Yosemite – The High Sierras | National Parks Exploration Series HD | Full Movie PA 19
E The Sierra Nevada Mountains sometimes called the highas is one of America’s great mountain ranges a range exclusively located in the state of California the sieras contain the highest point in the Continental 48 states Mount Whitney at 14,495 FT High it is a range whose snowcapped Peaks Supply most of the water for California’s agriculturally Rich Central Valley snowcapped Peaks that also Supply much of the water for California ‘s two great population centers the Los Angeles Basin and the San Francisco Bay Urban Complex however the Sierra Nevada mountain range also contains some of the most amazing wonders found on the planet nowhere else is Nature’s awe inspiring Grandeur more deserving of lavish oh wow mindblowing experiences Yi Valley is one of the most jawdroppingly beautiful places on Earth I mean it’s got the largest exposed face
Of granite in elcapitan it’s got half do it’s the longest waterfall in North America in yuse Fall I mean and you just look around amazed that these things are all in one place I mean I every time I go back I’ve gone since I was a little
Kid probably the first time I went was I was five but every time I’ve gone back since it’s brings me back to that first time I saw these features and just speechless you can’t I mean just the granite just explodes into the sky and uh the waterfalls I mean our
Mindboggling it’s like a Californian Cathedral for lustfield of Bay Area even La consider it their their special place their ashes have to be dropped there but when they die and so on and it’s it’s always surprised me that U so many people in California are in love
With Yus and an almost a excessive way and the rest of the United States doesn’t seem to know it exists except as a word but Yus is an incredibly beautiful um Glacier carved system a couple of big valleys there Hy in yede and those two have uh because the
Granite itself is so recent you know maybe 10 million years old the all the carving that’s been done has been done in EX in an Exquisite medium and uh much like the appeal of Canyon Country in the southwest y systems are just dazzlingly beautiful because they’re so Monumental and clean
It’s very uh unusual type of scenery in the world and then again they create these little lost worlds you go hiking in Yus you’re in a lost world in a world of pines and granite and so on and it’s very appealing when I came to visit yed
National Park I was really at a time in my life where I was looking for change and I thought that my change would be going to Southern California and experiencing the culture and the city on my way as I came through Yus National Park and really saw the Beauty and the
Towering Cliffs and the peacefulness and the smell of the woods I realized that this is where I wanted to be I realized that this power and this draw that I was feeling toward youed was something I couldn’t ignore I found a way to actually come to you somebody to stay
Here and still have that balance and still have that peace I’m a park ranger today because I came here and immediately fell in love with the place and knew that I couldn’t leave this place I may not have understood it at the time but now that I’m here I can’t
Walk away from it and I’m this is where I belong and this is one of the most amazing places on Earth standing below a sequoia or a Grove of sequa gives an immense feeling of uh of smallness and you realize the cares that you might have in the world alth the significant
Pale in comparison to the immense uh giant uh feeling of of just standing below something that that is that big and that immense and uh it’s just quite staggering to to realize um your place in the scheme of things at the base of a giant Aoria the sieras are deeply historic the place where the discovery of gold fueled a nation to Greatness and changed the nature of the American Character they are also home to modern rock climbing this is lumbert Dome and we’re doing a climb called the Northwest books it’s a short 56 because we just got here from the airport so just going to do something fun to warm up tomorrow we’re going to go out into the cathedral range
To Mathis Crest which is like past that Peak you can see in the distance and like six miles in so that should be fun it’s like the bird place of modern climbing so yeah the high sieras also contain many spectacular marble Caves and of course the sieras are the site of four of America’s most spectacular Parks Devil’s postpile National Monument King’s Canyon National Park seoa National Park and of course yane National Park the birthplace of America’s wondrous National Park system this is Yede Mike White calls himself a professional hiker of the sieras and has written the definitive book on the subject joh Mir referred to the Sierra Nevada as the range of light spent a lot of time here coming up into the mountains and getting the mountains Good Tidings and I think that really
