Hetch Hetchy Valley

Hetch Hetchy Valley below the dam

O'Shaughnessy Dam

Water flowing from the dam

Hetch Hetchy Reservoir (more than 300 feet deep)

Digger pine cone (Pinus sabiniana)

South rim of the valley above the dam. Photos taken in April 2018

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Our last day in Yosemite National Park was April 12, 2018. After walking in Tuolumne Grove, we took a lovely drive to Hetch Hetchy Valley.  It was beautiful. We couldn’t walk in the valley, because it is filled with a reservoir that provides the San Francisco Bay Area with water. But we could see it from above & from the top of the impressive dam. The Hetch Hetchy Road runs down to the dam, near the western edge of park.  The reservoir fills the valley to the east for 8 miles.

The valley was even more beautiful before the dam was built. The bottom of the valley had 1,200 acres of meadows surrounded by a forest of pine, oak & Douglas fir. The Tuolumne River & many streams flowed through the valley, while stands of alder, willow & dogwood grew among them. More than 300 feet of the valley walls had not yet been covered by water.

Work on the Hetch Hetchy Project began in 1914 when the Hetch Hetchy Railroad (68 miles long) was built to bring construction materials to the dam site. It was dismantled in 1949. Construction of O'Shaughnessy Dam began in 1919 & ended in 1923. The height of the dam was increased from 227 to 312 feet in 1938. The aqueduct system brought water to San Francisco in 1934 after flowing 167 miles from Hetch Hetchy Valley.

San Francisco was granted water rights to Hetch Hetchy Valley by the United States Department of the Interior in 1908.  The Sierra Club (led by John Muir) began a campaign to stop the project.  National opinion was divided between damming & preserving Hetch Hetchy Valley. Conservationists felt the environment should be used in a "conscientious manner" to benefit society.  Preservationists believed that nature should be preserved & protected. San Francisco argued that the reservoir was vital to the city. John Muir asked Congress to protect Hetch Hetchy Valley from destruction. Hundreds of individuals & organizations sent petitions to Congress. It was the beginning of the American environmentalist movement.

Because the valley was in Yosemite National Park, an act of Congress was required. The Raker Act was passed in 1913 & signed by President Woodrow Wilson. It permitted the flooding of the valley, but stipulated that power & water could only be used for public interests.

In 1921, Principal Jessie Lockwood was asked to select a new name for the York School that had opened in 1910 in the Mt Baker neighborhood of Seattle. She chose John Muir. Part of her motivation for selecting Muir was the hope that students would develop a love of nature & a desire to conserve natural beauty.  Ironically, I attended that school for 7 years, but learned nothing about John Muir or environmentalism during that time.

Tuolumne Grove Yosemite National Park

Photos taken in April 2018

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On 4/12/18, we drove to Tuolumne Grove at an elevation of 6,000 feet. It was cold, but not quite freezing & covered with a thin layer of snow. The forest was magnificent. The giant sequoias (Sequoiadendron giganteum) were huge & amazing. I’d never seen a tree anywhere near that large before. Even coast redwoods (Sequoia sempervirens) aren’t that big. The pines were also much larger than any pine I’d ever seen. It was truly an ancient forest. We walked on a trail that was partly covered with snow. The distance was about 2.5 miles round trip. Tuolumne Grove is one of  3 giant sequoia groves in Yosemite National Park. It contains more than 20 mature giant sequoia trees in the midst of a lush coniferous forest also including pine, fir & dogwood.

Giant sequoia are the most massive trees in the world.  Some have grown to 300 feet with diameters of 56 feet near the base. A range of 160 to 270 feet in height with trunk diameters of 20 to 26 feet is more common. The oldest tree is more than 3,000 years old. They can produce as many as 11,000 cones & disperse more than 300,000 seeds annually.  Giant sequoias grow in the western Sierra Nevada. They are scattered among 68 groves that cover less than 36,000 acres.  They grow at elevations averaging 5,600 feet in the north & 6,300 in the south of their range, mostly on southern slopes in the north & northern slopes in the south.

Giant sequoia were discovered by Europeans in 1833. Logging began in the 1850's & removed a third of the big trees. A preservation effort started in 1864 & increased in 1890 with creation of  Yosemite National Park & Sequoia National Park.  Giant sequoia can be found in Seattle parks & gardens.  They are easy to grow, but require a lot of space.

Yosemite Valley

El Capitan

Half Dome

Mirror Lake

Half Dome

Merced River

Photos taken in April 2018

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After spending the night in Modesto, we drove to Yosemite National Park. The foothills of the Sierra Nevada were beautiful. We stopped along a rural road just inside Mariposa County to take photos. We stopped again in the small town of Mariposa to buy groceries, some of which we ate for lunch. The drive along the mountain roads was lovely with many manzanitas & redbuds in bloom.

Yosemite Valley was disappointing. It was smaller than we expected by half: the valley half as wide, the mountains half as tall. It was less impressive than many other mountain valleys we had seen in the Cascades & Rockies. I kept thinking of the very tall & impressive Teton Mountains in Wyoming. It was the first time we had seen the Sierra Nevada, where the mountains are taller than the Cascades. We usually see the Cascades from a much lower elevation. The elevation of Yosemite Valley is 4,000 feet/1,200 meters. It makes sense that the mountains wouldn’t be very much higher than that.

It’s a fairly narrow valley. There are lots of trees that obscure views of the mountains. And there have been many forest fires in Yosemite National Park & the surrounding national forests. The dead & blackened trees were disturbing. The ground was trampled by millions of tourists. Yosemite is the most visited national park in the US. The area around the Majestic Yosemite Hotel (formerly the Ahwahnee Hotel) built in 1927, was like a small city. The ground was covered with cabins, tent cabins, employee apartments, stores, roads & parking lots. It did not feel close to nature.

Our friend was irritated by our attitude. I tried to joke when I pulled out my camera & said, "I'll just have to work with what we’ve got here." Although she laughed, that irritated her even more. She has an annual pass & comes to Yosemite several times a year. It takes 2.5 hours to drive from Modesto. She suggested we walk on the trail to Mirror Lake. That was much better. We walked on an asphalt road that had been closed to cars. The forest plants were less damaged by foot traffic. There were beautiful & impressive views across the lake to mountains including the famous Half Dome.