Yosemite National Park 2017 Devastation at Tuolumne Meadows

My family history in the Eastern Sierra and Yosemite dates back almost eighty years. In 1938, while on a hiatus from living in prewar Los Angeles, my fraternal grandmother, Dorothy met her second husband John A. McCollum there. At that time, he was helping construct U.S. Highway 395 near Bridgeport, California. They fell in love, were married and for the next fifty years returned to fish for trout in Gardisky Lake and Saddlebag Lake near the Tioga Road. In 1944, my mother, Phyllis married my father, Loron N. McGillis. For their honeymoon, in December of that year, they chose Yosemite Valley.

In 1959, I got my first taste of Yosemite National Park and nearby Mono County. For several nights, our family of five camped in Yosemite Valley. When we naively set out one morning to climb the Yosemite Falls Trail, we took no water or food. By the time we reached the base of the main falls, we were hot, tired and dehydrated. When my father wisely made the decision to turn back, at infamous Columbia Rock, I refused to move. The lure of the giant waterfall was too strong for me to admit defeat and return to our campsite.

At night, bears would roam the campgrounds, silently looking for food. On our final morning in Yosemite Valley, a neighboring camper showed me where a bear had licked the side window of his old truck. There had been a melon sitting on the front seat, but bears and people were more naïve in those days. Instead of smashing the window and taking the melon, the California Black Bear walked around our sleeping bags and headed back to his or her domain.

When we left Yosemite Valley, we drove up Highway 120, heading for Tioga Pass and the town of Lee Vining, California on the far side. Although it was late June, there was still snow in the high country. Two years later, in 1961, construction crews completed the modern version of the Tioga Road, all the way to the eastern entrance of Yosemite Park, at the top of Tioga Pass.

Because the construction season was so short and there was no alternate route, traffic stopped for up to one hour at a time. Traffic would alternate at the construction sites and then everything would close down for an hour or more blasting and grading around Tanaya Lake. As a ten year old, the experience seemed to last forever. Even after the arduous trip over the Tioga Road of old, we motored on. In late afternoon, we arrived in the City of Bishop, California. There, we spent the night at a motel with a swimming pool. To me, it seemed the height of luxury.

From Bishop to our home in Burbank, California was about a three hundred mile trip, featuring desert heat and Sierra Nevada views much of the way. In the late 1950s, most of U.S. Highway 395 was a two-lane road, with only occasional passing lanes or other safe places to pass slower vehicles. To this day, one treacherous stretch of road between Olancha and Cartago remains as it was back in the day. With completion of a four-lane bypass scheduled for 2022, I guarantee every day, some fool will pull out to pass, even though there are twenty vehicles ahead of him.

Since my first visit to Yosemite National Park, it has held a place in my heart, as it did for my parents and grandparents before me. Over the decades, I would often visit Yosemite, driving north on U.S. Highway 99 to Fresno and then northeast on Highway 41. Once inside the national park, the highway becomes the Wawona Road. From Los Angeles to Yosemite Valley was a three hundred mile trip, with lots of San Joaquin Valley heat to endure. From Yosemite Valley to Tuolumne Meadows was only sixty miles, but that took another two hours via the Tioga Road. In recent years, I realized it was eight miles shorter to drive from Los Angeles to Tuolumne Meadows via Highway 395 and then over Tioga Pass. In addition, once you leave Bishop, heading north, you ascend almost immediately into the high country, with its cooler temperatures and scenic views.

After a decade of drought in California, the winter of 2016-2017 brought record-setting snowfall in the Sierra Nevada. With a cool springtime and a late start to summer heat, many Sierra trails and secondary roads remained blocked well into July. After seeing a complete lack of snow atop Mammoth Mountain in August 2016, I wanted to see the Sierra snowpack that remained this summer. In order to avoid July 4th weekend crowds, I planned my trip to end on July 1, 2017.

When I left Los Angeles on June 28, my initial destination was the Mammoth Mountain RV Park. I planned to road test my New Titan XD truck, towing our travel trailer to that location. From there I could venture to Lee Vining and then over the Tioga Road to Tuolumne Meadows. Over the winter, the meadows had received up to thirty feet of snowpack. In Mammoth Lakes, at an elevation of 7,500 feet, there was no trace of snow. At an elevation of 8966 feet, nearby Lake Mary was still frozen. As is often the case in July, the days were warm and the nights were cool.

After arriving at Mammoth Lakes, I remembered that it takes almost a week to acclimate to the altitude. On Thursday morning, I slept late and did not venture away from my campsite until late afternoon. Wanting to test my four-wheel drive system, I drove my new truck to Obsidian Dome, just fifteen miles away. One of five volcanic craters in the Mono-Inyo Craters group, I knew that the Obsidian Dome forest trail was challenging but not too daunting for such a big truck.

