Yosemite NP closure

[John Kasaian]

Apparently, the flooding wasn't as bad as Smokey predicted and the park is opening back up with a caution to check for more mischief from this Spring's runoff.

[Vaughn]

Not surprised...I was just looking at the river predictions -- might hit flood level tomorrow and Monday briefly in the early morning hours at the Pohono Bridge.

But about three feet higher than when I left the park on Monday.

[Drew Wiley]

This morning the NP site showed access by all three incoming routes as far as the Bridge crossing the Merced near the entrance of the Valley, but no further. In other words, you could take a look at Bridal Veil Falls, or El Cap and the Valley from the turnout viewpoint at the tunnel, but can't drive into the Valley itself. I think it will be touch and go for a number of weeks, depending on how hot it gets. This next week things are predicted to be relatively cool again, with more snow higher up; but that equates to even more water when things do even more seriously melt.

It will be when people are out hiking again that real problems will happen. Even in the past few drought years there were numerous drownings. One couple got over the bridge past the waterfall in Hetch Hetchy in the morning, but didn't realize there would be a lot more runoff in the afternoon, and were swept off the bridge and killed at that point in time. Six people drowned trying to cross the S Fork of the Kings in early summer, where the bridge had washed out. It will no doubt be worse this year. Even in Yellowstone, far more people die in streams than from bison and grizzlies combined. My sidekick wants to do a 300-miler in the high country this Sept-Oct; but even then there will be some risky crossings. I all too well remember that from analogous years, and am now getting too old to accompany him on that kind of trip. I still have vivid memories of losing the coin toss among three teenagers to see who had to carry the rope across a swollen stream of April snowmelt at 9000 ft. Coldest wettest night in my whole life, with all my gear either soaked or lost to the current. Managed to make an igloo before dark, which at least kept me alive. None of us could afford a real tent.

[bmikiten]

I love hearing these stories from those who know the park so well. I've only been once and expect to go again next year.

[Drew Wiley]

Despite living near there, I never spent much time in the Valley itself. We locals called it "the city". My most memorable time in the Valley was being trapped there for three days in a January when there was so much snowfall that nobody could get in or out. I'd just park on the road (no turnouts were cleared); and one day saw only one other vehicle - a ranger. My nephew wanted to scout out an upcoming Spring extreme route up El Capitan, so we took ice axes and hacked our way up a massive ice cone that had accumulated under the cliff, and I chopped a little platform off the top of it, and got a unique edge-on 4X5 Sinar shot of the monolith. It was pretty spooky getting back down; we didn't have ropes. But winter is when you want to go.

The last time prior to this month I was within Yos Park boundaries per se, me an my backpacking sidekick spent 12 days in the SE corner of the Park, and didn't see another person for a whole week of that. And much of it was off trail. The headwaters or Lyell Fork of the Merced River are in my opinion more impressive that Yos Valley itself way further downstream, but go from timberline to around 13,000 ft, the highest portion of the Park. That was on my bucket list before I turned 70. It would probably be too strenuous for me now approaching 74. Seventy pound packs were involved, including my 4X5 gear. Yosemite Valley is only 8% of the overall Park area, which itself is just a small portion of the entire high Sierra, which contains many deep glacial canyons. Despite hundreds of backpacking trips into the Sierra over the past 60 yrs, it would take me another eight lifetimes to see everything on my bucket list of "must sees" in that one mountain range alone. And even the same places are never really the same twice. The lighting and foliage are constantly nuanced.

[Vaughn]

I was born and raised in a surburb town next to Los Angeles, a basketball playing nerd. My dad was born in Bakersfield, and at seven, his mother, sister and he moved to Santa Monica (1929). When my dad got out of the Navy in '48, he brought his NY City wife to LA and his dad lent him his car for my mom's first camping trip -- to Yosemite Valley. So I grew up car-camping in Yosemite, got lost in the campgrounds after watching the Firefall, floated on air mattresses down the Merced as it wound between the campgrounds, sat in the stands watching the bears in the dump, hiked, even rode the mules once. My family started backpacking in the Sierras in 1968 or so -- that was a heavy snow year that made backpacking great in late September...lots of water.

Not quite the same upbringing as Drew. Somehow in there I fell into packing mules and building trails for a decade in a wilderness few have heard about and far fewer have been to...while falling into photographing under the redwoods at the same time...and found that Yosemite Valley is also a fine place to gather light.

