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12th Oct 2005
Tioga and Twolumne
Wednesday, 12th October, 2005
We awoke this morning at about 7 to find that the power had been switched off for some end-of-season maintenance work so the place was freezing. We were up and out fairly quickly, took a few shots of the locale and then headed down to the diner for some coffee. This time avoiding the queued masses for breakfast.
We dropped in by the Ahwahnee once more in order to retake the 1930’s postcard image that I’d bought up in Seattle. The place was completey submerged in scrub and trees from that angle … sad really it must have been spectacular before. What was evident from the various paintings inside (painted by a Swede called Widforss) was that the Yosemite valley floor was relatively bare a century ago and that much of the scrub and trees have grown up in the interim under ‘wilderness’ management.
We set off immediately to drive the Tioga Road up and out of the park onto the Sierra Nevada through Twolumne (Twalomee apparently) Meadows. A long, slow haul up several thousand feet passed bare domes of rock with occasional trees sprouting from the cracks. We stopped at various places the most notable Tenaya Lake and went to the camera locations of Muybridge’s 1872 picture and the later pictures by Edward Weston and Adams. It’s a lovely location.
We then did a hike up to Dog lake, which got us to about 9250 feet and then to the lower of the domes at Lambert Dome which must have got us to 9500. The dome landscape is incredible parts of the rock polished like polished marble and other parts lumpy and granitic. Once we came down, we discovered that you weren’t supposed to go up there … so luckily we only read the signs on the way back down because it was great view from the top down over the meadows.
At Tioga Pass, the rock changes dramatically from the plain light grey granites to a very unstable red slate type and the scenery changes completely. We wound our way down on a new road dropping down from the summit in just a mile or two. Beside the road we finally caught up with some Autumn. Its strange but we were early for the fall in Vermont, and Quebec … even BC and Seattle but we’ve finally caught up. There were spectacular stands of aspen, backlit by the low sunlight.
Once clear of Tioga, within a few miles we were passing Bodie and then out onto a massive prairie landscape with thousands of head of cattle all grazing on the grassland. We also passed Mono Lake with its glistening white tufa formations on the shore
It was a long drive and we took a direct route through the hills which I think was the better option as there was less risk of being caught speeding above the sometimes ridiculous 15mph bends, or more commonly 35mph limits.
We arrived at Auburn and Tony O came down to the gas station at the Combie Road junction to guide back to his hill top home.
Inside, Gracie and Bogart, Tony’s two dogs, greeted us. Bogart, having had a bit of a disturbed upbringing … was deeply distrusting and in fact never stopped barking and growling whenever I was near the house. We were briefly reconciled when I happened to catch hold of his ear as he passed my chair at one point but as soon as I released him he was off again.
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