Yosemite II: The Falls

It has been a La Niña year, so winters in the northwest can be accompanied by higher than average precipitation. ENSO-linked precipitation trends are less clear for central California, but snowpack appears to be plentiful in the Sierras. During our visit, snow lingered in the Park above 5000 or 6000 feet elevation, though the California spring was well underway.  The numerous waterfalls around the Yosemite Valley were full, the water roaring onto the granite rocks below with a constant roar like soft thunder.  At Bridal Veil Fall there was so much water mixed into the air that the immediate area at the base of the waterfall had its own microclimate of soft rain.  In fact, up to about a half mile away from the falls, I could still feel the moisture in the air.  Vernal Fall, up the Little Yosemite Valley, presented a similar scenario.  Here the Mist Trail follows the southern bank of the Merced River from Yosemite Valley right up to the waterfall.  The trail then is composed of a long series of steep steps cut into rocky terrain leads hikers up behind Vernal Fall.  Here again, the volume of water was sufficient to greet visitors with a soft rain and make the steep granite staircase more dangerous.  I captured a beautiful rainbow made possible by the saturated air:

The upper and lower Yosemite Falls, together presenting a tremendous drop in water of over 2400 ft is probably the most impressive of Yosemite’s waterfalls to most visitors.  According to signage at the park, it is the tallest waterfall in the United States and fifth tallest in the world.  No doubt these waterfalls are beautiful and impressive.  I also enjoy smaller, more intimate, waterfalls.  At these waterfalls there is often opportunity to observe more closely the small moisture-loving biota like mosses and ferns that cling to life on the surface or cracks of bedrock.

Upper Yosemite Fall

Bridal Veil Fall



Staircase Falls



Nevada Fall

Yosemite I: Dimensions

Hoping to find some real spring weather in California, we left Oregon for a week of adventures down south.  This was our second visit to Yosemite; our first was during late November a year and a half ago.  Yosemite National Park is impressive partly because of its size.  Many of the natural features are of majestic dimensions in the park, from the numerous waterfalls to the granite precipices that form the walls of Yosemite Valley to the ancient giant sequoias in the park’s three groves.  It seems that everyone should leave impressed by these larger monuments of geologic forces and biological wonder.

The wonderful thing about nature in general is that beauty is present from the largest monuments of natural forces down to the smallest scales visible to the human eye.  Yosemite most impressively illustrates this principle.  Stately Pacific dogwoods and conifers are juxtaposed with both immense grey granite cliffs and soft blankets of small mosses and lichens on rocks.  There are cloud patterns in the sky, tree patterns on mountainsides, and rich patterns of bark ridges and valleys on the trunk of a single pine tree. From big to small, Yosemite is a treasure.

Uncertainty

Human life can be a cyclone of uncertainty at times.  Uncertainty, stochasticity and complexity are inherent in nature.  For us in our structured society, uncertainty can seem like the enemy.  But it is not. The enemy is our fear of uncertainty.  After a cyclone passes through a forest, a new generation of trees is always ready to spring forth.

Frogs and the sweet stench of swamp

It seems that there are not usually too many places on managed public lands where visitors are free to wade through a wetland.  Today I had the opportunity to get the boots wet and muddy in a coastal freshwater wetland at Beaver Creek State Park where a short dedicated trails runs right through swamp sans the usual catwalks. 

The wetland occupies the bottom of a valley extending from the coast to several miles inland.  The valley is sparsely populated with surrounding hillsides wooded with alder and conifers.  The abundance of alders suggests that the area had been logged at some point in the past.  The marsh as a whole itself appears to be largely dominated by at least 5 species of wetland plants: cattail (Typha latifolia), spikerush (Eleocharis), the invasive reed canary grass (Phalaris) and two species of Carex.   Other species appeared to include Potentilla anserina, bright yellow skunk cabbages, twinberry, trefoil, some grasses and Juncus. 

Like other marshes I have been in, disturbance of the water logged soil exposed the strong smell of anoxia.  This marsh was interesting too in that the ground was very spongy in some locations.  A few birds, some dancing insects, and skittish brown frogs constituted most of the fauna I observed.