Dan's Outside

A Day at Tuolumne Meadows (July 8, 2005)

I wanted to do some photography and to see the Tuolumne area before all of the snow melts, so yesterday I drove to the Tuolumne Meadows/Tioga Pass area and back. Yes, a long day of about 21 hours on the road and the trail.

I left around 4:30 a.m. and got to Yosemite fairly early. After turning onto Tioga Pass Road, I stopped a few times to take pictures, finally arriving at Tuolumne Meadows between 9:45 and 10:00. It seems that things are finally starting up open up. The store and grill were open and a crew was repainting the parking lot. Most campgrounds were closed on the way up, but by the time I left in the evening several had opened, including Tuolumne Meadows. It also appearred that Tuolumne Lodge opened yesterday – on the way up there was a big sign stating that the Lodge was closed, but on the way down in the evening I actually saw that they had hung out a ‘vacancy’ sign. (Imagine that – a vacancy on a summer Friday evening!)

Tuolumne Meadows. Yosemite National Park. July 8, 2005. © Photo copyright Dan Mitchell.

After taking some pictures in the Meadow and making a quick stop at the store I headed up the road and made a brief visit to the meadow and lakes near the pass. Then I drove back down to the Mono Pass trail (perhaps a miles or so) and loaded up the pack for a trip out towards Mono Pass.

Everything is still very wet and parts of the trail were flooded at the start. A few minutes into the hike I managed to get my socks a bit wet during a stream crossing. There was another crossing a short distance later, so this time I took off my boots and socks and waded, stopping on the other side to dry out.

The trail heads off in the general direction of the pass, crossing a couple of moraines near the beginning and then ascending gradually and steadily. It turns left at a junction with the Spillway Lake trail and then climbs more steeply for awhile, eventually starting to level out near a junction with the trail to Parker Pass.

I took the Parker Pass trail, having never been there – though I had previously looked that way from a low ridge near Mono Pass. This trail crossed a meadow and ascended a sandy section (very wet this year) and then more or less disappeared under the snow as it approached a low ridge. I could have followed the trail through the snow, but it seemed just as easy to make my own route in the sand and rocks along this ridge until the trail again emerged from the snow.

Suncups and Clouds Near Parker Pass. Yosemite National Park. July 8, 2005. © Photo copyright Dan Mitchell.

From here the route to the pass was quite obvious. The little ridge eventually merged into a broad sloping valley that headed right up to the pass. It was an easy walk, though I had to detour cross-country a few times to avoid large snow fields and/or very wet and muddy sections where the meltwater was flowing heavily.

I soon arrived at the windy pass and stopped to put on a windbreaker, eat a snack, and take some pictures. Unlike Mono Pass (from which you can look down to Mono Lake) there is no view of Owens Valley from this pass, but the view of snow-covered peaks made up for that. Below was a good sized lake; I suspect it was Spillway lake, but I didn’t have a map so I could not check. If it is Spillway, it looks like one could make a pretty easy loop back past the lake and pick up the return trail to Tioga Pass Road.

Parker Pass. Yosemite National Park. July 8, 2005. © Photo copyright Dan Mitchell.

After leaving the pass I backtracked to the small ridge and instead of following the trail back, I decided to cut up to the top of the ridge and see if I could make it over to Mono Pass. On a previous walk to Mono Pass I had climbed a ridge from which I thought I could see Parker Pass, and this low ridge seemed to be that very same ridge.

Floating Ice in Alpine Tarn. Yosemite National Park. July 8, 2005. © Photo copyright Dan Mitchell.

I quicky got to the top and crossed the relatively flat upper section to where I could see down the other side. There was good news and bad news. The good news was that I could see the old cabins at Mono Pass. The bad news was that the drop off below where I stood was steep and snow covered. I traversed to the right on the ridge and finally managed to work my way down to the old cabins and then across to Mono Pass.

From here it was just a matter of backtracking to the parking lot. I was a bit smarter about the creek crossing where I had waded earlier in the day. This time I followed the creek upstream a ways and found a good size log to cross on, and then I found a shallow spot where I could more easily cross the second creek.

Soon I was back at the car and heading over the pass to get some dinner at the Tioga Pass Resort. I finished dinner about 45 minutes before sunset, and used the remaining daylight to get pictures at Ellery Lake and then at the pass before starting the long drive back home.

Sunset, Tioga Pass. Yosemite National Park. July 8, 2005. © Photo copyright Dan Mitchell.

I was very surprised at the small number of people in the high country. It felt more like mid-September than July. Perhaps that news reports about snow and high water have scared them away. In any case, lots of people are missing some absolutely stunning conditions in the high country this season.
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July 9, 2005 - Posted by gdanmitchell | Trips