Yosemite

Witnessing Yosemite in all four seasons has been California’s greatest challenge and reward.

Every time I visit Yosemite, I'm struck by an immense sense of scale; not just the literal size of the granite walls, but the vast amount of time it took for the smallest snowflakes to form into ice and carve their towering shape.

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The granite walls of Yosemite never feel more alive than in the dead of winter, when the layers of weather bring complex motion to these acutely fixed points.

In the wilderness, during that brief period of gloaming when the light has died but night hasn’t quite arrived, you feel a shift in your senses, and every sound swells in sharp focus.

Technically, the sun had risen, but it hadn’t climbed high enough in the sky to spill over the granite walls and down into the valley. In the campsite, beneath towering pine trees, all was quiet, save for muffled snores from a nearby tent and a Steller’s jay (Cyanocitta stelleri) hopping across picnic tables. I knocked the previous day’s dust from my hiking boots before pulling them on, swung my backpack over my shoulder, and, by the light of my headlamp, began to walk. 

My goal for the day was to summit Half Dome, the iconic batholith that towers over Curry Village like a gigantic ship’s bow pointing to the heavens. The sheer Northwest face was famously free-soloed by Alex Honnold in 2008, but I was planning a much more leisurely route to the peak, hiking around the back and ascending the cables for the final 400 feet. Still, with fourteen miles of trails and a 4,800-foot elevation gain ahead of me, it would be a long, hot day in Yosemite. As I marched on, a mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus) caught my eye, and I imagined a shared appreciation for this cool, peaceful morning.

The first part of the hike was a steep incline up the Mist Trail. If I’d been overly confident in completing this hike, this section restored some humility. As I crossed the Vernal Fall Footbridge, my legs burned slightly, and sweat formed on my brow. I turned left and continued up the granite steps. Everything beyond this point was new territory for me. Below me, Vernal Fall crashed into rocks and formed a hazy rainbow in the sunlight. For a moment, I forgot about my aching calves. 

The trail continued past Emerald Pools and across the Silver Apron Bridge. The day began to feel more vibrant as bright green trees threw a purplish shade on the rocks. Between their branches, I caught views of Nevada Fall, another beautiful sight astonishingly easy to take for granted in a park full of natural wonders. That could be for the best, however, because if I stopped to photograph everything that caught my eye, I’d never finish the hike in a day.

Little Yosemite Valley was a welcome respite after the previous climb. Relatively flat trails led through the forest and along the Merced River, and I began to look forward to the mile markers, whose numbers were punched through rust-colored metal. Sometimes, I was surprised at how far I’d walked and, sometimes, how far I still had to go. 

After a while, the trail grew steeper again, winding back and forth towards the summit. Occasionally, golden-mantled ground squirrels (Callospermophilus lateralis) or Sierra fence lizards (Sceloporus occidentalis taylori) scurried into the bushes. As the crowds thinned out, I passed one man quietly whispering The Little Engine That Could’s mantra, “I—think—I—can, I—think—I—can.” I smiled and settled into my own rhythm. One foot in front of the other.

Eventually, the granite slopes of the dome became visible through the trees. This vision kept me focused, and with the summit in reach, I picked up the pace. Leaving the shade of the forest, I suddenly felt very exposed under a clear blue sky. The day had grown remarkably warm. It was time to reapply sunscreen and hydrate. 

The final stretch of the ascent was ahead of me. A thin line of precarious-looking metal cables and wooden slats stretched straight up the granite slope. It seemed surprisingly steep. I counted around fifty people actively using this route, cautiously passing each other as they climbed or descended the dome. It was time to join them.

I pulled on my gloves, brought specifically for this application, and got in line. Just 400 vertical feet of 45-degree rock to go. I started to move at the pace of the line and felt a strange blend of excitement and anxiety. As I climbed, I fought the urge to look back or off to the side, not because I was worried about the height, but because I knew I’d be transfixed, and I didn’t want to hold anyone up. I looked at my feet and kept moving.

