Easy walks within view of Half Dome.
Boats on the Tuolumne River with Lembert Dome in the distance.
The village in Mammoth Lakes.
Mono Lake next to the small town of Lee Vining. “Some people say it looks like an alien landscape because it’s not like anything else that we typically encounter in mountains, lakes and deserts,” says tour guide Bartshé Miller. Tufas are limestone formations created by calcium from underwater springs mixing with carbonates in the dead-end, terminal lake, shooting them up from the lakebed as high as 30 feet. As tributaries entering the lake have been diverted as a water source for Los Angeles, lake levels dropped and the salinity increased. Thus, brine shrimp thrive in the water and are a vital food supply for migratory birds. In recent years, lake levels are rising once again. “As the City of Los Angeles takes less water, the lake will comeup,” saysMiller. “The city is farmore efficient inusing, replacing, and recycling water, and storm-water capture. It’s a new era we live in in California, and we continue to make progress at stretching our water supplies.” Maybe 15 miles north on US 395, and a right on SR 270 leads to Bodie, a ghost town that was once home to one of California’s richest gold strikes. Dilapidated buildings— brick homes, saloons, wooden storefronts and even an old fire house and morgue—have been in a state of “arrested decay” since becoming a state park in 1962. That means buildings’ roofs and foundations will be repaired to keep them standing, but interiors won’t be refurbished. Started in 1859, Bodie saw its heyday from 1877-81 when the town’s 20-stamp mill crushed 50 tons of rocks from the gold mines, 24 hours a day, six days a week. “They say you’d hear the stamp mills three miles out,” explains Catherine Jones, an interpreter with California State Parks. The mill remains today as one of about 200 structures that survived a massive 1932 fire, before which there were more than 2,000 buildings. Today, the 1878 Miners’ Union Hall is a museum with everything from feathered hats, pianos, and hair rollers used there before the town went bust. About an hour’s drive south along US 395 leads to the upscale ski town of Mammoth Lakes with its trendy restaurants and many hotels—especially in and around the retail “Village.” Named for its cluster of lakes surrounded by mountains, the town has many stores and serves as a
Tioga Road in an RV is a delight.
Spectacular view of Half Dome from the valley floor.
Tufas at Mono Lake.
dominating the mountainous view with its distinctive sheared shape. Below me are hiking paths where a yellow- bellied marmot scurries along the rocks. Just ahead on SR 120 is scenic Tenaya Lake, its shoreline riddled with boulders and with surrounding mountains reflecting off the lake’s still waters. The roadway continues past a series of bulbous granite domes: the two larger Fairview and Medlicott formations with their summits shooting above the tree line, followed by the flatter Pothole Dome where Tuolumne Meadows begins. I soon reach the rounded Lembert Dome, soaring 800 feet above the meadow at about 8,600-feet elevation, and alongside the meandering Tuolumne River that cuts through a pine forest. Reaching the domes’ summits can be challenging for both rock climbers and hikers. At Tuolumne Meadows, ducks glide atop trickling creeks zigzagging through flat grasslands, against a backdrop of snow-covered mountains. “It’s a very unique meadow system, one of the largest sub- alpine meadow systems in the world,” says DeGrazio. “It was shaped by glaciers over a million years ago and you have this wide open, expansive area with high peaks all around you.” After exiting Yosemite’s east entrance and descending the steep Tioga Pass, I’m anxious to see the twisting and contorted tufa rock formations along the shores of salty
convenient home base for visiting Yosemite, Mono Lake, and Bodie. It’s also just a quick drive from Devils Postpile National Monument with its unusual basalt columns naturally strung together in the shapes of pentagons and hexagons. A tram up Mammoth Mountain offers expansive views of the surrounding snowcapped High Sierras including the spire-like Minarets, pointed Mt. Ritter and the lakes themselves—Mamie, Mary, George, and Horseshoe. The area has a ghost town of its own called the Mammoth Consolidated Gold Mine, in operation from 1927-33, with rundown shacks and piles of rubble that were once buildings. “You can see they’re just wood and tar paper with no running water or electricity, and a pot-bellied stove to keep warm,” says guide Noelle Deinken during a tour. A quick hike up the mountainside offers yet another stunning view over the distant lakes, with a constant “whoosh” through the trees. “When the wind blows through the Aspen trees it sounds like rushing water,” notes tour guide Jay Deinken. “But through the pines, it just sounds like wind.” As long as it just whooshes with the view in front of me, it’s refreshing to me—whatever it sounds like.
Hetchy is a gateway to hiking trails snaking into the park’s northwest wilderness area. Within their paths are the Wapama, Tueeulala, and Rancheria waterfalls. I choose to explore Yosemite’s so-called high country by heading north and then east along Tioga Road (SR 120), which eventually leads to the park’s east entrance. SR 120 was once the Old Mono Trail along what was a Native American trade route leading from the desert to the sea. The road reaches 9,945-feet elevation at the park’s entrance, becoming the Tioga Pass that winds down steep mountainsides to the town of Lee Vining and U.S. Route 395. It’s California’s highest highway pass and is closed in winter usually from November through late May. The distance between the Yosemite Valley Visitor Center and panoramic Olmsted Point lookout is 45 miles and the drive can take more than an hour. It’s nonetheless a scenic drive winding around thick pine forests, lakes, and mountainside waterfalls. Creeks parallel the roadway at times while passing through falling rock areas, camping and picnic grounds, and hiking trails, all surrounded by sturdy pines. At the Porcupine Creek trailhead, I notice backpackers taking a break. When I reach Olmsted Point, the elevation has spiked to more than 8,000 feet compared to the Yosemite Valley’s 4,000. From the lookout is yet another view of Half Dome framed between tree clumps—so many miles away, yet
12 COAST TO COAST SPRING 2017
COAST TO COAST SPRING 2017 13
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