Looking more like a huge pile of volcanic rocks than a crater, I decided not to hike to the top of the dome. Instead, I drove to a turnout in the woods and enjoyed the solitude of the place. Soon, two other vehicles pulled up to my secluded spot and idled for several minutes before moving on. One might think my spot was the only place to stop in the Eastern Sierra. After the interlopers departed, I noticed that there was still snow a few hundred feet above my location.

Upon returning to the RV Park, I confirmed that the Tioga Road had indeed opened to traffic on that very day. The next morning, I started out for the historic town of Lee Vining and then up the Tioga Road to Yosemite National Park. While talking on my mobile telephone, I became distracted and missed the Tioga Road turnoff. That was a lucky break, because a trip through Lee Vining on Highway 395 is always a treat. Just north of the town, there are spectacular views of ancient Mono Lake, so I stopped to take pictures.

In all my years of visiting Mono County, I had not seen the lake level so high. This summer, there was more water available to the City of Los Angeles than it could divert. As a result, Lee Vining Creek and other streams in the Mono Lake watershed appeared to disgorge directly into the lake.

After researching historic water levels at Mono Lake, I determined that the July 7, 2017 elevation of 6380.4 ft. was up 2.1 ft. from the same date the previous year. Even at that, the lake level was forty-seven feet lower than it was in 1919. Today, the City of Los Angeles and the Mono Lake Committee have an agreement regarding diversion and partial refilling of Mono Lake. With its gently sloping shores and shallow depth, even a small rise in water level covers a vast expanse of the original lake-bed.

After gazing at Mono Lake, I realized that I had driven right past the Tioga Road Junction. Soon, I turned around and headed back toward Highway 120, also known as the Tioga Road. When I stopped at the service station just off Highway 395, I could see that it was busy. Inside the store and deli, several hundred people milled around and blocked every aisle. Luckily, I had brought my own snacks and did not need to wait in line for food.

Back on the Tioga Road, I used the torque of the Titan XD’s turbo-diesel engine to glide up the steep grade. I was passing slower vehicles and appeared hell-bent to get to the high country. Then, I saw the first of two large lakes visible from the highway. It was full to the brim and the spillway was open. I stopped to see a cascade of water plunging down the rocky slope into Lee Vining Creek. At each subsequent stop, I positioned the truck off-road, so I could and take pictures through the open side window. On the return trip, I would photograph points of interest on the other side of the road. One place I stopped, the Tioga Pass Resort, founded in 1914 was flooded and partially destroyed. That was my first taste of infrastructure destruction in the area. Later, I learned that the resort would not open for the season in 2017.

By the time I reached Tuolumne Meadows, I realized that I had missed the sign for the Tuolumne Meadows Lodge, which is located in the woods, to the east of the actual meadows. Strange… I thought. Did they cover or remove the signage? Before long, I arrived at the Tuolumne Meadows Store. I should say… what was left of the store. In the late fall, the store is stripped of its canvas roof. As winter snows fall, they drift and accumulate inside the skeleton of the wooden structure.

This year, over thirty feet of snow accumulated on the concrete floor of the store. We perceive that snow melts vertically, disappearing into the earth without a trace. The reality is that deep, wet Sierra Nevada snow-pack behaves like a slow-motion glacier. As the snow-pack accumulated in the store, it could not melt through the concrete floor, so it pushed sideways, contorted by both wind and gravity. The result was about ten-years of weathering in only one season. The ends of rafters snapped under the load. Anything left standing looked decrepit and derelict.

Compared to the summer drought of 2016, this year Tuolumne Meadows looked green and lush. There was no remaining snow in the upper meadow, but high water flowed down the Tuolumne River. When I headed west another mile along the Tioga Road, I came to the lower meadow that gives the place its plural name. There, the river had backed up at the entrance of a small canyon, creating a seasonal lake. A later check of Google Maps showed no lake in that location, only a wide spot in the river.

Traveling back to the east, toward Tioga Pass, I turned right on to the Tuolumne Meadows Lodge Road. At a fork in that road, temporary barriers blocked blocked vehicle access. Parking in the adjacent parking lot, I began a short hike up the closed road. My goal was the Tuolumne Meadows Lodge, with its famed tent-cabins, dining hall and general store. With no one else in sight, my hike alternated between hot sun and gentle shade from the pine and fir trees. When I arrived at the lodge parking lot, I saw the first signs of destruction.

During the spring melt, the Dana Fork of the Tuolumne River had breached its natural banks and an errant stream had cut through grounds of the lodge. Below, mud, rocks and gravel lay fanned out across the parking lot. Closer to the wood-framed lodge, the new stream had cut a v-shaped channel in the pathway. Although a dozen of the tent cabins had their canvas tops and sides installed, there was no sign of any additional work or work parties.

