Yosemite Park – Glacier Point Road

On our first couple of visits to Yosemite the weather was gorgeous, but the forecast was for a winter storm that would drop substantial snow and rain, depending on your elevation.

 

With this in mind we decided our first trip would be along Glacier Point Road.   It’s a lovely drive through the forest and even though we went on a weekend it wasn’t too busy.

 

On the drive we stopped beside this beautiful meadow, it’s closed for restoration and the fence is there to try and keep people out.

 

The first viewpoint we stopped at had breathtaking views.   The falls in the photograph are the Nevada (594 ft high) and Vernal Falls (317 ft high) both are on the Merced River.   Neither falls existed until after the Ice Age and a million years ago were buried under 1000 ft of ice.   Not exactly sure how anyone know it was 1000 ft, as I’m  sure no-one was around to measure it.

Although it’s possible to hike to both, hiking to the top of Nevada falls is much more difficult than hiking to Vernal falls.   We could see quite a few people at the top of Vernal Falls, but no-one at the top of Nevada Falls.

 

Glacier Point is at the top of the South Wall of Yosemite Valley and at one time had two hotels, McCauleys Mountain House (1872–1969) and The Glacier Point Hotel (1917-1969).   Both hotels were built from trees cut down near the point and both hotels burned to the ground on the evening of 9 July 1969.   The NPS decided not to rebuild the hotels, a couple of photographs from the informational board.

Half Dome and Tenaya Canyon.   Tenaya Canyon is a very dangerous place and people can and do lose their lives trying to hike through as a short cut into Yosemite Valley.

Yosemite Falls and Yosemite Valley.

This photograph was on an informational board, I can honestly say I wasn’t even vaguely tempted to try that!   Neither was anyone else, at least not on the day we were there.

Looking across Half Dome and Nevada Falls into the High Sierra and Clark Mountain Range.   The Clark range was named after Galen Clark Yosemite’s first guardian.

Have fun, we are!