Yosemite National Park

Few landscapes explain their own making as plainly as Yosemite. The park's 1,187 square miles sit on the granite of the Sierra Nevada batholith, rock that cooled deep underground, was lifted and tilted with the range some ten million years ago, and was then worked over by ice. Glaciers of roughly the last million years scoured Yosemite Valley into its U-shaped trough, leaving sheer walls where the rock was solid and hanging side valleys from which streams now fall free. The valley itself covers only about one percent of the park, yet it gathers nearly everything the name brings to mind.

On its north side stands El Capitan, a single face of granite about 3,000 feet from base to rim, which became the proving ground of modern big-wall climbing: The Nose was first climbed in 1958 over 47 days of fixed ropes, freed by Lynn Hill in 1993, and in 2017 Alex Honnold climbed the Freerider route alone and without a rope in under four hours. At the valley's head Half Dome rises some 4,800 feet above the floor, its sheared face turned to the west, and across from it Yosemite Falls drops about 2,425 feet in three linked stages — at its best in late spring, when snowmelt is heaviest. Watch the walls at the end of the day: the grey granite goes gold and then pink long after the valley floor is in shadow.

Beyond the valley the park changes character entirely. Mariposa Grove in the south holds some 200 giant sequoias; Tuolumne Meadows, at about 8,600 feet, is a broad subalpine plain ringed by polished domes; and the high country climbs to Mount Lyell at over 13,000 feet. To the north, the glacial Hetch Hetchy Valley lies flooded behind O'Shaughnessy Dam, a reservoir created inside a national park.

The Ahwahneechee lived in the valley for thousands of years before the Mariposa War brought outsiders in 1851. Only thirteen years later, in 1864, Abraham Lincoln signed the Yosemite Grant, placing the valley and Mariposa Grove under protection; John Muir's campaign then led to the national park in 1890. UNESCO added it to the World Heritage list in 1984.

Getting there

The nearest town of any size on the west side is Clovis, about 100 km to the south-west, next to Fresno. Mammoth Yosemite Airport (MMH) is about 60 km away in a straight line but sits east of the crest, reachable only over Tioga Pass on Highway 120, which is open in summer. Most visitors fly into Fresno Yosemite International Airport (FAT), about 90 minutes' drive from the South Entrance on Highway 41. Without a car, Amtrak runs train-and-bus connections via Merced, where YARTS buses continue year-round along Highway 140 through Mariposa and El Portal to Yosemite Valley; seasonal YARTS routes also run from Fresno (Highway 41) and, in summer, from Mammoth Lakes and Lee Vining over Tioga Pass.