Perhaps a Last Look at Some Yosemite High Country (for the Winter, Anyway)

"Half" Dome from Washburn Point

I made the trek up the hill to see Yosemite last weekend, with a field trip on the valley floor on Saturday with my students, and a quieter tour in the high country with Mrs. Geotripper on Sunday. We headed up Glacier Point Road to gain a unique perspective on Yosemite Valley and the higher country above. With a fairly powerful storm arriving tonight, it is at least conceivable that the road could close for the winter due to snow. There was certainly a mood of closing down. The road was uncrowded, and so were the parking lots. The curio shop at Glacier Point was closed for the season.

Yosemite high country, with Mt. Broderick, Liberty Cap, and Nevada Fall in the foreground.

Many people who travel to Glacier Point tend to be single-minded in their quest, and often miss one of the truly spectacular viewpoints the road has to offer: Washburn Point. It is perched at the 7,400 foot level above the Merced River directly across from "Half" Dome. It is from this point that the misnomer is most obvious. If anything, Half Dome should have been named "Four-fifths Dome".

Nevada Fall on the upper Merced River

There is a stupendous view towards the high country of Little Yosemite Valley and the headwaters of the Merced River. The effect of glaciation is apparent everywhere. Glacial stairsteps, caused by pervasive vertical fractures in the granite ("joints"), were the origin of the two major waterfalls on the Merced River, Nevada Fall (594 feet, above), and Vernal Fall (317 feet, below). Along the skyline above, the glacially-carved horns, aretes, and cirques can be seen. It's wild and beautiful country.

Vernal Fall from Washburn Point

I imagine Washburn Point gets less traffic than Glacier Point because it doesn't look down on the main part of Yosemite Valley. That's okay with me. It's notable that not a single road is visible from Washburn. One is looking at wilderness, something that is sorely lacking in the more populated parts of Yosemite National Park.

North Dome and Basket Dome on the north side of Yosemite Valley. Mt. Hoffman rises in the distance.

Vernal Fall in Yosemite and a Sense of Scale (or, How to Feel Very Small)

It's a sense of scale that helps us keep perspective. I was at Washburn Point in Yosemite National Park today, and I took a few shots with the zoom of the same spot across the way.

We have a bunch of people apparently enjoying themselves on a flat slab of rock next to a fair sized river. But why the fence? Why aren't they letting people cool their feet in the river on this reasonably warm day?

Maybe it is the fact that they are standing at the top of a 318 foot (97 meter) waterfall. And a hell of a dangerous one. It is far too easy to miscalculate just how powerful a flowing river can be. Water only a foot deep can easily knock you off your feet, and the rock can be exceedingly smooth from glacial erosion and slick with algae. Too many people on the wrong side of the fence have lost their lives.

As we pull back even more, we can see the full extent of the waterfall, and the insignificance of the people gathered around the brink. They are now barely visible. This is Vernal Fall on the Merced River just upstream of Yosemite Valley. It formed because the glaciers that once flowed through the valley plucked away at highly jointed rocks forming what is called a glacial stairstep. It is just one of many spectacular waterfalls in Yosemite that leave one feeling awestruck.

And yet, Yosemite is such an incredible landscape of gigantic granite domes and deep glacially carved gorges that even a 318 foot waterfall can almost be lost in the richness of scenery. As I noted before, I was on Washburn Point, about two miles away as the crow flies (or more probably the raven, given their abundance here) from Vernal Fall. In the picture below, Vernal is the smaller of the two gigantic waterfalls. The upper one is Nevada Falls, which drops 594 feet (181 meters). 

To the left of Nevada Falls is Liberty Cap, a glacially smoothed granitic dome. To the left of Liberty, the dark rounded form of Half Dome is seen from an unfamiliar angle. From this angle it is clear that if anything, it should be called Three-Quarters Dome, or even Four-Fifths Dome. 

Half Dome was never covered by glacial ice, and was formed instead by exfoliation, the tendency of rocky monoliths to break off slabs of rock as the pressure is released as the rock is exposed at the surface. The slabs mostly remove corners and edges, giving the rock a rounded profile. The steep face of Half Dome was a prominent joint, a vertical crack that also forms from pressure release. The "missing" half was undercut by the glacier below in Tenaya Canyon and quarried away down the valley.

Feeling small yet?

A Last Look at High Water in Yosemite...

Well, I finished culling through the, er, um, 227 pictures I took while at Yosemite during the high point of the spring runoff (the earlier posts started here). The Merced River spent a day or two at a bit more than 7,000 cubic feet per second, about three times normal for the date, and just above flood stage, enough to cover many valley meadows in a few inches of water. The late afternoon had us at Washburn Point, the less-known and less crowded viewpoint perched on the valley rim near Glacier Point. The view is almost indescribable...

Here, we are looking towards the headwaters of the Merced River, and this shot shows the famous plunge of the river over Vernal Fall (317 feet) and Nevada Fall (594 feet), along with the dome of Liberty Cap (center), and Half Dome on the left. From this perspective, one can see that Half Dome would better be called Two-Thirds Dome (I prefer the Native American name of Tis-sa-ack).

During the height of the ice ages, ice covered almost all the scene before us, except for the topmost part of Half Dome and the higher peaks in the far distance. As the ice flowed, it dropped over jointed sections of bedrock, and plucked the rocks in such a way as to form a series of stairsteps. These steps became the setting for two of the most spectacular waterfalls in Yosemite National Park.

A zoom shot is necessary to convey the size of these waterfalls and the volume of water that was flowing over the brink. Nevada, above, is further upstream and a bit longer of a hike. Vernal Fall is a relatively short hike from Happy Isles and is one of the most busiest trails in the entire park. At this time of year you will end up soaked if you take the lower trail (I wonder why they call it the Mist Falls trail?). Scale? Click on the photo below and realize there is a crowd of people on the right side of the brink. There is a guardrail, but it is terrifying to see how many people will go outside of it. This is one of the most deadly spots in the park, both to the ones that fall in the water, and to those who bravely try to save them from going over the edge...

This is one of the most beautiful places on our planet....

Staring into the Abyss #5 - Yosemite as you (maybe) have never seen it

Well, perhaps you have seen this view, if you have been to Yosemite. It is the view up the Merced River Canyon above Yosemite Valley, as seen from Glacier Point. The two waterfalls are the justly famous Nevada Falls (upper, 594 feet) and Vernal Fall (lower, 317 feet). Because they are on the Merced River, they have the virtue of not drying up in the late season, although they can shrink to insignificance in a dry year. The falls have formed along prominent joints in the Half Dome granodiorite. The glaciers moving down the valley plucked at the more jointed rocks down-canyon, forming these glacial stairsteps.

The hike to Vernal Falls is one of the most popular hikes in the park. In the early season, hikers will end up entirely drenched from the spray from the base of the falls. Unfortunately, there is an utterly beguiling green pool of water just upstream of the the fall that just begs to be soaked in on a hot day...it is fun right up to the point that one gets caught in the current and gets swept over the brink. Believe the signs and find somewhere else to swim!