Yosemite National Park: Your Complete Hiking Guide

by Elizabeth Wenk

Overview

The Essential Guide for Hikers, Backpackers, and Equestrians

Yosemite National Park is a hiker’s paradise. Many people return time and again to experience its multifaceted landscapes. With 800-plus miles of maintained trails and several hundred more just beyond the park’s boundaries, the options for exploration are endless. It would take years to visit every corner of the park—yet each trail yields new wonders to admire. Fortunately, expert hiker Elizabeth Wenk helps you choose where to go and what to see in this meticulously updated guidebook.

Yosemite National Park describes almost every trail in Yosemite and most of the trails just outside the park. The routes are divided into 96 trips of varying length and difficulty, each with a standalone map that complements the author’s trip description. Take in the stunning views of the Pothole Dome hike in less than an hour. Plan a family backpacking trip along the remarkably flat Twenty Lakes Basin. Enjoy endless views of El Capitan on the Valley Loops Trail. Discover granite slabs, subalpine lakes, rugged peaks, and endless flowers on the Clark Range Circuit. This classic book leads you to sequoias, waterfalls, and canyons in Yosemite and the surrounding Emigrant, Hoover, and Ansel Adams wilderness areas.

In this book you’ll find

• 96 routes along popular and less-frequented trails
• Detailed trip narratives that let you know what to expect
• At-a-glance icons highlighting the best spots for views, camping, swimming, and more
• Comprehensive information on lodging, permits, and other park activities
• Descriptions of the region’s history, geology, flora, and fauna

If you’re planning a visit to Yosemite, you must have this book!

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780899977850
Publisher:	Wilderness Press
Publication date:	11/09/2021
Edition description:	6th Revised ed.
Pages:	720
Sales rank:	1,104,265
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

Since childhood, Elizabeth “Lizzy” Wenk has hiked and climbed in the Sierra Nevada. She continues the tradition with her husband, Douglas Bock, and daughters, Eleanor and Sophia. As she obtained a PhD in Sierran alpine plant ecology from the University of California, Berkeley, her love of the mountain range morphed into a profession. In 2007, with the publication of her first Wilderness Press title, writing guidebooks became a way to share her love and knowledge of the Sierra Nevada with others. Lizzy continues to obsessively explore every bit of the Sierra, spending summers hiking on- and off-trail throughout the range, although she lives in Sydney, Australia, during the “off-season.” She is a board member of the John Muir Trail Wilderness Conservancy, helping guide the organization to preserve and restore lands that have been loved a little too roughly. Lizzy’s other Wilderness Press titles include John Muir Trail, Top Trails: Yosemite, Sierra North, Sierra South, One Best Hike: Mount Whitney, One Best Hike: Grand Canyon, 50 Best Short Hikes: Yosemite, and Wildflowers of the High Sierra and John Muir Trail, which is a perfect companion book for all naturalists.

Read an Excerpt

From TRIP 30: Traverse from Yosemite Creek to Tenaya Lake via Ten Lakes Basin

Switchbacks lead east out of the South Fork drainage, alternately climbing across open slabby slopes and through forest pockets until you cross onto continuous granite slabs for the final zigzags. Rolling over the lip out of the South Fork drainage, the north side of Tuolumne Peak fans out broadly, and the trail follows a series of broken benches across it. It is a beautiful landscape, with repeated granite spurs proffering exquisite views across Yosemite’s northern lands and beyond to Emigrant Wilderness. You drop repeatedly to drainages holding small tarns, rivulets lasting most of the summer, and dense clusters of hemlocks, only to again ascend a rocky rib. There are lots of hidden camping options along here if you collect water from the little creeks and then trend up and north to camp in sandy flats on a knob. Indeed, starting where the trail first levels out near a seasonal tarn, there are places to stop on every major knob for 1.5 miles east. Ambling along the bench, you eventually cross the most major drainage off Tuolumne Peak (14.1 miles)—this is the easiest place to ascend the peak to enjoy a 360 degree view, a worthwhile and easy side trip if you have 2–3 spare hours. Continued walking brings you to another pair of seasonal tarns, with the final superb campsites. A few more switchbacks take you to the top of a spur, beyond which the trail turns to the south and begins a long descent down the northeast side of Tuolumne Peak. The walking is generally pleasant and sandy, with various flower displays breaking the monotony, since views aren’t striking.