On August 25, 2016, I had visited the Tuolumne Meadows Lodge. By chance, it was the centennial of the U.S. National Parks Service. On that date, the lodge was bustling with activity. Some people sat in the shade, reading, while others had lunch in the dining hall. Hikers and visitors crowded the little store, buying backcountry supplies. Unless one had a prior reservation, no lodging was available. After ten years of drought and insignificant snowfall, the lodge had opened early in 2016.

On the Friday before the July 4th weekend of 2017, the scene was quite different. No other humans were in sight. Almost nothing of the old wooden lodge had received attention. The white-painted structure looked like the bleached bones of a beached whale. The shed roof in front was broken and falling down. Many of the hand-made trusses that supported the dining hall roof were broken. One dangled over the concrete floor, hanging by a length of old electrical conduit. No one had yet taken a broom to the floor, let alone repaired any of the extensive damage. It appeared that the many layers of flaking white paint were all that held the structure together.

Out back, I had the cascading falls of the Tuolumne River’s Dana Fork all to myself. I could see where the river had jumped its banks and toppled an enormous old tree. Steel lunch tables, where campers had sat reading the previous year lay crumpled and broken by the weight of the winter snow-pack.

With no one working and the road so recently opened, repair of both the Tuolumne Meadows Store and Lodge appeared to be an overwhelming task. With California experiencing the lowest unemployment figures in a decade, I wondered who would endure the hardship of living in a tent cabin in order to rebuild derelict buildings that might not be repairable. With meager federal government funding for the National Park Service, where would the money come from to repair structures that my parents had first visited seventy-five years ago?

At the old Tuolumne Meadows Service Station, I noted that there were no gas pumps. Where once had been a concrete pad and a service island was a large patch of gravel. Nearby, I photographed an old roadside sign. For motorists heading west to Yosemite Valley, it read, “No Services Next 39 Miles”. The irony was that there were no motorist services for the seventy-five mile stretch between Lee Vining and Yosemite Valley. As I departed Yosemite National Park, I realized that high country visitors would find no food, fuel, campsites, wilderness permits or lodging any time soon. As with everything else in Yosemite and Mono County this year, unprepared travelers could be in for a rude shock and a very long wait.

Email James McGillis

By James McGillis at 05:32 PM | Travel | Comments (0) | Link

 

Each Spring, I Hear The Call - And Then It's Moab Time

In May 2014, I departed Mesquite, Nevada, heading for Moab, Utah, 375 miles to the northeast. Normally, it is an easy trip north on Interstate I-15 and then East on I-70. At Crescent Junction, I would hit U.S. 191, and then head south toward Moab. According to Google Maps, the highway trip should take five hours and thirty minutes. Since I was pulling our Springdale travel trailer, I added two hours to the estimate.

Near its start at Cove Fort, Utah, I-70 traverses parts of both the Fish Lake National Forest and the Manti La Sal National Forest. Along that route, the mountain passes exceed 7,250 feet elevation. After transiting through both national forests, I-70 presents itself as a slow-motion roller coaster ride. The culmination is a twisting descent down the east side of the San Rafael Swell.

Combined, my Nissan Titan truck and its trailer weigh 11,000 pounds. With a twenty percent horsepower-loss at 7,250 feet, the 5.6 liter V-8 in my pickup was averaging just over six miles per gallon. The only way to go faster was to downshift into second gear while ascending. At that throttle setting, the engine runs at over 5,000 RPM, increasing both gasoline consumption and engine wear.

The only sensible solution was to slow down and not push my rig so hard. In doing so, I finessed the gears, rather than the power to keep my average speed above fifty-five miles per hour. Another consideration was the hundred-mile distance to the next service station, in Green River, Utah. In case of emergency, I carry several gallons of gasoline in an approved container. I rarely have to use my reserve fuel, but it offers peace of mind when I visit remote locations.

Once I reached Crescent Junction, I had only thirty-three miles to go on U.S. Highway 191 South. In Moab, my final destination was the Moab Rim Campark, at the south end of town. Before I reached Moab, I had a brief side trip to take. On a railroad siding near the turnoff to Utah Highway 313, I hoped to locate an old friend. Like an old-time prospector’s affection for his burro, I had become fond of the Moab Burro.

Although it is not an animal, the Moab Burro is a fascinating example of twentieth century railroad construction equipment. Built by the Cullen Friestadt Company, the Moab Burro is a self-propelled railroad crane capable of pulling other rail cars, lifting 12,500 pounds and swiveling on its turret 360 degrees. On my previous visit, the Moab Burro lay idle and alone on a railroad siding of the Union Pacific Railroad Potash Branch Line. In fact, the crane and its flatcar-tender had been on that siding for so long, Google Maps had snapped its picture from space.

