Osemit Guide
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25¢ Photo by Tom Slater E E Continued on page 1 by Pete Devine Visiting a Visiting SPRING he last two miles to upper base camp are the hardest. After miles of flat walking up the floor Lyell Canyon, climbing the headwall seems cruel punishment. We’ve got extra heavy packs for our four days of work in the VOLUME XXIX, NO. 1 GUIDE GUIDE alpine zone. The air thins as the trail steepens, creek rushes down toward Tuolumne Meadows, our tired legs need a night’s rest. When we drag into camp and fire up the stoves, we’re satisfied that we’ve already earned our time in Yosemite’s beautiful high country. Thus begin the challenges of seeking to learn more about the Lyell Glacier. T OSEMIT OSEMIT YOUR KEY TO VISITING THE PARK MARCH 14, 2000 – JUNE 19, 2000 Y Y Yosemite Glacier Yosemite Look Inside! Information. 8 & 9 • Planning Your Visit • Planning Your • Important Road Valley Shuttle Valley Bus Map . Back Panel Park Map Park Rules . 2 Bears . 3 Camping . 4 Backpacking & Day Hikes.Valley . 5 Activities . 10 – 12 Facilities & Services . 14 & 15 NewsYosemite . 6 Nature Notes. 7 Plan Valley Yosemite . Center Yosemite, CA 95389 P.O. Box 577 National Park Service of the Interior U.S. Department Shuttle Bus Route N 8 Shuttle Bus Stop Trail to Yosemite Falls Bicycle Path Upper Trail to Yosemite Snow Creek Hiking Trail Fall and Gasoline is not Tuolumne Road designated for bicycles Meadows and shuttle bus available in Campground Lower Yosemite Valley Royal Yosemite Arches Picnic Area Fall Restroom Yosemite U.S. Village Half Court i Dome P Parking Medical Visitor Clinic 4 Yosemite Valley destination areas Center Ansel 4 Museum Adams Gallery Church Map not to scale 6 Post Office Bowl Columbia 5 Rock 7 9 4 3 Mirror Lake 10 3 Village The Yosemite P Store Ahwahnee Lodge 8 11 k P e e Day Use r C Parking ite Camp 4 em Chapel os k (Sunnyside) Y Housekeeping 2 ee Walk-in Cr Camp ya Tena North El Capitan LeConte Lower Swinging 1 Memorial 12 Pines Pines Bridge Lodge 18 Stables 19 17 This map should not Me er M rce Riv 13 e d 1 14 rc be used for hiking. ed P R Curry 15 ive Trail maps are available Village Upper r Sentinel Pines for purchase at visitor Beach Campground 2 Reservation centers and stores Office throughout the park. Yellow Glacier Pine Point Sentinel Dome 16 No rths e ide Driv e Four Mile riv Trail to P e D Glacier hsid Vernal Sout Point Fall Nature d Center Trail to R at Sentinel t n Happy Dome i o Isles P r e i Trail from c Glacier Trail to Vernal a l Point to Vernal & Fall G Vernal & Nevada Footbridge Mist Trail Nevada Falls Falls Seasonal John Muir Trail 1 Curry Village 9 Visitor Center 16 Happy Isles IDE THE REE (Service resumes April 1; R F 2 Rivers 10 Yosemite Village/Day Use Parking Postage and Fees Paid service ends 8:30 p.m.) YOSEMITE VALLEY 3 Yosemite Village/Day Use Parking 11 Sentinel Bridge/ 17 Mirror Lake 4 The Ahwahnee U.S. Department Third Class Mail SHUTTLE BUS Yosemite Chapel Parking (Service resumes April 1; Yosemite Village of the Interior Schedule and routes may vary. 5 service ends 8:30 p.m.) Shuttle buses operate daily at 15 to 20 minute intervals. 12 Housekeeping Camp/ 6 Visitor Center All buses follow the same route, serving stops in numerical order. LeConte Memorial Lodge 18 Stables 7 Yosemite Falls (Service resumes April 1; SCHEDULE: (Service ends at 5:00 p.m. until April 1; 13 Ice Rink/Bike & Raft Rentals service ends 8:30 p.m.) G-83 ends at 8:30 p.m. after April 1) March 14 – 30, 9:00 a.m. - 10:00 p.m. 14 Curry Village 19 Pines Campgrounds March 31 – June 19, 7:00 a.m. - 10:00 p.m. 8 Yosemite Lodge/Camp 4 (Sunnyside) Walk-in Campground 15 Upper Pines Campground YYOSEMITOSEMITEE GUIDEGUIDE YOUR KEY TO VISITING THE PARK SPRING MARCH 14, 2000 – JUNE 19, 2000 VOLUME XXIX, NO. 1 Visiting a Yosemite Glacier Continued from front cover Far upstream from Yosemite Valley The next two full days stands the park’s highest summit, Mt. that we were in the alpine Lyell. On the north slope of this 4,000- zone, we scrambled like TO LEARN MORE… meter mountain is Yosemite’s largest bighorns, searching for glacier, the Lyell Glacier. The major ice faded paint and old brass Visit the glaciation of rivers that are credited with affecting caps that marked permanent Yosemite Valley exhibit at some of Yosemite’s main landscape fea- survey points. At one point the Valley Visitor Center. tures had all melted away by perhaps in the search, I inspected