This image taken from the Valley Floor to the base of a seasonal waterfall. It probably has a name, but it is not listed. It is next to Sentinal Falls. I have hiked up to its base a couple times with the 8x10...no trail, a bit of a tough go in places for an old guy. I have a 4x10 image from there I need to find and work with one of these days. Always places to explore.

My biggest adventures this last trip to Yosemite (besides the workshop) was riding my ebicycle (and 5x7) on the Valley roads and up through the Wawona Tunnel and such. Actually, the Park visitors were pretty cool, but someday the Park will have to address the issue of bikes on the roads.

[Drew Wiley]

Great! I actually have that lovely little ephemeral fall in one of my prints done Friday, but only as part of a broad mist view which was quite tricky to print due to the sheer all-highlight nature of the background, while it was still snowing, accented by deep black oak limbs on one side. I just wanted two or three special shots to add to my Yos Valley portfolio, and I think I got them. Nearly all my other Yos prints are from the high country. There were waterfalls nearly everywhere this year. I heard them all night camped on the San Joaquin Canyon and then on the lower Kings. Streams which are dry most of the year were roaring.

I suspect the nearly one-way road attitude in place already in the Valley factors bicycles. I don't think E-bikes will be much of a problem because they're not noisy. But too many at once could be. Of course, there's always the nuclear option : going back to reservation-only entry during the peak season.

[Vaughn]

I decided to appreciate the places I have been able to see when I had the legs and lungs for it, and appreciate the places I'll never see, just because.

Except for a mile or two, and over several years, I have solo backpacked down in the Grand Canyon with a 4x5 from the Little Colorado River at the east end to a bit past the Bass Trail on the west end, on the south side of the Colorado, and a little off-trail on the north side of the river, and have covering several stretches a few times. Wish I had knew what I was doing with a 4x5 at the time. I have not looked at those negatives in years...maybe they are not as bad as I remember them.

But I think I could still hike down into the Canyon...just not back out. Incredible place...as are many places in the SW I'll never get to!

[Drew Wiley]

Never did go down into the GC, but did some long remote canyons in Utah. Had to carry not only enough water to get to the next anticipated pool or spring, but enough to get back out in case it was dry. It was still my Sinar years, so around a 95 lb pack. Yeah, there are sure some magical places in the SW, but also the web attention these days has turned some of them hardly nobody knew about before into so crowded that now day permits are being issued with quota of 80 people per day.

I was doing almost entirely 4X5 chromes back then. My later SW reincarnation was mostly with 8X10 Bergger 200 pan film - was that ever a wonderful film! The chrome films of that era were dimensionally unstable triacetate and hell to maintain register with. I ended up making stable precision chrome dupes from the 8X10 masked sandwich combinations, and then printing from those. They were so good that later I made Portra internegs from those positives dupes, and reprinted some of the same images on RA4 Supergloss just a year ago. Best color repro quality I've ever gotten. But if I hadn't had a big stash of film already on hand, it would be prohibitively expensive. MY best Escalante Can 8x10 chrome ever required 13 sheets of film to generate the printing master, but was worth it (Dye transfer printers would often burn through 15 or more sheets of film per image). Don't know if I'll ever make more 8X10 internegs - just too costly now - but will just proceed forward with color neg originals instead. I hope to print a few of the new 8X10 color negs next week.

Haven't even developed my black and white negs from the last trip yet. A couple of them were taken in the Gold Country below Mariposa the afternoon before entering Yosemite. The soft overcast lighting preceding the snowstorm the next morning was ideal for FP4.

[Vaughn]

Yeah -- hiking 14 miles down into the Canyon with a 90 lb pack (I'd be out for 10 or 11 days) was not good for my knees. Too dumb back then to use hiking sticks. Worse comes to worse, there was always the Colorado River if one could get down to it. Fill up a quart container, let the silt settle and pour it into the gallon canteen, and toss in a couple purification tablets. Springs and side creeks were much preferable!

Getting permits was always an issue...back then (70s/80s) I found a way around it by making my first camp a dry camp, with a short hike to the first water the next morning. No one else liked the idea of a dry camp. Also, being a wilderness ranger at the time made the whole process pretty easy for me. I think for awhile the Park was not issueing any solo permits -- safety in numbers or something. I much prefered it when I would see people the first day and the last day, and see no one for the 9 days inbetween. Those days are over.