Top Trails Yosemite: 50 Must-do Hikes for Everyone

by Elizabeth Wenk, Jeffrey Schaffer

Overview

45 “Must-Do” Yosemite Hikes

It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the amazing number of choice destinations in Yosemite National Park—Yosemite Valley, Glacier Point, Tuolumne Meadows, Hetch Hetchy, and many other famed locales. Now in full color, Top Trails Yosemite by Elizabeth Wenk and Jeffrey P. Schaffer helps you sort through the options. It doesn’t describe every possible hike in the Park, only the best.

Whether you’re looking for a scenic stroll, a full-day adventure, or even a spectacular backpacking trip, you’ll find it here. And with at-a-glance information for each hike, visitors can determine which hikes are most suitable to their skills, schedules, and preferences.

Books in the affordable and easy-to-use Top Trails series feature elevation profiles, detailed maps, driving directions, and “don’t get lost” trail milestones. Innovative trail-feature charts give information on which trails are child-friendly; which allow horses; where to see giant sequoias, waterfalls, lakes, wildflowers, and autumn colors; which trips have the best photo opportunities; and which have camping, running, or biking opportunities.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780899977836
Publisher:	Wilderness Press
Publication date:	07/10/2018
Series:	Top Trails Series
Pages:	416
Sales rank:	211,843
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 8.00(h) x (d)

Read an Excerpt

Sunrise Lakes and Sunrise High Sierra Camp

TRAIL USE: Dayhike, Backpack, Horse

LENGTH: 11.6 miles, 4–8 hours

VERTICAL FEET: +1890’/-710’/±5200’

DIFFICULTY: 3

TRAIL TYPE: Out & Back

FEATURES

Backcountry Permit

Lakes

Streams

Wildflowers

Great Views

Camping

Swimming

FACILITIES

Restrooms, Bus Stop, Picnic Tables

Considerable climbing at fairly high elevations would normally make this hike a moderate one, but its distance is so short for a backpack trip that it is rated easy. Some hikers go only as far as upper Sunrise Lake, only an 8-mile round trip and a good, moderate dayhike, although many are capable of doing the whole route in under a day. However, if you camp near Sunrise High Sierra Camp you are rewarded with a beautiful sunrise—the reason for the camp’s being situated where it is.

Best Time
Because of fairly high elevations, the trail can have snow patches even into mid-July, the soonest you’ll want to start. Lakes are near their optimal temperatures from early July through early August, so if you want to minimize mosquitoes and snow and enjoy dips in the lakes, then early August is best. To avoid crowds, backpack in mid- and late September. You can even go in early and mid-October, although then be prepared for cool days and subfreezing nights.

Finding the Trail
The trail begins on the Tioga Road at the Tenaya Lake trailhead parking area, at a highway bend near the lake’s southwest shore, located 30.5 miles northeast of Crane Flat and 8.5 miles southwest of the Tuolumne Meadows Campground. If you are driving east up the Tioga Road, you will pass the following campgrounds, the first three along spur roads: Tamarack Flat, White Wolf, Yosemite Creek, and Porcupine Flat.

Trail Description
From the trailhead parking area near the southwest corner of Tenaya Lake, 1 take a trail that heads east, and you soon cross the usually flowing outlet of Tenaya Lake. Just beyond this crossing you reach a trail junction. The trail left goes northeast to start a loop around the lake, and then it continues another 7 miles to the Cathedral Lakes Trail in Tuolumne Meadows.

You veer right on a trail that heads south for 0.25 mile along Tenaya Creek. Over the next 0.5 mile your trail ascends southeast in sparse forest over a little rise and drops to a ford of Mildred Lake’s outlet, which, like the other streams between Tenaya Lake and the Sunrise Trail junction, can dry up in late season. Beyond the Mildred Lake stream the trail undulates and winds generally south, passing several pocket meadows browsed by mule deer. The trail then begins to climb in earnest, through a thinning cover of lodgepole pine and occasional red fir, western white pine, and mountain hemlock. As your trail rises above Tenaya Canyon, you pass several vantage points from which you can look back upon its polished granite walls, though you never see Tenaya Lake. To the east the canyon is bounded by Tenaya Peak; in the northwest are the cliffs of Mt. Hoffmann and Tuolumne Peak.