Symbolizes what y means to a lot of people as well as to me and that it’s it’s really kind of a spiritual homecoming no one has captured the iconic beauty of yosee Seoa and the greater high sieras in word better than John Muer the father of America’s national park system no Temple made with hands can compare with yede every Rock in its walls seems to Glow with Life awful and Stern immovable Majesty how softly these rocks are adorned and how fine and reassuring the company they keep their feet among beautiful Groves and Meadows their brows in the sky a thousand and flowers leaning confidingly against their feet bathed in floods of water floods of Light of the Sierra’s iconic Meadows he wrote with inexpressible delight you weighed out into the grassy Sun Lake feeling yourself contained on one of Nature’s Most sacred Chambers withdrawn from the Sterner influences of the mountains secure from all intrusion secure from yourself free in the Universal Beauty and not withstanding the scene is so impressively spiritual and you seem dissolved in it yet everything about you is beating with warm terrestrial human love delightfully sub substantial and
Familiar hiking through the Glorious Granite domes of the sieras Mira saw their reverent Beauty as a special prayer for everyone to treasure climb the mountains and get their good tidings Nature’s peace will flow into you as Sunshine flow blows into Trees the winds will blow their own freshness into you and the storms their energy while cares will drop away from you like the leaves of autumn mura held the ancient trees of sequa national park with exceptional esteem God has cared for these trees see sa them from drought disease
Avalanches and a thousand tempests and floods but he cannot save them from Fools but there is also the subtle beauty of Alpine flowers and the Sierra’s glorious Meadows E Water falls dropping thousands of feet from The High Country to The Valleys below create ate their own unique beauty a powerful ferocious Beauty The Unstoppable fierceness of the waterfalls leads to the more subtle strength of turbulent Rivers But there is a piece that also comes from contemplating the vast scale and sheer power of the sieras a scale and power built on its unique Geology the long and narrow Sierra Nevada mountain range extends over 400 miles and is only 40 to 80 M wide many of its magnificent Peaks exceed 12,000 ft the mountains extend Northwest from Tahachapi pass near Bakersfield California to just south of the volcanic Mountain Lassen Peak the Sierra Nevada’s Eastern Front Rises sharply from the Great Basin while its Western slope descends gradually to the hills bordering the Central Valley of California geographical features that greatly impact visitors experiences depending upon if they approach the sieras from the east or west the west side of the of the Sierra
Which most people there’s the first encounters coming in from uh the San Francisco Bay area or for some of Southern California what they’re going to experience is a gradual incline where you pass from the valley into the Foothills then up into the mid elevation forest and finally when you start to get
To the subalpine range near the crest you get that classic Granite serated Peaks and glacial lakes and that sort of thing when you come in from the east or the backside of the park it’s the rise is much more dramatic because of that fault uplift so the the roads the trails
Whichever way you come in are going to climb much much steeper and it’s going to be much more of a dramatic uh incline as you come up to the Sierra Crest traversing north south through the mountains is a very different story uh the Sierra is fairly uniform uh
In its its style and its motifs from the greater yed area down to SEO and kings can so it’s going to be very much at least in the High Country the granite the glacial lakes the tall forests the serrated Peaks the rushing streams and rivers the sieras were shaped by powerful tectonic
Forces the well-known Granite that makes up the core of the sieras started to form hundreds of millions of years ago at that time where the sieras are today was the edge of the continent here a mountain range of volcanoes and lava flows began to rise up underneath these volcanoes a giant
Mass of magma cooled forming the massive granitic Selena’s PLU eventually these early sieras eroded away and then this granitic block began rising up again around 20 million years ago kry Cobb is a park ranger who has studied what happened next beginning 4 million years ago the current CR Nevada mountain range
It experienced a tilt what we call a Westward tilt as the mountain range tilted it created created these gentle West slopes and these dramatic amazing East ridges so if you go to the east side of this siada mountain range you see these incredible drop offs but if
You go to the west side of the mountain range it’s more of a flow and more of a gentle rolling and that was created by this tilt as the Tilt happened it increased the flow of streams and rivers that come through this area and what that did is over millions of years it
Carved out these deep valleys and these deep Gorges of course here in Yus National Park the major river that flows through Yus Valley is called the mered river over time that mered River just exfoliated away the granite and created deep valleys approximately 2 million to 250,000 years ago this what we’re
Sitting in now Ed Valley began to fill with ice and snow just piling up on top of each other until there were major glaciers in this area we estimate that the glaciers here in US Valley we’re about 4,000 ft deep which is where we get these 3,000 to 4,000 ft Cliffs