That day, I was not so lucky. As I approached Seven Mile, I could see that both the Potash Branch Line and its siding lay deserted. Since the Moab Burro is a functioning piece of railroad maintenance-of-way equipment, Union Pacific Burro Crane No. BC-47 was probably elsewhere in the High Southwest. My hope of photographing Plush Kokopelli and Coney the Traffic Cone with the Moab Burro were dashed. Instead, I had to settle for pictures of my unlikely superheroes sitting on the empty track at Seven Mile.

If any reader spots the Moab Burro elsewhere on the Union Pacific network, please take a photo and send it to me via email. If received here, I will then post any newly found images of Union Pacific BC-47, also known as the Moab Burro.

After leaving Seven Mile, I headed straight for Moab. While crossing the Colorado River, I noted that it was flowing higher than it had in the past few years. If the increased flow originated in a heavy snow pack on the Western Slope of the Colorado Rockies, that could be a good sign for Colorado River health. If the flow came from a rapid snowmelt upstream, it might be just a “flash in the pan”, soon to subside. As it turned out, 2014 would be a good water flow year in the Upper Colorado River Basin.

According to the USGS interactive website, on May 15, 2014, the Colorado River was flowing at about 10,000 cubic feet per minute (CFM) at Moab. By June 3, the river peaked at about 37,500 CFM, which was more than twice the sixty-three year average. Downstream, Lake Powell reached its 2014 low of 3574' elevation around April 15. By July 10, 2014, the lake was peaking at 3,609' elevation. That rise of thirty-five feet put the lake level ten feet higher than on the same date in 2013.

A six foot rise might not sound like much, but with Lake Powell's immense surface area, that represents almost an eight percent gain in water volume. As of July 10, 2014, the Lake Powell watershed had mixed statistics. The snow-pack was at forty-seven percent of normal and the total precipitation was at ninety-six percent of normal. A vigorous Monsoon in early July had added greatly to the total precipitation. Still, the lower mass of the snow-pack suggested lower flows for the remainder of the year. 

Soon after passing over the Colorado River, I saw a rare sight in Moab. As I waited at the Highway 128 stoplight, four identical 1960’s Shelby Cobra 289 sports cars pulled on to U.S. 191. From my vantage point, I could not see if the Cobras were original or if they were among the ubiquitous replicas manufactured over the past forty years. After snapping a picture of each Cobra, I followed them toward Moab. Soon, they pulled off for an early dinner at the venerable Sunset Grill. I wondered how the stiff suspension of each Cobra would fare on the long, washboard driveway that leads up to the restaurant.

Soon, I arrived at the Moab Rim Campark, where I stay when in Moab. Owners Jim and Sue Farrell always offer old-fashioned Moab hospitality to all who stay there. As I pulled in to the RV Park, I noticed a young couple standing at the rear of their rental RV. Emblazoned across the stern of their RV was a high definition image of Yosemite Valley. With their permission, I took several photos of the couple and the Sierra Nevada scene. As I shot the photos, I zoomed-out to show that they were in Moab, not in Yosemite. To see the full scene, please click on their image.

Reflecting now on that meeting, I remembered that the young woman had looked up toward me and into the sun. She said, “I can’t see, so tell me when to smile”. Later, after examining the photos, I realized that the woman was blind. In my experience, blind people often see more of our universe than many sighted people can. I only wish I could have explained to her the double meaning created by their standing in front of the Sierra Nevada Range and Moab’s La Sal Range, all at the same time.

For years, I have witnessed and studied various dimensional anomalies in and around Moab. To witness a young blind woman standing in two places simultaneously was an event on par with witnessing a plasma flow etched across the morning sky in Moab. Smiling about my good fortune to witness such a sight that day, I realized that as of that moment, I was on Moab Time.

Returning from Yosemite to the Moab of my contemporaneous three-dimensional time-space reality (3DTSR), I looked beyond the young couple to the snowfields of the La Sal Range. Fresh snow, which fell only a day before my May 15 arrival dusted the lower slopes of the great mountain range. The brilliance of white snow against the blue sky was spectacular. Looking at my photos later on, I realized that one shot captured an image of a large bird of prey, frozen in time within that infinite sky.

My first trip to Moab was in the summer of 1965. After leaving there, I assumed that it was a magical place, which I would never see again. Decades later, I read about the Moab Pile and its nuclear threat to life along the Colorado River. Upon returning to Moab in the early 2000’s, all of the magic and many new threats to the environment came to me. With Big Oil, Big Gas, Big Potash and Big Tar Sands all ganging up on Moab and Grand County, the soul of that magical place might easily be lost.

During my current visit, I hoped to join others and sway Moab toward a more positive outcome.

Email James McGillis

 

By James McGillis at 04:59 PM | | Comments (0) | Link