Waiting for Sierra Summer?
There is a progress report from Yosemite National Park covering the prospective opening date for the Glacier Point Road and progress on clearing Tioga Pass Road:
Tioga Road Plowing Update for April 20:
Start: Crane Flat
End: 7 miles past Crane Flat (just beyond South Fork bridge)
Miles plowed today: 7 miles
Average snow depth: 4 feetThe Glacier Point Road tentatively may open on Friday, May 1, conditions permitting.
The Mariposa Grove Road tentatively may open on Friday, April 17, conditions permitting.
I love to engage in the sport of predicting when Tioga Pass Road might actually open. I don’t have the sources that some people have so I really have to guess. My guess is sometime around the middle of May if conditions stay more or less on track. Sometime close to that date I hope to enjoy fish tacos in Lee Vining while overlooking Mono Lake, and perhaps stop at Latte Da for an espresso afterwards. (You can view a historical record of opening dates online.)
Two-Heel Drive reports on one of my favorite hiking locations
Tom Mangan just posted a description of his Sunday hike at my favorite local park, the Calero County Park south of San Jose. I was there on Saturday (when it was cool and foggy in the morning, Tom… ;-) and he was there on Sunday after the Great Spring Warmup in Central California.
Tom hiked on some of my favorite trails in the park, including the relatively remote Chisnantuk Peak Trail, which traverses some of the less visited corners of the park (and in doing so passes over some less maintained trails) and also visits some of the open ridges that provide great vistas of Santa Clara County and beyond.
As a bonus, Tom not only writes a witty and informative description of his hike, but he accompanies it with some great photographs of the area, including some of the wildflower displays – which were probably more or less at their peak when he visited
Two hikes… or was it three?
I managed to get out for morning hikes (and photo shoots) on both Saturday and Sunday mornings this weekend. On Saturday I started out at Calero County Park. I arrived very early, expecting to have the park pretty much to myself at first, but was surprised to find the parking lot filled with cars before the sun came out – apparently this was the weekend of the Tierra Bella bike ride and Calero was a rest stop. In any case, I wandered out along my usual route past Castillero Pond, making photographs of birds and of the light as the early fog cleared.
A bit later I decided that rather than do a longer hike at Calero I would head back to the Mockingbird Hill entrance to Almaden Quicksilver Park and visit my favorite flower-filled canyon near the parking lot.
Today I arrived at Castle Rock State Park before the gate was open. I wandered on out to a bit past Goat Rock, enjoying the spring flowers and the still-green conditions… along with warm weather that felt more like summer than spring.
More Redwoods
At his Two Heel Drive blog, Tom Mangan points out a redwood grove that I did not know about. It is located at the Mount Madonna county park on the ridge between Santa Clara and Santa Cruz counties.
Can Anyone Identify This Plant?
I photographed this very lush new growth at Muir Woods National Monument yesterday morning – but now I’m unable to determine what kind of plant it is. (I should have asked the naturalist while I was there, but I was in a hurry to get back home.)
The leaves are very thick and shiny and you can see that flower stalks are emerging from each plant, topped with what look like clumps of ball-like buds. The plant was on a slope in the redwood forest not too far above the canyon bottom and, obviously, in a very shady area.
Thanks in advance!
UPDATE: Someone just posted a comment (sorry, didn’t leave actual name) that suggests the plant is Andrew’s Clintonia (Clintonia andrewsiana). I did a bit of checking around that this sure seems like it could be the right plant – so I’m going for that ID. Thanks!
Dan
More Spring-ish Observations
Yesterday I again visited Muir Woods to do some photography. (I’m working on a sort of informal project to shoot a series of photographs there – you can find more at my photography site and elsewhere.) I noticed a few things that shouted “spring!” during my little trip.
- Bay Area wildflowers are everywhere. The combination of recent rains and spring sun may make this weekend (or possibly next) the peak of the season.
- People are out and about! Muir Woods was packed even earlier than usual, and the pedestrian lane on the Golden Gate Bridge was packed from end to end when I drove across on my way home at midday.
- If you get cold – for example, from spending a lot of time in the bottom of a damp, redwood-filled canyon – a moment in a sunny spot will warm you right up.
Signs of High Country Spring
At about this time every year thoughts begin to turn to another upcoming summer (and a bit of spring and a good chunk of fall) of High Sierra experiences. The signs are starting to appear – recently the following was reported at Yosemite Blog and elsewhere:
- In Yosemite Valley the Upper and Lower Pines campgrounds have opened for the season.
- The Mist Trail to Vernal fall is apparently open.
- Crews have started clearing the road to Glacier Point. (No word in this report on Tioga Road clearing, but I’ll bet that some work has commenced.
- The Dweeb Report has begun to speculate about the weather on opening day of the fishing season.
At this point I have a few somewhat firm plans, the main one revolving around the annual talusdancers pack trip with my back-country friends. Looks like we’ll head in over Kearsarge Pass sometime in early August, go south over Forester Pass (grunt… groan…) to enter the upper Kern, explore the upper west side of the upper Kern River drainage, and then exit over Shepard Pass. We may also do a slightly shorter trip out of Kings Canyon a bit earlier in the season. And, of course, I’ll do several shorter trips, most of which will be focused on photography, between the start of the season and perhaps as late as early October when the aspens will turn once again.