Because of that tilt that happened millions of years prior these glaciers were able to move from one end of what is now Yus national park down to the lower elevations through Yus Valley as that happened these glaciers carved out the valley then gives us that U shape
That we see today in addition these Granite Peaks that you see were formed by those glaciers as well of course the most obvious sign of these glaciers coming through is haome as that big Glacier came through it sheared off the face of half doome and gives us that
Iconic sheer face that we see today what’s pretty amazing about these glaciers is they take the granite and the Stone from the surrounding Cliffs and they carry them several miles down the canyon and we actually see rocks several miles down the canyon that are attributed to half on the Eastern side is irrefutable
Evidence of the Sierra’s volcanic origin here is a dome of obsidian black volcanic glass a little further west is another reminder of the Sierra’s volcanic Origins this is sort of a little bit of evidence that in fact there are there are still volcanic events in this area Mammoth Mountain which is just over
These trees here um is a dormant volcano but a volcano nonetheless it’s erupted I think the last time was about 40,000 years ago um there’s still magma beneath our feet even today and this soda spring is Testament to that this water is carbonated it has carbon dioxide in it
Carbon dioxide released from that magma chamber is forced into the spring water that’s coming up here at the surface and so this water tastes just like a well like a Sprite or some kind of soda water but instead of a factory forcing the gases into the water carbonating the
Water the the Earth is doing that the Earth’s pressure is forcing those gases into the water once the water reaches the surface here the surface of the Earth atmospheric pressure is much less than the pressure deep beneath the surface of the Earth and those gases can escape and those are the bubbles that
We’re seeing today the Western sieras are also rich in underground caves and caverns caves that are mostly solution caves dissolved from Marble Limestone that was metamorphed IED into marble by the tremendous heat and pressure of the formation and uplift of the Sierra Nevada bolth 50 to 10 million years
Ago here are a few of the iconic cave features found in sequa National Park’s Crystal Cave The Sierra’s mountainous geography is the key factor in the distribution of their Ecosystems the sieras are populated by a variety of old growth forest and Alpine Meadow ecosystems the Yus region is uh you know John M’s stomping grounds and he wrote some Exquisite Pros about the mountains of California the eede and so on and if you read these books he’s able to
Convey in very colorful and precise way what kind of amazing Wilderness was there but basically a series of pine forests that gradate down Life Zone life Life Zone Life Zone and these multiple life zones are represented in Yus because the valley is only about 3,000 ft and then the mountains behind it go
Up to 12 13 and so on so there’s a huge vertical difference and set of life zones from the Alpine down to the lower uh Digger Pine and Oak Forest that region was home to basically the last grizzly bear in California was trapped in yede and it’s on the flag that is he
Named Samson and Grizzly Adams trapped that bear in Yus but Yus had a huge uh an expansive ecosystem of different species many of which are now gone but uh luckily a lot of it’s been preserved the elevation here at ye National Park spans many different life zones the
Elevations range from about 2,000 ft up to 13,000 ft at the 2,000t elevation along the mered river um it will go up to Y Valley which is at 4,000 ft here at 4,000 ft the uh basically we’ve got a lot of the Ponderosa Pines we’ve got the
Black Oaks um no giant sequ is at this elevation there’s a few that are planted here in yed Valley but this is about the 4 to 5,000 ft the next Life Zone will be up at your 5 to 6,000 FT elevation and this is going up towards glacier point
Where you’re going to see more of your Lodge pole Pines and and your uh different Manzanita uh grows at the higher elevations and then we get up into the subalpine and the Alpine ecosystems and this is up in the twam Meadows area where you’re getting into the 78 9,000
Ft and up in twam Meadows you’ve got a true Alpine ecosystem where you’ve got not only the wildlife you’ve got the um you’ve got the Marmet some of the large rodents and the bear and the deer that we have here but the Alpine ecosystem and then that will go up above of the
Timber line at about 11,000 ft and go all the way up to 13,000 ft so we have a good range of ecosystems when you come to the sieras don’t expect to see an abundance of wildlife like you might find in Yellowstone and bat lands national parks what you find is a smattering of Birds small mammals such as ground squirrels including the ubiquitous Choring a few Lizards mu deer herds in some of the Meadows and the occasional black bear all of the Bears that people find here in you are black bears and although they’re called black bears they range in color from a cinnamon brown to medium brown and I’ve seen them dark brown almost black we estimate we have between
