The Upper Tuolumne Excursion

From John Muir's The Yosemite:

We come now to the grandest of all the Yosemite excursions, one that
requires at least two or three weeks. The best time to make it is from
about the middle of July. The visitor entering the Yosemite in July has
the advantage of seeing the falls not, perhaps, in their very flood
prime but next thing to it; while the glacier-meadows will be in their
glory and the snow on the mountains will be firm enough to make climbing
safe. Long ago I made these Sierra trips, carrying only a sackful of
bread with a little tea and sugar and was thus independent and free, but
now that trails or carriage roads lead out of the Valley in almost every
direction it is easy to take a pack animal, so that the luxury of a
blanket and a supply of food can easily be had.


The best way to leave the Valley will be by the Yosemite Fall trail,
camping the first night on the Tioga road opposite the east end of the
Hoffman Range. Next morning climb Mount Hoffman; thence push on past
Tenaya Lake into the Tuolumne Meadows and establish a central camp
near the Soda Springs, from which glorious excursions can be made at
your leisure. For here in this upper Tuolumne Valley is the widest,
smoothest, most serenely spacious, and in every way the most delightful
summer pleasure-park in all the High Sierra. And since it is connected
with Yosemite by two good trails, and a fairly good carriage road
that passes between Yosemite and Mount Hoffman, it is also the most
accessible. It is in the heart of the High Sierra east of Yosemite, 8500
to 9000 feet above the level of the sea. The gray, picturesque Cathedral
Range bounds it on the south; a similar range or spur, the highest peak
of which is Mount Conness, on the north; the noble Mounts Dana, Gibbs,
Mammoth, Lyell, McClure and others on the axis of the Range on the east;
a heaving, billowing crowd of glacier-polished rocks and Mount Hoffman
on the west. Down through the open sunny meadow-levels of the Valley
flows the Tuolumne River, fresh and cool from its many glacial
fountains, the highest of which are the glaciers that lie on the north
sides of Mount Lyell and Mount McClure.


Along the river a series of beautiful glacier-meadows extend with but
little interruption, from the lower end of the Valley to its head, a
distance of about twelve miles, forming charming sauntering-grounds from
which the glorious mountains may be enjoyed as they look down in divine
serenity over the dark forests that clothe their bases. Narrow strips of
pine woods cross the meadow-carpet from side to side, and it is somewhat
roughened here and there by moraine boulders and dead trees brought down
from the heights by snow avalanches; but for miles and miles it is so
smooth and level that a hundred horsemen may ride abreast over it.


The main lower portion of the meadows is about four miles long and from
a quarter to half a mile wide, but the width of the Valley is, on an
average, about eight miles. Tracing the river, we find that it forks a
mile above the Soda Springs, the main fork turning southward to Mount
Lyell, the other eastward to Mount Dana and Mount Gibbs. Along both
forks strips of meadow extend almost to their heads. The most beautiful
portions of the meadows are spread over lake basins, which have been
filled up by deposits from the river. A few of these river-lakes still
exist, but they are now shallow and are rapidly approaching extinction.
The sod in most places is exceedingly fine and silky and free from weeds
and bushes; while charming flowers abound, especially gentians, dwarf
daisies, potentillas, and the pink bells of dwarf vaccinium. On the
banks of the river and its tributaries cassiope and bryanthus may be
found, where the sod curls over stream banks and around boulders. The
principal grass of these meadows is a delicate calamagrostis with very
slender filiform leaves, and when it is in flower the ground seems to
be covered with a faint purple mist, the stems of the panicles being so
fine that they are almost invisible, and offer no appreciable resistance
in walking through them. Along the edges of the meadows beneath the
pines and throughout the greater part of the Valley tall ribbon-leaved
grasses grow in abundance, chiefly bromus, triticum and agrostis.