From TRIP 57: Vogelsang Pass–Merced Lake–Emeric Lake Semiloop

You cross roaring Lewis Creek on a pair of bridges and proceed west on an almost level, wide, sandy path under forest canopy, noteworthy for the beautiful grove of Jeffrey pines. The trail then loops south around a granite ridge, dropping an additional 100 feet to reach the Merced Lake basin. You first pass the Merced Lake High Sierra Camp (15.65 miles), where you can buy a few provisions at the small store and make use of a water faucet, and heading north, soon encounter a short spur trail to the Merced Lake backpackers’ campground, where there is a toilet and bear boxes (15.8 miles). This is the only legal campsite around Merced Lake. After spending a night here—for why else did you descend to here?—and enjoying Merced Lake in its photogenic late evening and early morning moods, you retrace your steps to the Lewis Creek—Fletcher Creek junction (17.75 miles)

A few tight switchbacks descend to a wooden bridge over Lewis Creek. In a flat to the northeast are a few pretty tent sites, although fallen trees have vanquished most real estate in this previously popular camping area. From here, the trail begins a moderate-to-steep ascent over unevenly cobblestoned, exposed trail—a grunt on a hot day. The path is bordered by prickly shrubs, in particular featuring whitethorn and huckleberry oak. Just past a tributary a half mile from the Lewis Creek bridge, stepping west of the trail provides views of some fine cataracts and waterfalls along Fletcher Creek. Climbing onwards, granite slabs open to your left, providing splendid vistas of Fletcher Creek chuting and cascading down the bare bedrock. The trail keeps ascending, steeply at times and mostly some distance east of the creek, often on the now-familiar and generally-despised cobblestones that are essential to prevent too much erosion. A detour onto the middle of the slabs is called for, to feel the smooth glacial polished rock away from the water flow and the water polished rock within it, but be careful not to slip. The few solitary pine trees clinging to the nearby slabs and the dome overhead testify to nature’s extraordinary tenacity.

The trail climbs up to a notch, levels off, and soon meets a side trail left (west, then south) to small Babcock Lake, with acceptable campsites, but once again lots of lodgepole-needle-miner-induced ghost forest (19.35 miles).

Onward, you walk for 0.6 mile through flat, marshy forest, passing springs and small meadow patches brightly colored with flowers. Turning a little west, the trail breaks into the open and rises more steeply via rocky switchbacks. From these, looking north, one can see the outlet stream of Emeric Lake—though not the lake itself, which is tucked behind a dome just to the right (east) of the outlet’s notch.

The switchbacks parallel the dashing creek until it tops out in a long, skinny meadow, constrained by domes to either side. The trail follows the meandering Fletcher Creek northeast to a ford and just beyond reaches a scissor junction, where a sharp left (west) is the spur trail to Emeric Lake (21.35 miles), a worthwhile detour.

Table of Contents

Introduction

• Fees
• Public Transportation and Yosemite National Park
• Camping and Lodging
• Supplies
• Yosemite Activities Other Than Hiking

Human History

Flora

Fauna

Geology

Climate—and When to Go

Traveling the Backcountry

About This Guide

CHAPTER 1

• TRIP 1 Tower Peak Country via West Walker River
• TRIP 2 Peeler Lake, Kerrick Meadow, and Buckeye Forks
• TRIP 3 Barney and Peeler Lakes
• TRIP 4 Seavey Pass–Benson Pass–Matterhorn Canyon Semiloop
• TRIP 5 Green Creek Canyon to Green, East, and West Lakes
• TRIP 6 Virginia Lakes Basin to Green Creek
• TRIP 7 Virginia Canyon Loop
• TRIP 8 Virginia Lakes Basin to McCabe Lakes and Twenty Lakes Basin
• TRIP 9 Saddlebag Lake to Twenty Lakes Basin

CHAPTER 2

• TRIP 10 Kibbie Ridge and Boundary Lake
• TRIP 11 Kibbie Lake
• TRIP 12 Lake Eleanor and Miguel Meadow
• TRIP 13 Preston Falls Trail
• TRIP 14 Poopenaut Valley
• TRIP 15 Hetch Hetchy to Laurel Lake and Lake Vernon
• TRIP 16 Jack Main Canyon–Wilma Lake–Tiltill Valley Loop
• TRIP 17 Hetch Hetchy to Rancheria Falls Camp
• TRIP 18 Rancheria Mountain–Bear Valley–Tiltill Valley Semiloop
• TRIP 19 Lookout Point
• TRIP 20 Smith Peak from the Mather Ranger Station

CHAPTER 3

• TRIP 21 Merced Grove of Big Trees
• TRIP 22 Tuolumne Grove of Big Trees
• TRIP 23 Harden Lake
• TRIP 24 Smith Peak from White Wolf
• TRIP 25 Grand Canyon of the Tuolumne from White Wolf
• TRIP 26 Pate Valley–Pleasant Valley–Bear Valley–Kerrick Canyon–Rodgers Canyon Semiloop
• TRIP 27 Lukens Lake from White Wolf
• TRIP 28 Lukens Lake from Tioga Road
• TRIP 29 Ten Lakes Basin
• TRIP 30 Traverse from Yosemite Creek to Tenaya Lake via Ten Lakes Basin
• TRIP 31 May Lake and Mt. Hoffmann