350 and 400 black bears that live in Yi National Park this is a good population um they basically eat their natural food sources they’ll dig into logs for termites um they will do some hunting they’ll eat a lot of plants um we see the Bears in and around the campgrounds
And what our goal is is that there’s enough natural food to sustain the Bears and so it’s our goal that bears don’t associate uh people with food and so we ask people to store their food properly but the black bears here the the females weigh anywhere from 150 to about 200 lb
About so big and the males are larger and they’re they’re beautiful bears and we feel that the population in the park is is just about right for the food source and the habitat that we have Fire and Fire management have become an important element in maintaining the Sierra’s native
Ecosystems fire is a tremendously important component of the ecosystem here in yeed and all forest forest fires are naturally occurring events so in an area like this about every 7 to 10 years there would be a lightning caused fire and it would burn and in fact the Native Americans the American Indians that
Lived here burned The Meadows and basically kept the natural cycle going but what’s happened over the past 100 years not only here in yosee but in other national parks across the country Fire’s been suppressed and this has created an unnatural growth of trees it hasn’t allowed new trees to come up it’s
Created a huge what we call a fuel load so what happens is when a natural fire does occur it’s a catastrophic fire so what we’ve tried to do is mimic the ecosystem for example here in Valley having prescribed Burns where we’ll burn areas or what’s happening right now up
Near Glacier Point we’ll have what we call a managed fire and that means we have a lightning caused fire which is the one that occurred just a couple of weeks ago if it burns we have what we call the MMA the maximum manageable area we feel that if the Fire doesn’t
Threaten any structures any trails and it’s a natural occurrence will allow it to burn so it’s always that balancing act because it’s putting some smoke in the valley and people come to eity Valley and their views of halom and eity Falls are obscured but once we’re able
To explain to them the importance of fire and how naturally occurring it is people are very understanding of it right here at this spot in yose it is said that conservationist John murer and president Teddy Roosevelt hatched the idea of America’s great National Park system this is just a part of the
Pivotal role the sieras have played in American History the early human history of the High Sierra is shrouded in Mystery archaeological evidence shows that Native Americans came to the mountains to gather obsidian to make tools but probably never lived in the sieras because of its harsh climate and steep topography early on some of the earliest white settlers raised sheep in the area but the event that transformed the
Region as well as the nation was the discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill in 1848 in the western foothills of the mountain range on a bright clear morning in January 1848 Carpenter James Marshall reached into the cold Waters of the American river and picked up an unusual looking piece of
Quartz in the quartz he saw gold California park historian Ed Allen has studied how gold was formed in what is called the Sierra’s motherload the Gold in California the vast majority of it in the foothills of the sieras is in one formation and that’s called the Mariposa slate
Formation it is Jurassic in age and it goes all the way from Sierra City all the way down to Mariposa and what it is is slate which is Flat Rock with veins of quartz through it and those those contain the gold when the news of the Sierra’s gold
Reached the Eastern United States tens of thousands of men left their families and jobs in a headlong rush for gold a gold rush like the country had never seen before nor Since people poured into the sieras beginning a massive move West the discovery initiated an entrepreneurial boom that energized the country and the gold itself bankrolled America’s industrialization soon stories of giant trees and magnificent valleys in the mountains made it to the east reaching men like conservation Pioneer John Muer John mirer grew up in Wisconsin and as a Young Man began walking the
Country and as he did a new idea Rose in his mind the idea that nature was not the enemy nature was not to be conquered some nature and Wilds needed to be preserved this idea reached fruition when he began exploring the sieras and Yos Valley in particular he knew this Grand Wilderness
Needed to be preserved for all time one of the Pioneers here in Ed National Park is of course John mure John mure came to used and he loved it here he spent so much time exploring the different areas of the park and really letting people people know why such an
Amazing place as ybody National Park should be set aside and shouldn’t be disturbed and should be made available for future Generations John Mir is one of my favorite historical characters and the more I learn about him the more I’m Amazed by this man they uh they don’t even know how
