Shake and Bake

We thought that last Wednesday's little earthquake here was exciting, then we had the Motor Fire come to El Portal on Thursday. The fire started on the highway, on the south side of the Merced River, jumped across to the north and quickly shot to the canyon rim. It moved east toward Incline and El Portal, but a heavy application of brute force firefighting in steep terrain (including use of the mighty DC-10 Supertanker) has contained this in a few days.
Now outside the Conservancy office in El Portal there is fresh handline, just a hint of smoke, and no helicopter traffic. Ground squirrels bark, acorn woodpeckers laugh their maniacal cackles, scrub jays squawk. A tanager was 'br-dip'-ing earlier, and a phoebe 'p-chew'-ing. Grindelia remains in bloom in El Portal and the pale turkey mullein is having a good year. The river is more refreshing than ever as canyon temperatures will remain near 100 for the week.
The Motor Fire is nearly out, but the Avalanche Fire near Badger Pass continues to smolder. Though the park was open and not too smoky, visitation plummeted during the Motor Fire excitement; people may have misunderstood the location/impact of the blaze. Maybe it'll be a somewhat quieter holiday weekend.

Founders Day

The National Park Service was established on this date in 1916, and today's Director is announcing big plans to prepare for celebrating the centennial in 5 years. In Yosemite we are also planning diverse ways to observe the sesquicentennial of the Yosemite Grant in 2014. This was when the US government protected Mariposa Grove and Yosemite Valley (yes, 8 years before Yellowstone).
There was yet another regretable fatality in the park early this week, when a hiker fell from the top of Half Dome, down the face. No official story for how this happened has been released.
Some of us woke to an earthquake yesterday (24 August). After anomalous quakes in the prairie of southern Colorado then near Washington, D.C. in recent days, it was a little more exciting to hear the ground roar then feel it tremble for a moment here. Our event was from a 4.2 shaker, over near Mammoth Lakes on the East Side at 5 a.m. The hypocenter was 10 km beneath the Sierra, between the crest and Mt. Morrison.
The Merced River is low, but not as low as it usually is at the end of August. Yosemite Falls is still relatively impressive - far more people are taking photographs of it than ever do in typical August. Squirrels are shredding ponderosa cones. Bears are finding ripening apples, and though the eat pounds of them, their scat appears to leave a lot of calories untouched.

Smoke and Heat

The Avalanche Fire is putting up a good amount of smoke from just above the western end of the Glacier Point Road and it finally feels like summer in the Sierra. This fire was caused by lightning and is just over 400 acres. It's burning at ground level in a healthy way and managers hope it'll burn at least 2000 acres.
The river and waterfalls are still running at unusually high levels, approximately 4-5 times the trickling volumes normally seen in early August. Yosemite Falls is still worth a photograph and Vernal is still all the way across the lip, and putting lots of mist on to the Mist Trail.
Birdlife has quieted considerably in Yosemite Valley. Orioles and grosbeaks are still around, but they are silent. Mule deer bucks have full, velvety racks now.
Coneflower, some tincture plant, lotus and milkweed are in bloom in the Valley - it's a great year for floral displays. The show has shifted to higher elevations where pentstemon, gentians and others are blossoming. Post-bloom, our native raspberries are ready for harvest in the Valley. Yum!

Summer Still Coming

Blazing stars and Clarkia are still in bloom in El Portal, buckeye flowers are gone and leaves are browning. Yosemite Valley has spicebush, cow parsnip, Draperia, Gray's lupine and azalea in bloom. Birds have gotten quiet, ducklings and merglets are nearly full grown. The Merced River is still running at 400% of normal flow for mid-July, but the top of Table Rock is partly above water and the Valley has been opened to rafting/floating.
Utilities challenges persist in Tuolumne Meadows, but NPS hopes to activate the septic and water systems tomorrow. If they work this means that employees can move in up there and that facilities can open up. The campground is supposed to open Friday night, the Visitor Center should open Saturday and the Tuolumne Meadows Lodge plans to open on Monday the 18th. It'll be a short season, with many facilities starting to shut down after Labor Day, in just 7-8 weeks.
Flowers are pretty good at the 7-8000' level now, with bright Sierra pride pentstemon lighting up the roadcuts. Lots of snow and high water persist along Tuolumne trails. Hikers should plan on covering fewer miles than on dry ground. The waterfalls in the Valley are still quite impressive.