Spring in Death Valley
I spent about four days in the Death Valley National Park area last week, doing photography in familiar and new places. This has become something of a spring break tradition over the past few years. (Photography from the trip has started appearing at my photography web site and will continue to do so for the next week or so.)
On the final day of this trip I was more or less run out of the park by a huge dust storm. I’ve experienced several of these in the past, but this one pretty much takes the cake. Due to a lucky turn of events in the morning I was able to exit the park faster than I might have otherwise.
I woke up at 5:00 a.m. so that I could head to my planned photography location well before dawn. My plan was to shoot until mid-morning and then swing back through the campground at Stovepipe Wells to strike camp before heading out of the park later in the day. But because I got up quickly I found myself with a few extra minutes, and I changed plans and struck my camp in the dark before heading off for photography. I was very glad about this a few hours later!
Before dawn I arrived at the iconic Zabriskie Point. I hadn’t necessarily planned to shoot there, but I thought there might be some interesting clouds on this morning, and that can make for something very special at Zabriskie. Turned out that the clouds did not materialize, but despite this development and the tremendously windy conditions I managed to spend a productive couple of hours shooting. As I finished up I noticed that a few scattered clouds were developing over the ridges to the west, east, and north – but this was more or less in the forecast.
As I drove back up the Valley toward Stovepipe Wells the clouds began to get a bit thicker… and I noticed a very ominous haze around the summit of Tucki Mountain above Stovepipe Wells, a haze that I recognize as the warning sign of a dust storm. (I’ve experienced two in the past, so I have at least a bit of experience with them.) As I continued on up the Valley it became apparent that there was a huge, thick, dark cloud of nasty looking dust all the way across the Valley before Stovepipe, and just before the road turned left to head west across the Valley I drove into it.
It immediately became twilight dark, strong winds buffeted the car forcing me to slow to 45 mph or so, and the sand was streaming across the roadway. Visibility became quite bad as I passed the Mesquite Dunes area and at Stovepipe Wells it was dark and no one appeared to be outside. I was very glad that I had packed up earlier – it would have been a real mess trying to strike my tent and pack the car in this meteorological awfulness!
The photo below shows the beginnings of the dust storm across the Valley near Tucki Mountain, with one final glimpse of blue sky showing through.
Mt. Umunhum Umpdate
Sorry. Couldn’t help myself.
There is a post today at Two-Heel Drive about the possibility of cleaning up the summit of Santa Clara Valley’s (or Santa Cruz County’s, if you live on the other side of the hill) Mt. Umunhum so that the stunning views from this ridgetop location can become available to hikers and others. (And, no, Tom, I’ve never heard anyone call this place “Mt. Um.”)
When I was a kid growing up in Santa Clara Valley, Mt. Umunhum housed a military base of some sort – we all understood it to be some sort of radar station guarding the west coast. On “Armed Forces Day” the base opened to the public, and on at least one occasion my father took me and one or more of my siblings up there for the open house. I recall going inside the concrete block building on the summit and watching – with the awe that children can have about such things – the technicians sitting in front of screens watching radar. I also remember being very impressed by a low-level fly-over by some military jets as part of the festivities.
I did get back up there once some years later. For a few years early in college I played in a band – who didn’t right? – and we were once hired to play in some sort of club on the base. As a result we were authorized to drive up there, play for the very small number of folks looking for something to do on the base on a weekend night, and then drive down after dark.
There are other stories about that area. Apparently the road to the top of the peak was not actually owned by the military. If I understand correctly, they got an easement of some sort from a landowner up there who supposedly owned a very large tract. After the base closed, there were many who felt that the road should be public – quite a few of them treated it that way, especially certain bicyclists. Some of them told stories of being met by this landowner and/or his hired hands with guns and being arrested for trespassing.
In more recent years areas around the peak became accessible. You can now drive the road to a very high point though not all the way to the summit, and there are trails in the area. Finally opening the whole ridge and peak for public use would be a wonderful thing, and the sort of development that future residents of the valley will regard as evidence that we made at least a few good decisions “back in the day.”
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Dan's Outside 
Yosemite Spring Progress Report
Several thing define the progress from winter to summer in Yosemite, both in the Valley and in the high country. Edie Howe (of The Little Red Tent) posted two indicators this evening. First, she reports that the recent warm weather may have jump-started the dogwood blossoms – it will be interesting to follow this since some had speculated that the bloom would be delayed this season. Maybe not. She also posts a web cam photo of the Tioga Pass entrance kiosk… showing that plows have made it to that point from the east.
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April 22, 2009 Posted by gdanmitchell | Commentary | blog, bloom, blossom, country, dogwood, edie, high, howe, little red tent, national park, Sierra Nevada, Spring, summer, tioga pass, valley, Yosemite | Comments Off on Yosemite Spring Progress Report