Many first ascents he did in the Sierra I mean he would just like pick out a peak on a given day and say well I’m going to climb that and more often than that nobody had ever climbed it before and I was reading recently about how he
Did a 7,000 foot hike to a summit in California actually Shasta four times in an afternoon putting up barometers I mean he was a scientist but I mean he went up and down and he could climb that in which would take a good hiker several
Hours or just or five or six hours he would do it in two you Know H H Oh The rugged Eastern precipice of the sieras contains one of the most remote of the national monuments in the lore 48 states Devil’s postpile here there is no fancy Visitors Center it is a monument that is only open 6 months of the year yet it contains something special something worth the
Trip Devil’s postpile was set aside as a National Monument by President William Howard Taft in 1911 one of the deep Canyons here reveals a most unusual Pattern a geometric pattern this is just a tease for what lies ahead one of the truly geologic wonders of the world one of the two great monoliths in this country Devil’s postpile every every angle on the monolith provides a stunning new view of this most unusual natural Structure just as stunning as the walls is the very top of Devil’s post pile the top of the post pile is rounded off Dome shaped and the surface is actually Polished by the glaciers polished to where it shines in the afternoon sun another thing we see are the glacial
Striations and of course the most perfect six-sided hexagons you will ever see in Nature what makes Devil’s postpile so unique um is the interaction of Fire and Ice because Devil’s postpile was originally lava originally born of fire cooled and hardened into rock um but it was buried and it’s the it’s the glaciers that have excavated the devil’s postpile that have revealed it to us um
So in fact it’s it’s the thousands of years of of glacial working that has excavated the beautiful face of Devil’s postpile that we see today another thing that’s so unique about the devil’s postpile is the the sheer number of six-sided columns the hexagon being Nature’s most perfect shape found in
Honeycombs and on turtle shells um even pencils are six-sided because you can fit more of them in a box if they’re six-sided um and the devil’s postpile has 55% of the columns are six-sided which is more than any other colon balt formation in the world the postpile monolith is 60 to 80 ft
Tall how far it extends into the Earth is an unknown truly making it one of the geologic wonders of America’s West One of Nature’s greatest living wonders can be found in King’s Canyon and Sequoia National Parks sequa and King’s Canyon are very similar to Y in their structure and composition um but one thing that they do have that y has some of but not in the in the magnitude is the Giant
Sequoia Groves the giant sequoia trees largest living organism on the planet it’s the number one tourist site that people from Asia want to see they want to see these trees because they’re so immense when they first start to cut the Seas down and take them to some of the
Expositions like in the famous Chicago World’s Fair people they reassembled them and people didn’t believe that such a such a huge tree could exist home to the greatest concentration of giants Aqua Groves in the the world Sequoia and King’s Canyon national parks are managed as a single unit of the Park
Service however their roads to park status rep pose Apart by the mid 19th century the story of a unique and dramatic Canyon in the southern reaches of the sieras began reaching settlers and miners in California But it was not until John mure visited King’s Canyon in 1873 that the canyon began receiving national attention M immediately saw the canyon similarity to yosee Valley the discovery of this new Valley further added to his argument that both were carved by Massive glaciers during the last time Ice Age a theory that would eventually be proven Correct King’s Canyon’s future was in doubt for nearly 50 years some wanted to build a dam at the Western end of the valley While others wanted to preserve it as a park interestingly a part of present day Kings Canyon National Park was originally set as side in
1890 as General Grant National Park to preserve the giant Grove of sequoia trees growing there at last in 1940 General Grant was absorbed into the new and larger Kings Canyon National Park which eventually grew to include the South Fork of the Kings River and almost 500,000 Acres of stunning Backcountry
Wilderness today traveling into the mighty King’s Canyon is an adventure not taken by many people but well worth the effort King’s Canyon is one of the deepest Gorges in North America and to enter it you feel like you’re walking into a cathedral and it just takes your breath away in this beautiful Canyon
Through which courses the South work of the King’s River particularly when the river is full you see the Majesty of water moving the high walls of the canyon and it’s really a stunning sight to behold really gives you a a feeling of your place in the universe that
Something’s going on that’s much bigger than uh than we are there is only one road leading into the canyon itself a road that aptly ends at Road’s end deep into the the east side of the canyon along the way there are many Scenic views of granite domes and craggy