June Skiing

Tioga Road has opened, but summer has not really arrived in the park's high country yet. Tuolumne Meadows is a lake, Tenaya Lake is mostly iced over (with renewed freezing and new ice last night), snow covers a good portion of the terrain above 6000' (north-facing slopes are mostly snow) and meltwater is filling every trail. Skiers still have time to enjoy the slopes near Ellery Lake, False White, Mt. Conness, Mt. Hoffmann, Mt. Dana and more. Backpackers are going to struggle for a while to find trails, to make distance over snow, to avoid wet feet in all the runoff. No facilities are yet open along the Tioga corridor, including TPR, Saddlebag Lake road, White Wolf or anything in Tuolumne Meadows.
Half Dome cables go up this week for those with permits. Walked the west valley loop on Saturday; flowers are looking good: iris in El Cap and Bridalveil Meadows, yellow violets, white Nemophila, Arnica, Senecio, Alumroot, thimbleberry, Linanthus, larkspur near the base of Bridalveil Fall, creek dogwood, Azalea (smells SO good), globe gilia, blue dicks, golden brodeia, silverleaf lotus, Indian paintbrush, pussypaws, catchfly, and more. We saw no snowplants on the loop. One sow bear with two cubs near El Cap's Nose. Slackliners working their art over the icy Merced at El Cap Bridge. Ribbon Creek is running very high in several channels. Birdsong is still plenty active: grosbeak, tanager, Wilsons and yellow warbler, Cassins and warbling vireo, creeper, song sparrow, spotted towhee, etc.
Hotter days are coming this week and the river may hit another peak above flood stage. It is unusual to have such a late peak, such a high peak, and for the river to hover close to the flood level for two weeks like this. What next in this atypical spring/summer transition?

High Water is Here

The river gauge at Pohono Bridge is just about tapping the formal 'flood' stage this morning, at 6300 cfs, or a hair under the 10' mark. This is a little lower than the forecasted overnight peak. Tonight's projection is to go over 11' or perhaps 9000 cfs. If it gets that high, the river will be up on parts of Valley roads, not to mention flowing into two campgrounds and Housekeeping Camp. Rangers have been preparing for days for this surge of meltwater, to evacuate people ahead of nighttime peaks as needed and to implement area closures for safety.
There have been lots of cyclists enjoying the delight of pedalling on the Tioga Road without cars for the past couple of weeks; no noise but birds, running water and the whisper of gumwalls. There is still snow at Crane Flat, and lots of deep snow higher up. The avalanche zone at Olmsted Point has been a lingering concern, so that part of the road is closed to cyclists and pedestrians. Road/trail crew personnel have been working on that spot and with this week's heat and clear skies, there is a fair bit of buzz about the road opening this weekend. Nothing is official and the high country route may not be safe enough to open until next week.
From Olmsted Point we can see that Tenaya Lake is still frozen over. Today's San Francisco Chronicle has an item about the park's Tenaya Lake Area Plan, in which the Conservancy is involved for funding.
Tenaya's ice is melting quickly, and washing down-canyon to fill Yosemite Valley with its own transient lakes.

Yosemite Flood Watch

NWS has issued a Flood Watch for our part of the Sierra starting Friday evening. We are getting warmer weather this week and the Merced River has started rising again, reaching 4000 cubic feet per second (cfs) at Pohono Bridge (the west/downstream end of Yosemite Valley) last night. The average annual high water flow for the Pohono gauge is just 2500 cfs.
As has been said elsewhere, on top of our tremendous snowpack, it's been an unusually cool and wet spring. The normal warming (and therefore snowmelt) trajectory has not happened; there is still a huge quantity of snow in our higher elevations. We have just a little less snow now than what we usually have in April; the combination of June heat and April snowpack suggests powerful possibilities. The rate of Merced runoff may get interesting in the next few days.
We had two spikes of just under 5000 cfs in early May. Then we had another cool stretch and on the typical annual highest water date of May 20, the river was running only about 1800 cfs, 72% of average volume.
NBC Nightly News aired a feature last week about Yosemite's big waterfalls during a period when they were running right about average for springtime. The exceptional flows may have already happened, or may be coming within this next week. Though we're now 3 weeks past the usual highest flow date, we may not yet have seen our biggest water volume for the season. In 2010 we topped out at near 8000 cfs; if it stays warm (like June usually does; our forecast continues warming for the next 5 days) we may surpass that and see the Merced back up through Wosky Pond on to Northside Drive.