Stepping off the cables was a strange moment. In the late 1800s, Josiah Whitney, Chief of the California Geological Survey, called the summit of Half Dome “perfectly inaccessible,” yet here I was, surrounded by people fulfilling the same goal. I certainly couldn’t compare it to Alex Honnald’s free solo climb, but in Alone on the Wall, he said, “Maybe it was better that I didn’t have to talk to anybody. How could I have expressed what my last few hours had been like? It was enough that I knew.” In a much smaller way, I understood how personal this sense of achievement felt. It was also oddly fleeting, quickly replaced by a fascination with the view. Spinning around, I saw a vast wilderness that was hard to appreciate; the kind of view you’re more likely to see from a plane, but with clarity you don’t get when squinting through two inches of window plastic. 

I stayed on the summit for a while and stared into the valley below. I watched one particular car wind its way past the meadows and thought about how rarely you get to look upon a distant point and know you were there that day and found yourself so far removed, purely by the power of your own locomotion. Turning around, I looked at the patchwork of trees and granite that stretched to the horizon. I tried to switch focus from such a grand vista to individual trees or boulders, but neither gave me a sense of the whole. The scene was just too big to fully appreciate. The last thing I did before descending was get a photo of myself standing on the iconic Visor, a small overhanging lip above the Northwest face. 

I don’t remember coming down the cables, and I couldn’t tell you if I faced forward or backward. I suspect it was a mix, depending on how steep it felt, but I know I didn’t hang around long afterward. I suddenly became aware that my sense of completion was technically the halfway point in the hike, and there was a long road ahead of me, back to the campsite. At times, the descent felt more challenging than the climb, partly because I was tired, partly because I was now using different muscles, and partly because the adrenaline dissipated. Having been to the top, I was ready for the hike to be over. 

A lot of time has passed since I hiked Half Dome. Like many memories, parts remain crystal clear, while others have blurred into vague associations. Since then, I’ve looked at Half Dome from dozens of viewpoints, including Cloud’s Rest, Olmsted Point, El Capitan, Tunnel View, and Crocker Point. I’ve seen it in every season and in all weather conditions, but my favorite view was from Glacier Point in the fall. Bathed in a pink glow as the sun set, I watched a shadow make the day’s final ascent, creeping up the mountainside for an hour until the dome caught the dying of the light. Then, during that brief period of gloaming, when the light had waned but night hadn’t quite arrived, I felt a shift in my senses, and every sound began to swell in sharp focus. No matter the situation, however, it’s always extra special to know I once stood on that peak and wonder if I’ll ever return. 

Today, Yosemite is a World Heritage Site and National Park primarily associated with recreation and tourism. Its history, of course, stretches back much further, and like America as a whole, it’s rich in both beauty and devastating pain. Many accounts begin with the first European settlers in the 1800s, but humans are thought to visited the region 10,000 years ago, and Yosemite’s indigenous people, who called themselves the Ahwahneechee, had resided there for around 4,000 years. Unfortunately, the gold rush, the Mariposa Indian War, and evictions by the US federal government decimated their presence and population. Many landmarks we know today have names inspired by the Ahwahneechee, but these were often chosen by white people, ignoring older names the native people had chosen. An example is Tenaya Lake, named after Chief Tenaya but originally called Pie-we-ack. 

The land itself is, of course, much older. The strong, imposing granite surrounding you at every vantage point in the park was formed during the Cretaceous period. Movements in the Earth’s plates lifted these rocks, along with others, to form the Sierra Nevada mountain range. It was in the last twenty million years, however, that erosion exposed the underlying granite. The canyon was originally carved by a river, but there was still a lot of work ahead to shape the valley that we admire, hike, and photograph. Josiah Whitney, the same geologist who considered Half Dome inaccessible, believed that Yosemite Valley was formed due to a massive earthquake. To be fair, this wasn’t an unreasonable theory given the part tectonic plates have played in shaping the region, but John Muir, the famed naturalist and “Father of the National Parks,” correctly concluded that the valley was largely the product of glacial erosion. 