Peaks there is also Grizzly Falls a roaring waterfall that lets you get up close and personal as it dramatically plunges some 75 ft in a crashing display of Misty water power a ther ous Force so strong you can feel the reverberations in your chest but most people who come to King’s
Canyon come to see General Grant Grove a detached part of the Park this spectacular Grove of giant AAS covers a little over 154 Acres but it is here that visitors often get their first taste of the magnificence and scale of these trees including the second largest living organism on the planet a 2,000-year-old giant Squire named General Grant president Calvin kulage proclaimed
It the nation’s Christmas tree on April 28th 1926 in our March 29th 1956 president Dwight D Eisenhower declared the tree a National Shrine a memorial to those who died in war it is the only living object to be so declared giant seas are the sole living species in the genus seoa
Dendron and one of three species of coniferous trees known as redwoods it is a tree which occurs naturally only in groves on the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada mountains a single tree will grow to the average height of 270 ft and 25 ft in diameter record trees have been measured up to
300 ft in height and 56 ft in diameter the age of these Giants is breathtaking when counting the rings on one of the logged giant quers it turned out to be an incredible 3,500 years old sooa bark is fibrous the leaves are evergreen for such a large tree the cones are remarkably Small however the greatest Grove of sequa is giant forest in sequa National Park The first white man to visit these giant trees may have been Hil Tharp in 1858 who once lived here others followed an extensive damage to the area was done by settlers who grazed sheep miners looking for gold and lumbermen who cut down many of the largest Seas finally led by naturalist John mure
A number of people began to make an effort to preserve the Magnificent trees a bill to turn it into a national park died in the senate in 1882 however the preservation effort was ultimately successful and sequa became the nation’s Second National Park when it was established on September 26th 1890 the new park tripled in size one week after its founding when the giant Forest Area was added the Groves of giant seoa in seoa Kings Canyon National Parks and seeing these trees I mean it’s something of religious experience you know just a living thing that is that large when
People take pictures of these trees it always you know you see people taking a snapshot and they’re beautiful snapshots I’m sure but unless there’s a person in it you can never get the scale and even then unless you’re there in person you really can’t fathom it and
It’s I had a friend that said you know You’ got to go look at these things you know to get small and all your problems all of a sudden fade away because it just get so small you see that the world is such a big place and
That you’re such a small small part of it then there is the largest living thing on the planet General Sherman is the largest of the Giants Aquas uh it’s got a huge number of uh cubic feet volume wise and it’s a massive massive tree that uh will
Take your breath away when you stand below and and gaze upon it in addition to the giant aers climbing moral rock is a Musto Adventure in Sequoya National Park I mean one of my favorite views in seoa National Park it’s not a very long hike it’s less than a half mile each way
But it’s it’s a heart pounder I mean you definitely get your uh lungs burn a little bit because it’s a staircase attached to moral Rock and you hike up and you get this incredible view to the ends of the Earth it feels like I mean it’s just the Great Western divide is
Out on the horizon and uh you see just the Sierra you know just jump out in front of you as you hit this viewpoint on top of moral Rock and uh and really see to the ends of the Earth is how it feels it’s it’s one of the most superlative views of the West this solid piece of granite is just a tease for the domes and Vistas that await the visitor at Yus National Park Yim the name says it all there is no greater icon of America’s Western Wilderness than yosee Valley in 1851 Dr Lafayette bunell accompanied a military campaign into Yus Valley in the process bunell gave the valley its name shortly after the Expedition yosee Guardian Galen Clark and California Senator John conis advocated for
Protection of the area a park bill was prepared and passed both houses of the US Congress and was signed by President Abraham Lincoln on June 30th 1864 creating yuse Park this is the first case of land being set aside specifically for preservation and public use by action of the US federal government and it set a precedent for the 1872 creation of Yellowstone the country’s first national park however letting the state of California manage his precious yose was
Not good enough for John mure and his Sierra Club in May 1903 president Theodore Roosevelt camped with miror along the rim of yosim Valley for 3 days on that trip mura convinced Roosevelt to take control of yosee and return it to the federal government in 1906 Roosevelt signed a bill that did precisely that when the National Park Service was formed in