In October the nights are frosty, and then the meadows at sunrise, when
every leaf is laden with crystals, are a fine sight. The days are still
warm and calm, and bees and butterflies continue to waver and hum about
the late-blooming flowers until the coming of the snow, usually in
November. Storm then follows storm in quick succession, burying the
meadows to a depth of from ten to twenty feet, while magnificent
avalanches descend through the forests from the laden heights,
depositing huge piles of snow mixed with uprooted trees and boulders. In
the open sunshine the snow usually lasts until the end of June but the
new season's vegetation is not generally in bloom until late in July.
Perhaps the best all round excursion-time after winters of average
snowfall is from the middle of July to the middle or end of August. The
snow is then melted from the woods and southern slopes of the mountains
and the meadows and gardens are in their glory, while the weather is
mostly all-reviving, exhilarating sunshine. The few clouds that rise now
and then and the showers they yield are only enough to keep everything
fresh and fragrant.


The groves about the Soda Springs are favorite camping-grounds on
account of the cold, pleasant-tasting water charged with carbonic acid,
and because of the views of the mountains across the meadow--the Glacier
Monument, Cathedral Peak, Cathedral Spires, Unicorn Peak and a series of
ornamental nameless companions, rising in striking forms and nearness
above a dense forest growing on the left lateral moraine of the ancient
Tuolumne glacier, which, broad, deep, and far-reaching, exerted vast
influence on the scenery of this portion of the Sierra. But there are
fine camping-grounds all along the meadows, and one may move from grove
to grove every day all summer, enjoying new homes and new beauty to
satisfy every roving desire for change.


There are five main capital excursions to be made from here--to the
summits of Mounts Dana, Lyell and Conness, and through the Bloody Cañon
Pass to Mono Lake and the volcanoes, and down the Tuolumne Cañon, at
least as far as the foot of the wonderful series of river cataracts.
All of these excursions are sure to be made memorable with joyful
health-giving experiences; but perhaps none of them will be remembered
with keener delight than the days spent in sauntering on the broad
velvet lawns by the river, sharing the sky with the mountains and trees,
gaining something of their strength and peace.


The excursion to the top of Mount Dana is a very easy one; for though
the mountain is 13,000 feet high, the ascent from the west side is so
gentle and smooth that one may ride a mule to the very summit. Across
many a busy stream, from meadow to meadow, lies your flowery way;
mountains all about you, few of them hidden by irregular foregrounds.
Gradually ascending, other mountains come in sight, peak rising above
peak with their snow and ice in endless variety of grouping and
sculpture. Now your attention is turned to the moraines, sweeping in
beautiful curves from the hollows and cañons, now to the granite waves
and pavements rising here and there above the heathy sod, polished a
thousand years ago and still shining. Towards the base of the mountain
you note the dwarfing of the trees, until at a height of about 11,000
feet you find patches of the tough, white-barked pine, pressed so flat
by the ten or twenty feet of snow piled upon them every winter for
centuries that you may walk over them as if walking on a shaggy rug.
And, if curious about such things, you may discover specimens of this
hardy tree-mountaineer not more than four feet high and about as many
inches in diameter at the ground, that are from two hundred to four
hundred years old, still holding bravely to life, making the most of
their slender summers, shaking their tasseled needles in the breeze
right cheerily, drinking the thin sunshine and maturing their fine
purple cones as if they meant to live forever. The general view from the
summit is one of the most extensive and sublime to be found in all the
Range. To the eastward you gaze far out over the desert plains and
mountains of the "Great Basin," range beyond range extending with soft
outlines, blue and purple in the distance. More than six thousand feet
below you lies Lake Mono, ten miles in diameter from north to south, and
fourteen from west to east, lying bare in the treeless desert like a
disk of burnished metal, though at times it is swept by mountain storm
winds and streaked with foam. To the southward there is a well defined
range of pale-gray extinct volcanoes, and though the highest of them
rises nearly two thousand feet above the lake, you can look down from
here into their circular, cup-like craters, from which a comparatively
short time ago ashes and cinders were showered over the surrounding sage
plains and glacier-laden mountains.