Three million years ago, as the Earth cooled and a new ice age began, glaciers advanced across the region, polishing granite, shaping the rocks, widening the valley, and forming lakes. In The Mountains of California, Muir described the peaks as “works of art—eloquent monument of the ancient ice-rivers that brought them into relief” and the canyons as “Nature’s poems carved on tables of stone—the simplest and most emphatic of her glacier compositions.” I like to stand at Olmsted Point and try to imagine the artistic glacier that sculpted Half Dome in the distance, composed the foreground with erratically placed boulders, and painted Tenaya Lake behind me. 

Cold weather has undoubtedly played an outsized role in shaping Yosemite, but I can’t say that’s why winter is my favorite time to visit. The lack of people is one factor. The place isn’t exactly deserted, but Yosemite Valley, in particular, can be uncomfortably busy during the summer, especially for a park the size of Rhode Island. I find winter far less frenetic, but more than anything, the landscape is stunning under a blanket of snow. The granite walls never feel more alive than in the dead of winter, when layers of weather bring a complex motion to these acutely fixed points. I’ve made my favorite images there in winter: images that made the challenge of navigating the conditions worth the effort.

A few years ago, I traveled to Yosemite in February, opting to stay in Groveland, twenty-something miles outside the park entrance. When I arrived at my cabin, snow was on the ground and falling fast. I learned that I’d need chains on my tires to enter the park, and given the slick conditions, they seemed like a wise investment. Unfortunately, I’d never attached chains before, and it was much harder than it looked. I laid them out flat, edged my wheels over them, and then began the process of wrapping them around the tire and fixing the hooks. It was incredibly finicky, and they either rattled loose at the first movement or took incredible effort to tighten. I remember kneeling in the snow, my hands bleeding, feeling utter frustration as the light faded. Time to try again in the morning!

The snow continued to fall all night, and conditions were less than ideal for driving in the morning. They were so bad, in fact, that the 120 was closed, and I was forced to go the long way around and approach the park via the 140. Entering the valley, surrounded by pine trees holding snow in shimmering light, lifted my spirits dramatically. I spent some time in the meadows, where the snow was up to my waist, and took some photos along the banks of the river. They were nice, but they weren’t the ‘one’ I was looking for. 

Later in the afternoon, I was heading out of the park. The conditions had turned blizzard-like, and I pulled over to let the worst of it pass. I couldn’t see out the windshield, so I got out and crouched under an umbrella to make coffee on the Jetboil. I had full intention to leave as soon as the snow eased off, but I found myself in awe of the scene that suddenly materialized before me. 

As winter howled through the Sierras, a moment of pure serenity settled between passing winter storms. The Merced River, jet black in contrast with the snow, meandered through the meadow en route from the ‘Giant Staircase’ to the San Joaquin River. A fin of pristine snow in the foreground led my eye into the scene, pointing across the water to a pair of skeletal trees backed by a wall of conifers and rocky peaks. Ansel Adams said, “Sometimes I do get to places just when God’s ready to have somebody click the shutter.” It felt like one of those moments. The image I created that afternoon was one I’d never seen anyone else capture. That can feel like a rarity in a place as famous as Yosemite. 

After making the photograph, I took a moment to enjoy the scene without a layer of glass between myself and the elements. Every time I visit Yosemite, I’m struck by the immense scale of the place. Usually, I’m in awe of the literal size of the cliff faces, but this time, I was thinking about time. Watching a single snowflake drift past and land on the riverbank before me—a tiny, gentle artifact in a world of towering, solid rock—I thought about how many of those moments it took, over thousands of years, to form the glaciers necessary to sculpt this scene I was enjoying. Yosemite is special, and I felt privileged to be there.

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