1916 yuse was placed under its control today visitors whether they come from from the east or the West are funneled into a single oneway Loop Road leading into the valley reading them on the left is Al Capitan El Capitan when you come into the valley I mean it just is this
Stunningly large piece of granite I mean it really is mind Bing to see how the size the sheer size of it going from the valley floor over 2,000 000 ft up I mean it’s a it’s a skyscraper of granite along with most of the other rock formations of Yos Valley elcapitan
Was carved by glacial Action the monolith was named El capan by the troops when they explored the valley in 1851 El Capitan as Legend has it was a rendering for chief the local Native American name for the massive Rock looking at the monolith one can see that El Capitan has two main faces between the two faces juts a massive prowl a feature dubbed the nose by ALC capitan’s many rock climbing
Fanatics every angle every change of Light each change of perspective brings a stunning freshness to elcapitan as if it were always being seen for the first Time Yos Valley itself is about 8 m long and up to a mile wide coursing through its Center is a mered river a river that ultimately drains the water that crashes into the valley from The High Country crashes into the valley over four spectacular waterfalls in the valley you’ve got uh
Bridal veale fall fall I mean as well as uh yeus fall which is one of the tallest waterfalls in the world it’s the tallest in North America and that’s the centerpiece and you’ve got Bridal fail fall right across the valley which is an equally impressive waterfall then if you
Hike the M Trail de veral fall you can almost touch another incredible waterfall that’s just I mean it’s just an animal it’s just I mean it’s so powerful in the springtime these all these waterfalls are that you can’t believe how much water is going over those Cliffs and then you can hike
Another Mile and get away from the crowds which is what I like to recommend to people and go to Nevada fall past FAL fall and get get a little bit of Elbow Room and really get to enjoy it by yourself they are ferocious Beauties I
Guess is the best way to put it it’s they’re so dangerous and so powerful but uh so beautiful moving along the valley dazzling white Granite Peaks spring up on each side on the right Cathedral Spires on the left the three brothers and North Dome reaching the Far Eastern end of the
Loop Road the visitor looks up and there stands half doome yosemite’s iconic rock formation half doome I mean it’s just this amazingly perfect formation I mean a so named the name is pretty apt once again I mean just looking at it from above is a totally different experience looking at on the Floor each year thousands of hikers reach the top of haome by following an 8 and 1/2 Mile Trail from the valley floor to its Crest then a rigorous 2 Mile approach leads to the the final pitch a final pitch seen here from the air is ascended with the aid of a pair of braided steel cables mounted on posts it is one of the most challenging and thrilling hikes in the World for the less adventurers there is another must hike Scott Gman is a yosity park ranger who never tires of hiking his favorite Trail if people are hiking and to go up the quintessential experience is going up the Mist Trail to Vernal fall it’s been a great year waterfall year but
Every year is a waterfall year so to me hiking up the Mist Trail you’re got the mered river you’re hiking up you’re seeing some of the back country you’re going up to Vernal fall one of the few waterfalls that goes year round here and that to me I always tell people it’s
About a 3 Mile round trip hike could easily be a half a day or a morning and I feel that I always tell people if you’re going to do one hike in yed it’s to go up Vernal fall next to the trail the mered river crashes and CHS its way to the valley Floor off in the distance you can spot youre Falls along the way playful chory entertain the hikers the Mist for which the trail is named foreshadows The Falls ahead then as a reward for your 1 and a half mile hike burle Falls itself what remains is one last look at
The Valley from the road that winds up to Glacier Point here one has reached the High Country The Road Less Traveled in yite National Park and for the visitor the High Country also means twam Meadows a gentle Dome studded subalpine Meadow in the eastern part of yosee swy Meadows is this area in the Eastern side of the park that’s about oh
It’s about 4,000 ft above uh above the valley floor which is about 4,000 ft above sea level so once you climb up to the brink of the yite Fall you’re in toon Meadows essentially which is uh the High Country it’s snowed in I mean it gets a lot more snow than the valley
Floor it’s it’s got similar features it’s all Granite but then it’s got these perfect alp Pine Lakes um you’ve got a lot less people you don’t have the visitor Services up there like the valley has four or five hotels a lot of campgrounds up there you’ve got one Lodge some campgrounds