Now on switchbacks, you see the Tioga Road across the canyon and can even hear vehicles, but these annoyances are infinitesimal compared to the pleasures of polished granite expanses all around. These switchbacks are mercifully shaded, and where they become steepest, requiring a great out- put of energy, they give back the beauty of the finest flower displays on this trail, including lupine, penstemon, paintbrush, larkspur, buttercup, and sunflowers such as aster and senecio. Finally the switchbacks end and the trail levels as it arrives at a junction on a shallow, forested saddle.

The trail ahead goes to Clouds Rest and beyond (Trail 17), but you turn left, and over 0.5 mile you first contour east, cross a low gap and descend north to lower Sunrise Lake. 3 Climbing from this lake and its small campsites, you reach a crest in several minutes, and from it you could descend cross-country an equally short distance north to more isolated, island-dotted middle Sunrise Lake. Your loop trail, however, veers east and gains a very noticeable 150 feet in elevation as it climbs to upper Sunrise Lake, the largest and most popular lake of the trio. Campsites are plentiful along its north shore, away from the trail.

With 1.7 miles remaining to your day’s goal, you leave this lake and climb south up a gully, cross it, then soon climb up a second gully to the east side of a broad gap, from which you see the Clark Range head-on, piercing the southern sky. From the gap, which is sparsely clothed with mountain hemlocks, whitebark pines, and western white pines, you descend south into denser cover, veer east, and then veer north to make a steep descent to a backpackers’ camp. By walking briefly north from it you’ll reach Sunrise High Sierra Camp. An overnight stay at either camp gives you an inspiring sunrise over Matthes Crest and the Cathedral Range.

Table of Contents

Contents

Yosemite National Park Map

Yosemite National Park Trails Table

Using Top Trails
Organization of Top Trails

Choosing a Trail

Introduction to Yosemite National Park

Geography and Topography

Geology

Flora and Fauna

When to Go: Weather and Seasons

Trail Selection

Key Features and Facilities

Trail Safety

Fees, Camping, and Permits

Topographic Maps

On the Trail

Have a Plan

Carry the Essentials

Trail Etiquette

Chapter 1

Northeast Yosemite

1 Barney Lake and Peeler Lake

2 Green Creek Basin

3 Virginia Lakes Basin to Green Creek

4 Twenty Lakes Basin

5 Mount Dana

6 Gaylor Lakes and Great Sierra Mine

Chapter 2

Tuolumne Meadows

7 Lembert Dome, Dog Dome, and Dog Lake

8 Pothole Dome and the Tuolumne River

9 Young Lakes

10 Glen Aulin and Waterwheel Falls

11 Vogelsang High Sierra Camp Lakes

12 Elizabeth Lake

13 Lower Cathedral Lake

14 High Sierra Camps Loop, northwest part

15 High Sierra Camps Loop, southeast part

Chapter 3

Central Yosemite

16 Sunrise Lakes and Sunrise High Sierra Camp

17 Clouds Rest

18 May Lake and Mount Hoffmann

19 North Dome

20 Ten Lakes Basin

21 Lukens Lake

22 Harden Lake

Chapter 4

Northwest Yosemite

23 Kibbie Lake

24 Laurel Lake and Lake Vernon

25 Wapama Falls and Rancheria Falls Camp

26 Tuolumne Grove of Big Trees

27 El Capitan from Tamarack Flat

Chapter 5

Yosemite Valley

28 Bridalveil Fall

29 Lower Yosemite Fall

30 Upper Yosemite Fall and Eagle Peak

31 Mirror Lake

32 Vernal Fall Bridge

33 Vernal Fall–Nevada Fall Loop

34 Half Dome

35 Merced Lake

Chapter 6

Yosemite Valley’s South Rim

36 Dewey Point

37 Taft Point

38 Sentinel Dome

39 Glacier Point

40 Four Mile Trail

41 Glacier Point–Panorama Trail

Chapter 7

South Yosemite

42 Ostrander Lake

43 Buena Vista Loop

44 Mariposa Grove of Big Trees

45 Vandeberg–Lillian Lakes Loop

Top Rated Trails

Appendix I: Campgrounds and RV Parks

Appendix II: Hotels, Lodges, Motels, and Resorts

Appendix III: Useful Books and Maps

Index

Authors