not to mention huge crystals of feldspar.

Olmsted Point is all about spectacular scenery, but there is much in the way of geological learning opportunities as well. On a field trip, it is not to be missed!