Extract from NG
Location: USA, California
Established: October 1, 1890
Size: 747,956 acres
In a high-country meadow two hikers crouch near the edge of a mirroring lake
and watch a pika as it harvests blades of grass for a nest deep within a huge
rock pile. When they resume walking, there is no other person in sight for as
far as they can see. And on this sparkling summer's day, the view seems
endless.
In the valley's crowded mall, families stroll by, eating ice cream, dodging
bicycles. People pile in and out of buses. Shoppers hunt for souvenirs. Kids
hang around a pizza place. Rock climbers, coils of rope slung over their
shoulders, swap stories over beer on a patio. On a summer's day about 14,000
people are in Yosemite Village.
Both the solitude of the alpine ridge and the throngs of the valley are part
of the experience when you visit Yosemite National Park. "No temple made
with human hands can compare with Yosemite," wrote John Muir, whose
crusading led to the creation of the park. To this temple come 4 million
visitors annually. And about 90 percent of them go to the valley, a mile-wide,
7-mile-long canyon cut by a river, then widened and deepened by glacial action.
Walled by massive domes and soaring pinnacles, it covers about one percent of
the park. In summer, the concentration of autos brings traffic jams and air
pollution.
Beyond the valley, some 800 miles of marked trails offer hikers easy jaunts
or grueling tests of endurance in the High Sierra wilderness. Even the casual
visitor can explore this solitude without getting outfitted for a backpack
expedition.
This park, roughly the size of Rhode Island, is a United Nations World
Heritage site. Here, in five of the seven continental life zones, live the mule
deer and chipmunks of the valley and the marmots and pikas of the heights; the
brush rabbit and chaparral of the near desert; the dogwood and warblers of
mid-elevation forests; the red fir and Jeffrey pine of mile-high forests; the
dwarf willow and matted flowers of Yosemite's majestic mountains.
Did You Know?
Towering more than 350 stories above Yosemite Valley, El Capitan
is the largest exposed granite monolith in the world.
The park’s giant sequoia trees can live to be more than
3,000 years old.
Yosemite Falls usually stops flowing in late August. The
cascade is fed solely by snowmelt, so the peak flow is in late May, when high
snows in the Sierra Nevada melt. Over the warm summer months the flow dries
up—but returns around October, when snow again begins to fall.
