Cycling on Tioga Road

There really is an exceptional quantity of snow in the high country: roadside snowbanks 6-8 feet tall, Tenaya and Siesta Lakes frozen over, lots of runoff, and persistent avalanche danger: a 6-foot granite slab slid onto the road above Yosemite Creek. A mild, sunny day had lots of bird activity: sooty grouse booming, Williamson's sapsucker drumming, and hermit thrush, olive-sided flycatcher and mountain chickadee singing. Marmots were up and about, despite 80% snowcover in the Olmsted Point area.
Skiers could park as low as the White Wolf area and make some runs at Siesta Cirque. The district ranger figures it may be a couple more weeks until the road can be opened to cars.
A couple warm days means the Merced River has leapt from around 1500 cfs at Pohono Bridge to 2800 cfs last night; it should get even more exciting over the next few days.

Summer Rolls In

One of the coolest Mays on record finishes up on a warm note this weekend with temperatures going from 50's-60's up to near 80. The Merced has been running at about 2/3 of average flow all week, but that's likely to change in a big way over the next few days. We'll have this late spike in river volume, and a delayed runoff that will keep the waterfalls healthy for weeks to come.
A couple inches of snow and ice on Thursday night kept the Glacier Point Road closed and had Hwy. 41 at R2 conditions yesterday. Glacier Point should open this morning for weekend crowds. Re-opening is likely for the Mariposa Grove Road, too. Tioga Road is open 4 miles up from Crane Flat, for those who want a look at the Gin Flat snowpack. Cyclists are allowed to pedal car-free between tall snowbanks and lots of fresh runoff as far east as Olmsted Point - the world's best bike trail.
Half Dome cables won't be installed for at least two more weeks; it's still too snowy to access this part of the Wilderness safely.
Snowplant and groundsel are blooming in the Valley, Wawona is full of lupine, and El Portal has nice stretches of Clarkia right at the park boundary. It's a very flowery time of this cool, wet season.

Stormy Monday

More chilly weather lingers in our Sierra, with a winter storm warning starting tomorrow night, and several more inches of snow expected above 6000' again. The river has dropped to 1500 cfs at Pohono Bridge.
Highway 41 was closed for a time yesterday due to snow and vehicle accidents. A rockfall closed the Yosemite Falls Trail this morning. These are January scenarios, yet it'll be June next week.
Ribbon Creek carried frazil ice yesterday. Steve Bumgardner's terrific frazil ice video has been featured on the world's number one blog, boingboing: http://www.boingboing.net/2010/05/24/frazil-ice-fascinati.html#comments. Pete is honored.
Concentrated numbers of yellow-rumped warblers on this morning's birdwalk. Juncos were both flocking and singing.
Poison Oak on the Valley floor is about 50% leafed out, though it may have some frost damage. Yes, there is p.o. on the floor of Yosemite Valley, but you have to be remarkably unlucky to stumble into it. Farewell-to-spring (Clarkia) is blooming in El Portal now; given the conditions a little higher up it seems premature to bid farewell to a a season we've only glimpsed.

Slow progress

The Mariposa Grove Road has opened to all traffic, though there's still snow aplenty in the upper grove. Glacier Point legend Dick Ewart is helping out in the Wawona Visitor Center while he waits for visitors to be allowed out to Glacier Point. The point still needs two feet of snow shoveled off of walkways. The Sentinel Dome/Taft Point trailhead area still has 4 feet of snow; it'll be easy to get lost with those trails being buried. We got a bit of snow on the Valley rim last night. The cool and clouds dropped the Merced volume at Pohono Bridge down from 3500 cfs a few days ago, to below 2000.
The startling red snowplant is seen throughout the Valley floor now. Blackberries are blooming in El Portal, along with plentiful tarweed, lupine, blazing star, and elderberry. Still the invasive pink clover owns some of the roadsides.

Yet More Winter

No cables on Half Dome for Memorial Day. I was in error, with old (insider) information that they'd be installed next week. The photo from the Snow Creek trail shows plenty of snow on the "sub-dome's" north slope; this makes trail work and travel to the base of the cables too dangerous still.
At the same time, the warmth of the past few days has brought the Merced to its highest volume yet, over 3500 cubic feet per second at the Valley's west end. The river has backed into all its tributary outlets. Wosky Pond is connected the river by flowing water at the surface.
The Valley still has lots of Miner's Lettuce and Varied-leaf Nemophila in flower as ground cover. Highway 140 is abloom with white flowers on Ceanothus integerrimus. Some cherries in the Valley have flowers. Cow parsnip in Cook's Meadow has leaves up to 10 inches long, but it's still less than 2 feet tall.

Geo Notes

Last week's heavy rains brought a small debris flow down the Cathedral Spires gully, covering Southside Drive with several inches of sand and gravel. A rockfall at Church Bowl seriously injured a local girl last week; thankfully she appears to be recovering well. Another good-sized rockfall occured yesterday, from beneath Horsetail Fall on El Capitan, sending up a big cloud of dust from the ledge below the East Buttress.
The famous sugar maple is just starting to turn. Native big-leafed maples vary in their color now from bright yellow, to leaf margins starting to brown, to altogether green. Willows and cottonwoods will start to color soon, but haven't yet. The meadows in Yosemite Valley are the most yellow places at the moment. Torreya 'drupes' are mature and dropping in the isolated pockets where they grow. Invasive black locust trees are finally being removed from Old Yosemite Village by Resource Management.

More and more Spring

The excellent Dave Wyman took this unearthly photo of a favored place on Earth. His autumn YA photography course has filled, but there are plenty of other great ones, including Howard Weamer's August high country course. People on our September China national parks trip may well come home with images that compare to this.
A road crew friend told me he didn't think Tioga Road would be open for Memorial Day; avalanches are still a factor. Half Dome cables should get installed next week, in time for those who have permits for Memorial Day weekend. Mariposa Grove Road opens this Friday to all vehicles.
Senecio is in bloom along Southside Drive. Mallard and merganser ducklings have been seen in calm Valley waters this week. A lazuli bunting was singing atop a still-leafing-out black oak near Cook's Meadow earlier today. Birders on this morning's walk also got to compare Vaux's swift with violet-green swallow flight.
Bit of rain overnight. The river is coming up a bit, a little over average flow again, with Table Rock fully covered. Side streams are still increasing; water leaks on to the road near Fern Spring now and Sentinel Creek is the biggest it's been this season.