CHAPTER 4

• TRIP 32 Cascade Creek from Big Oak Flat Road
• TRIP 33 Devils Dance Floor from Tamarack Flat Campground
• TRIP 34 El Capitan from Tamarack Flat Campground
• TRIP 35 Upper Tamarack Creek Trailhead to Tamarack Flat Campground
• TRIP 36 Yosemite Creek from Tioga Road to Yosemite Valley
• TRIP 37 North Dome from Tioga Road
• TRIP 38 Snow Creek Trail from Tenaya Lake to Yosemite Valley

CHAPTER 5

• TRIP 39 Polly Dome Lakes via Murphy Creek
• TRIP 40 Pothole Dome
• TRIP 41 Tuolumne River and Little Devils Postpile
• TRIP 42 Glen Aulin and Waterwheel Falls
• TRIP 43 High Sierra Camps Loop
• TRIP 44 Tuolumne Meadows to Sonora Pass via the Pacific Crest Trail
• TRIP 45 Young Lakes
• TRIP 46 Lembert Dome and Dog Lake
• TRIP 47 Lower Gaylor Lake
• TRIP 48 Gaylor Lakes, Great Sierra Mine, and Granite Lakes

CHAPTER 6

• TRIP 49 Upper Tenaya Canyon
• TRIP 50 Sunrise Lakes and Sunrise High Sierra Camp
• TRIP 51 Tenaya Lake to Clouds Rest, Half Dome, and Happy Isles
• TRIP 52 Lower Cathedral Lake
• TRIP 53 John Muir Trail from Tuolumne Meadows to Happy Isles
• TRIP 54 Budd Lake
• TRIP 55 Elizabeth Lake
• TRIP 56 Echo Creek and Nelson Lake
• TRIP 57 Vogelsang Pass–Merced Lake–Emeric Lake Semiloop
• TRIP 58 Vogelsang High Sierra Camp and Lyell Canyon
• TRIP 59 Lyell Canyon to Silver Lake via John Muir Trail
• TRIP 60 Dana Meadows to Mono Pass
• TRIP 61 Dana Meadows to Silver Lake via Parker Pass
• TRIP 62 Mount Dana
• TRIP 63 Glacier Canyon and Dana Plateau

CHAPTER 7

• TRIP 64 Valley Loop Trail: Bridalveil Fall, El Capitan, and Pohono Bridge Loop
• TRIP 65 Valley Loop Trail: Leidig Meadow and Swinging Bridge Loop
• TRIP 66 Valley Loop Trail: Lower Yosemite Fall Loop
• TRIP 67 Valley Loop Trail: Cooks Meadow and Ahwahnee Meadow Loop
• TRIP 68 Valley Loop Trail: Curry Village and Happy Isles Loop
• TRIP 69 Valley Loop Trail: Mirror Lake and Tenaya Creek Loop
• TRIP 70 Upper Yosemite Fall and Eagle Peak
• TRIP 71 North Valley Rim: Upper Yosemite Fall and North Dome
• TRIP 72 Wawona Tunnel to Stanford, Crocker, and Dewey Points

CHAPTER 8

• TRIP 73 McGurk Meadow and Dewey Point
• TRIP 74 Taft Point and the Fissures
• TRIP 75 Sentinel Dome
• TRIP 76 Pohono Trail from Glacier Point to Wawona Tunnel
• TRIP 77 Four Mile Trail from Glacier Point to Yosemite Valley
• TRIP 78 Panorama Trail from Glacier Point to Yosemite Valley
• TRIP 79 Happy Isles to Vernal Fall Bridge, Vernal Fall, and Nevada Fall
• TRIP 80 Little Yosemite Valley and Half Dome
• TRIP 81 Happy Isles to Merced Lake

CHAPTER 9

• TRIP 82 Bishop Creek via Alder Creek Trail
• TRIP 83 Ostrander Lake
• TRIP 84 Turner Meadow–Royal Arch Lake–Buena Vista Trail Loop
• TRIP 85 Clark Range Circuit from Glacier Point
• TRIP 86 Alder Creek–Bridalveil Creek Campground–Chilnualna Falls Loop
• TRIP 87 North Wawona to Chilnualna Fall
• TRIP 88 Royal Arch Lake–Buena Vista Lake–Chilnualna Lakes Semiloop
• TRIP 89 Mariposa Grove of Big Trees
• TRIP 90 Wawona Meadow Loop

CHAPTER 10

• TRIP 91 Royal Arch Lake via Chiquito Pass
• TRIP 92 Chain Lakes from Quartz Mountain Trailhead
• TRIP 93 Vanderburgh–Lillian Lakes Loop
• TRIP 94 Cora and Joe Crane Lakes via Isberg Trail
• TRIP 95 Sadler Lake–Post Peak Pass Loop
• TRIP 96 Isberg–Red Peak–Post Peak Passes Loop

Campgrounds and RV Parks

Hotels, Lodges, Motels and Resorts

Recommended Reading