Attend one of several ranger 10,000 years ago, when the earth warmed one particular spot, scan- walks on Yosemite’s geology up just a few degrees. The Lyell Glacier is ning carefully, yet saw (see pages 10 and 11). a small remnant from a cool period called nothing. It was a testament the Little Ice Age, which lasted roughly to the experienced sharp eye Read about glaciers. Some A.D. 1350-1850. It is composed of com- of ranger Mark Fincher that books available at the Valley pressed snow layers that represent he—not five minutes later— Visitor Center include: The hundreds and hundreds of Yosemite win- spotted the faint circle of Geologic Story of Yosemite ters, from a time before Columbus landed orange paint marking Photo National Park by N. King in the Caribbean. Station II. The old paint had Huber, and Domes Cliffs and been fading for nearly 50 Waterfalls by William R. Jones WHAT IS A GLACIER? years, until it virtually Read “Nature Notes” on By definition, a glacier is ice that matched the orange lichen page 7. moves. Such ice, whether in polar lati- on the rock. tudes or high altitudes, is derived from Off-trail travel was rough snowflakes that accumulate fast enough going, over talus, till, and to outpace their melting rate over many glacially polished bedrock. rate from 1960 to 1999, to see if it may years. Once such a snowfield becomes The sun was strong, the air have changed. We also know that the deep enough, it starts to ooze, either was thin, and the slopes Lyell Glacier is still alive; at the top of the horizontally in the case of the polar ice were steep, but what magnif- ice sheet, a long crack called a bergshrund sheets, or down montane valleys in the Knee-deep in suncups. Photo by Tom Slater icent landscape. Oddly separates the ice body from the summit case of the alpine glaciers. The Lyell Glac- enough, we couldn’t see the headwall, indicating downslope move- ier is no more than half a kilometer long CHALLENGES OF THE SURVEY Lyell Glacier—it was covered in snow! ment. This crack showed fresh activity in and, in two adjacent lobes, is about a Last August, a group of interested sci- The El Niño winter of 1997/98 dropped unmelted snow while we were up there. kilometer in width. This rather humble ence teachers spent a few days on the twice the normal snowfall, and the winter The glacier yet moves! field of ice is one of the most studied Lyell Glacier starting to revive the data of 1998/99 added 125% of average on top All of us were pleased just to be up glaciers in the Sierra, with photographic gathering process. It is a long hike from of that. The there, exploring in Yosemite’s high- records of its size going back to John Tuolumne Meadows to the upper Lyell actual ice of est corner, studying something that Muir’s day. In fact, in 1872, Muir himself base camp, but the beauty of the land- the glacier was links us to Muir and Matthes, to the measured the rate of ice flow in the near- scape and our determination to see what buried under the Little Ice Age and to the Pleistocene. by Maclure Glacier. we could learn about Yosemite’s glaciers remaining snow Whether the globe warms enough to In 1930, the National Park Service and made it worth it. Lyell Canyon is one from these two melt all the Sierra’s glaciers, or if Ice François Matthes of the U.S. Geological of the park’s lesser known delights: miles heavy winters. Age conditions should return again, Survey initiated an annual measurement and miles of subalpine meadow, a mean- The snow sur- it’s interesting to know that series and photographic survey on the dering crystal river, wetlands, and face was not Yosemite has one of the planet’s Lyell and several other Yosemite area avalanche chutes filling a broad U-shaped smooth, but long-term thermometers tucked glaciers. For three decades the Lyell Glaci- valley. We camped near one of the last choppy with away in its highest country. er was photographed from standard stream crossings, where Indian people suncups a meter reference points, and the position of the had once camped before us. Our group or more deep, Pete Devine is the Education ice front and ice surface were measured. included a National Park Service wilder- making travel Director of Yosemite Institute, a ness ranger, and three dedicated science atop the glacier When these measurements were gradually Survey crew residential field science program discontinued in the 1960s and 1970s, a teachers who bring their students to slow and tricky.