To the westward the landscape is made up of exceedingly strong, gray,
glaciated domes and ridge waves, most of them comparatively low, but
the largest high enough to be called mountains; separated by cañons
and darkened with lines and fields of forest, Cathedral Peak and Mount
Hoffman in the distance; small lakes and innumerable meadows in the
foreground. Northward and southward the great snowy mountains, marshaled
along the axis of the Range, are seen in all their glory, crowded
together in some places like trees in groves, making landscapes of wild,
extravagant, bewildering magnificence, yet calm and silent as the sky.


Some eight glaciers are in sight. One of these is the Dana Glacier on
the north side of the mountain, lying at the foot of a precipice about
a thousand feet high, with a lovely pale-green lake a little below it.
This is one of the many, small, shrunken remnants of the vast glacial
system of the Sierra that once filled the hollows and valleys of
the mountains and covered all the lower ridges below the immediate
summit-fountains, flowing to right and left away from the axis of the
Range, lavishly fed by the snows of the glacial period.


In the excursion to Mount Lyell the immediate base of the mountain is
easily reached on meadow walks along the river. Turning to the southward
above the forks of the river, you enter the narrow Lyell branch of the
Valley, narrow enough and deep enough to be called a cañon. It is about
eight miles long and from 2000 to 3000 feet deep. The flat meadow bottom
is from about three hundred to two hundred yards wide, with gently curved
margins about fifty yards wide from which rise the simple massive walls
of gray granite at an angle of about thirty-three degrees, mostly
timbered with a light growth of pine and streaked in many places with
avalanche channels. Towards the upper end of the cañon the Sierra crown
comes in sight, forming a finely balanced picture framed by the massive
cañon walls. In the foreground, when the grass is in flower, you have
the purple meadow willow-thickets on the river banks; in the middle
distance huge swelling bosses of granite that form the base of the
general mass of the mountain, with fringing lines of dark woods marking
the lower curves, smoothly snow-clad except in the autumn.


If you wish to spend two days on the Lyell trip you will find a good
camp-ground on the east side of the river, about a mile above a fine
cascade that comes down over the cañon wall in telling style and makes
good camp music. From here to the top of the mountains is usually an
easy day's work. At one place near the summit careful climbing is
necessary, but it is not so dangerous or difficult as to deter any one
of ordinary skill, while the views are glorious. To the northward are
Mammoth Mountain, Mounts Gibbs, Dana, Warren, Conness and others,
unnumbered and unnamed; to the southeast the indescribably wild and
jagged range of Mount Ritter and the Minarets; southwestward stretches
the dividing ridge between the north fork of the San Joaquin and the
Merced, uniting with the Obelisk or Merced group of peaks that form the
main fountains of the Illilouette branch of the Merced; and to the
north-westward extends the Cathedral spur. These spurs like distinct
ranges meet at your feet; therefore you look at them mostly in the
direction of their extension, and their peaks seem to be massed and
crowded against one another, while immense amphitheaters, cañons
and subordinate ridges with their wealth of lakes, glaciers, and
snow-fields, maze and cluster between them. In making the ascent in
June or October the glacier is easily crossed, for then its snow mantle
is smooth or mostly melted off. But in midsummer the climbing is
exceedingly tedious because the snow is then weathered into curious
and beautiful blades, sharp and slender, and set on edge in a leaning
position. They lean towards the head of the glacier and extend across
from side to side in regular order in a direction at right angles to the
direction of greatest declivity, the distance between the crests being
about two or three feet, and the depth of the troughs between them about
three feet. A more interesting problem than a walk over a glacier thus
sculptured and adorned is seldom presented to the mountaineer.


