Yosemite High Country

along Tioga Pass Road

High Country along the Trail | Yosemite Page | Photos Page | Home Page

These are spots in the high country that are readily accessible from Tioga Pass road.

Tuolumne Valley

Some years, there is a great deal of snow in the sierra. This is a wide angle picture of Tuolumne Valley, almost completely covered in water. The high country is very pretty at times like this, since the campground are generally not open this early in the season, the area is quite peaceful.

Tenaya Lake

Sometimes, when the wind is still and the air is clear, the face of Polly Dome can look like a walnut shell.

Tioga Pass

Just outside of Yosemite National Park is a small campsite run by Inyo National Forest. I've camped here once, when I was lucky enough to see an open space. The winds the previous night had ripped a few tents apart; few people got any sleep. Fortunately, everything calmed down the night I slept there.

Tioga Tarns

About a mile east of the Park Entrance at the top of Tioga Pass Road is a small parking lot around a cluster of small lakes. This is the Tioga Tarns, and is a nice flat trail around some fantastic alpine lakes appropriate for a stroll for people that would not otherwise attempt walking around in the steep mountains.

The photo above was taken with an extremely wide 18mm lens. These are very small lakes, thickly lined with trees in most places.

Up here, at about 9,600 feet in elevation, the granite rocks of the sierra are capped with strange, highly metamorphosed rocks which have not worn away completely yet.