DRUNK ON BEAUTY
Yosemite’s wildflowers and waterfalls don’t disappoint, Suzanne Morphet writes
We climb the stone steps in single file, heads down, looking every bit like pilgrims on a mission. Rounding a corner, we finally see it. A torrent of water plunges over a cliff with such force that it mists the air, polishes the rocks beneath our feet and baptizes us with spray.
Emerging at the top of Vernal Falls in Yosemite National Park, I’m struck first not by the view, but by the visitors. One woman is breaking off bits of a granola bar — in clear violation of signs warning not to feed wild animals — and holds the crumbs just out of reach of a desperate squirrel, which frantically claws at the air with its front paws.
Closer to the falls, several people have climbed over the protective metal fence and are casually walking beside the fast flowing river. I watch in horror as one man poses for a selfie at the very lip of the 1,000-metre falls, both hands on his camera overhead.
This is Yosemite Valley — and it’s not yet summer, when madness truly descends as 7,000 to 8,000 cars dash into the valley every day, fighting for 4,000 parking spots and bringing traffic to a maddening standstill.
I’ve come in early spring, not just to avoid the infamous crowds, but to enjoy wildflowers and the park’s iconic waterfalls at their peak. By summer, the flowers have faded in the valleys and many of the waterfalls have stopped flowing, like taps that have been turned off during a drought.
My friend Jeannette and I head first to the northern part of the park, to a valley so remote “it’s where they send the trouble bears” according to our guide, Bryant Burnette. One of the reasons Hetch Hetchy Valley isn’t overrun with people like Yosemite Valley is because much of it is underwater.
In the 1930s the Tuolumne River was dammed to supply San Francisco with drinking water. John Muir, who was instrumental in the creation of Yosemite National Park, vigorously opposed the O’Shaughnessy Dam project but it went ahead and was completed in 1938.
The massive reservoir extends for almost 13 km along the floor of Hetch Hetchy, creating a lake almost 100 metres deep. Still, the landscape is classic Yosemite. Polished granite walls rise straight up from the valley floor, streaked with black lichen and dripping with water.
Bryant leads us along the abandoned railroad on the north side of the reservoir. “They don’t have a name for that one,” he says, looking up at a waterfall that begins as a single plume, splits in three part way down, then divides again into half a dozen smaller chutes.
“It’ll be gone in a week,” he adds, explaining that Yosemite’s waterfalls depend on the snow pack, as do its flowers.
In late March, the week before we arrived, a storm blew through, covering the mountains with fresh snow. It’s hampered the flowers but it’s good for the waterfalls. On our hike to Wapama Falls, we cross numerous streams and shallow pools, where dozens of newts with bright orange bellies lurk underwater. “They have toxins, and if you touch them, they release them,” Bryant warns. He also points out things we do want to touch including the Jeffrey pine, which smells wonderfully of vanilla, and the California Bay Laurel, which smells like antiseptic and was used by Aboriginal people as a decongestant.
That night we stay in Jamestown, one of California’s gold rush towns on the western border of Yosemite, where people still come to pan for gold. (In 2016 a local prospector found an 18-ounce nugget under a boulder.)
The next day we head south to Yosemite Valley, where the granite monoliths El Capitan and Half Dome have thrilled visitors since the park was created in 1890, and where the modern art of rock climbing was born in the 1950s and 60s.
On a two-hour bus tour of the valley we stop often to see some of the valley ’s most accessible waterfalls. We learn from Maynard — our guide and driver — that Ribbon Fall is the longest single-drop waterfall in North America, and that Horsetail Fall is particularly popular on Valentine’s Day when it reflects the setting sun and appears to be on fire. Across the valley, Bridalveil Fall was named to entice women to Yosemite in the park’s early days with the promise that “if you got kissed in the mist by a mister, you would soon become a missus.”
By the end of our second day, we’ve admired most of the water- falls in Yosemite Valley but wildflowers have eluded us. Our last hope is Hite Cove Trail, which Bryant told us about earlier. It’s on the southern edge of the park, at a much lower elevation than Yosemite Valley.
Before leaving, we pause for one final look at the beautifully chiselled face of El Capitan, gleaming in the afternoon sun, and try again to capture the splendour of Upper Yosemite Falls in full force.
Hite Cove Trail leads to a former gold mine that made prospector John Hite a millionaire in the mid1800s.
We find another kind of gold. The steep hillside is awash in wildflowers. Huge swaths of bright orange California poppies toss their heads in the breeze, fanning yellow Foothill Sunburst and delicate Bird’s Eye Gilia. Far below the trail, the south fork of the Merced River rushes past in a blur of whitewater. The entire scene is beyond beautiful.
Drinking it all in, I’m reminded of something our bus driver told us earlier. He said to watch out for distracted drivers in Yosemite because they’re driving “under the
influence of beauty.” It seemed silly at the time, but now, I think, ‘that’s me.’ Dazzled by the flowers and dizzied by the steepness of the slope, I practically stagger along the trail, drunk on beauty.