The Lyell Glacier is about a mile wide and less than a mile long,
but presents, nevertheless, all the essential characters of large,
river-like glaciers--moraines, earth-bands, blue veins, crevasses,
etc., while the streams that issue from it are, of course, turbid with
rock-mud, showing its grinding action on its bed. And it is all the
more interesting since it is the highest and most enduring remnant of
the great Tuolumne Glacier, whose traces are still distinct fifty miles
away, and whose influence on the landscape was so profound. The McClure
Glacier, once a tributary of the Lyell, is smaller. Thirty-eight years
ago I set a series of stakes in it to determine its rate of motion.
Towards the end of summer in the middle of the glacier it was only a
little over an inch in twenty-four hours.


The trip to Mono from the Soda Springs can be made in a day, but many
days may profitably be spent near the shores of the lake, out on its
islands and about the volcanoes.


In making the trip down the Big Tuolumne Cañon, animals may be led as
far as a small, grassy, forested lake-basin that lies below the crossing
of the Virginia Creek trail. And from this point any one accustomed to
walking on earthquake boulders, carpeted with cañon chaparral, can
easily go down as far as the big cascades and return to camp in one day.
Many, however, are not able to do his, and it is better to go leisurely,
prepared to camp anywhere, and enjoy the marvelous grandeur of the
place.


The cañon begins near the lower end of the meadows and extends to the
Hetch Hetchy Valley, a distance of about eighteen miles, though it will
seem much longer to any one who scrambles through it. It is from twelve
hundred to about five thousand feet deep, and is comparatively narrow,
but there are several roomy, park-like openings in it, and throughout
its whole extent Yosemite natures are displayed on a grand scale--domes,
El Capitan rocks, gables, Sentinels, Royal Arches, Glacier Points,
Cathedral Spires, etc. There is even a Half Dome among its wealth of
rock forms, though far less sublime than the Yosemite Half Dome. Its
falls and cascades are innumerable. The sheer falls, except when the
snow is melting in early spring, are quite small in volume as compared
with those of Yosemite and Hetch Hetchy; though in any other country
many of them would be regarded as wonders. But it is the cascades or
sloping falls on the main river that are the crowning glory of the
cañon, and these in volume, extent and variety surpass those of any
other cañon in the Sierra. The most showy and interesting of them are
mostly in the upper part of the cañon, above the point of entrance of
Cathedral Creek and Hoffman Creek. For miles the river is one wild,
exulting, on-rushing mass of snowy purple bloom, spreading over glacial
waves of granite without any definite channel, gliding in magnificent
silver plumes, dashing and foaming through huge boulder-dams, leaping
high into the air in wheel-like whirls, displaying glorious enthusiasm,
tossing from side to side, doubling, glinting, singing in exuberance of
mountain energy.


Every one who is anything of a mountaineer should go on through the
entire length of the cañon, coming out by Hetch Hetchy. There is not
a dull step all the way. With wide variations, it is a Yosemite Valley
from end to end.


Besides these main, far-reaching, much-seeing excursions from the main
central camp, there are numberless, lovely little saunters and scrambles
and a dozen or so not so very little. Among the best of these are to
Lambert and Fair View Domes; to the topmost spires of Cathedral Peak,
and to those of the North Church, around the base of which you pass
on your way to Mount Conness; to one of the very loveliest of the
glacier-meadows imbedded in the pine woods about three miles north of
the Soda Springs, where forty-two years ago I spent six weeks. It trends
east and west, and you can find it easily by going past the base of
Lambert's Dome to Dog Lake and thence up northward through the woods
about a mile or so; to the shining rock-waves full of ice-burnished,
feldspar crystals at the foot of the meadows; to Lake Tenaya; and, last
but not least, a rather long and very hearty scramble down by the end of
the meadow along the Tioga road toward Lake Tenaya to the crossing of
Cathedral Creek, where you turn off and trace the creek down to its
confluence with the Tuolumne. This is a genuine scramble much of the way
but one of the most wonderfully telling in its glacial rock-forms and
inscriptions.


If you stop and fish at every tempting lake and stream you come to, a
whole month, or even two months, will not be too long for this grand
High Sierra excursion. My own Sierra trip was ten years long.