Spring 2008 - Yosemite Conservancy

BY KRISTINA RYLANDS
FOLLOWING YOSEMITE’S WILD
AND SCENIC RIVERS
Quick: Think of a Yosemite icon. Do you have one
in mind Did you pick Yosemite Falls Maybe
Half Dome or El Capitan Those are some obvious
choices. But Yosemite National Park is home to two
icons that are equally central to the park’s identity. Before
there was a Half Dome or a Cathedral Peak, for the millennia
when those iconic features were deep beneath a
primordial sea floor, there was the river.
Actually, rivers. Yosemite is home to two wild and
scenic rivers, each with headwaters surrounded by federally
protected wilderness. The park’s northern watershed
drains into the Tuolumne, designated by Congress as a
wild and scenic river in 1984. The Merced was designated
in 1987 and contains the park’s southern watershed. Both
of these tremendous waterways bisect Yosemite National
Park over some 140 miles from the Sierra crest to the
Sierra foothills.
THE TUOLUMNE
As seen from Tuolumne Meadows, the Tuolumne appears
a peaceful sleeper of a river, meandering quietly through
its meadow channel or sweeping in shallows over the
granite river bottom. It spills forth from two mighty
forks—the Dana and the Lyell.
Between the shoulders of Mount Dana and Mount
Gibbs, the Dana Fork emerges into Dana Meadows
almost imperceptibly. It then careens along the Tioga
Road, heralding the arrival to Tuolumne Meadows. The
Lyell Fork of the Tuolumne is superlative in every way.
It originates on Mount Lyell, Yosemite’s highest peak at
13,114 feet in elevation. The mountain contains one of
the Sierra’s last remaining glaciers, the Lyell Glacier. Here,
the Lyell Fork starts as a trickle that can be straddled in
places, flows into glacial pools and over granite benches
and finally slows to a near crawl in Lyell Canyon as the
river meanders through meadow bends punctuated by
chutes and riffles.
The forks meet in Tuolumne Meadows for a last
gentle pass before plunging over a series of stair-step
cascades to Glen Aulin and on to the Grand Canyon of
the Tuolumne River and the Muir Gorge. From lush Pate
Valley, the Tuolumne continues for trail-free miles to
the mouth of Hetch Hetchy. Here, the congressionally
designated portion of river corridor is interrupted,
exempt from wild and scenic river status due to the
impoundment created by O’Shaughnessy Dam. However,
the wild and scenic river continues below the dam and
through the Poopenaut Valley and slot canyons that few
It takes an interdisciplinary team to create a long-term plan for managing a wild and scenic river. Here members of Yosemite’s Tuolumne
planning team explore the river just above Glen Aulin.
KRISTINA RYLANDS
YOSEMITE ASSOCIATION, SPRING 2008
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