But a great many people aren’t going to drive up there to to go through the park and come out the east side so you you leave the people behind in large part right now we find ourselves uh in the midst of toy Meadows which is the largest Alpine Meadow in the Sierra
Nevada range it’s a typical Place most people who visit the park come to either to enjoy the scenery or for the backcountry adventurers to set out on the trails as numerous Trails radiate out from The Meadows the most famous of those hiking trails is the John M
Trail the John Mir Trail is from eusee National Park and goes all the way down through the Central Valley and seoa National Park and is over 200 miles long and a lot of people actually take that Trek and relive areas where John M actually traveled himself to see these
Amazing places in this amazing landscape Mike White has L many hikers along this celebrated track through the high sieras now we’re on a piece of the famed John Mir Trail named after the equally famous naturalist it’s a over 200 mile long trail that connects yemane Valley to Mount Whitney which is the highest
Point in the continental United States one thing about the Sierra the weather is typically very fair but you must be prepared when you go into the back country for any kind of experience weatherwise you need to be prepared for snow rain lightning high elevations all those things that one Associates with
High mountain ranges even in the typically Sunny Sierra right here is one of the classic ye signs which is made out of uh iron metal and the letters are punched out usually what you’ll see in many areas of uh the West are wooden signs with carved numbers and
Letters but these classic yeus signs are definitely an icon in Yus National Park we’re walking down a typical section of uh dirt Trail in the midst of a lodge pole Pine Forest here on the JMT we can look around us we can see the tall thin
Lodge poles as they rise up to the deep blue Sierra Sky it’s a classic Tree in this uh Inner Mountain area of yuse and then on the forest floor we look over here and see a couple of Mariposa lies which are a very delicate and beautiful
Flower uh in the Sierra and then further on up the trail see a few more wild flowers including these uh lovely blue delphiniums here’s some Lupin which is another very pretty common um Sierra Flower and backd dropped nicely by a large uh glacial erratic Boulder made of granite which is the customary and
Typical rock of the Sierra Nevada one thing about the Sierra Nevada is it’s known for the granite that’s been glaciated um over the course of uh geological epics and here’s a fine example of one of those glacial Boulders one of the great things about hiking in this sier Nevada and
Particularly in yede is you get some just incredible views we can look behind us and see some of the Peaks along the Sierra Crest and then also look over this direction and see the iconic profile of Cathedral Peak named because it reminded mure so much of being in a
Cathedral I love to hike in the back country of yeed and King’s Canyon and sequa just for the serenity the Solitude just the experience of being out in nature and it’s a wonderful thing that uh everybody who’s physically able ought to experience uh in their lifetime just
To be able to commune with nature to be a to get out and see some of these Wonders that uh are in our great national parks out in the west however there is one more thrill awaiting the everyday visitor to yosmite watching the rock climbers on El
Capitan indeed it was right here in Yus National Park that modern technical rock climbing got its start so people often ask when the best time is to see see Climbers on the wall and typically the best time to see climbers is in the fall and the spring because that’s when people climb the
Most cuz it’s not as hot on the face of the wall um people often ask how long it takes the average to climb the wall is between 3 to 7 days and so people sleep on a cot on the face of the wall right here we’re in the front of El Capitan
And uh a climber was just climbing what we call the nose where the two walls meet and he got to the top of what we call the Boot flake and he play placed a pendulum and he climbed back down and did what we call a swing across the nose
So that way he can continue climbing up the Nose and now one last look at yusti Valley a memory for all Time
National Parks Exploration Series Presents
Yosemite – The High Sierras
The Sierra Nevada mountain range contains some of the most amazing wonders found on the planet. Filled wi9th such notable geographic features including Lake Tahoe, three National Parks, two National Monuments and seemingly endless wilderness areas, the Sierras are truly spectacular in every-sense of the word. Enjoy breath-taking aerial views as you soar over its majesty. Discover the history and geology first-hand through in-depth interviews with the park rangers and ground tours that take you through the park.
Rich in history and known as the place of the gold discovery, the home of the modern mountain climbing and the birthpllace of America’s national parks system, this modern marvel is over 100 million years in the making. This is Yosemite country
Produced by Centre Communications Inc. for Mill Creek Entertainment, LLC.
Produced by Kenny James
Writen by Ron Meyer
Narrated by Alphonse Keasley
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