ACROSS YOSEMITE’S WILDERNESS

Laurel Munson Boyers Yosemite Wilderness – Ranger / Manager 1976–2007

AUTHOR’S COLLECTION

ACROSS YOSEMITE’S WILDERNESS

A Trailblazing Woman’s Career Protecting the Park’s Backcountry

LAUREL MUNSON BOYERS

An imprint of The Globe Pequot Publishing Group, Inc.

64 South Main Street

Essex, CT 06426

www.globepequot.com

Falcon and FalconGuides are registered trademarks and Make Adventure Your Story is a trademark of The Globe Pequot Publishing Group, Inc.

Distributed by NATIONAL BOOK NETWORK

Copyright © 2025 by Laurel Munson Boyers

Photos by Laurel Munson Boyers unless otherwise noted

Interior book design, art, and illustrations by Lex Munson

Map and photo development by Leslie Stone

No artificial intelligence was used in the writing or artwork in this book.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Available

ISBN 978-1-4930-8870-6 (paper: alk. paper)

ISBN 978-1-4930-8871-3 (electronic)

frn_fig_005 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

The author and The Globe Pequot Publishing Group, Inc., assume no liability for accidents happening to, or injuries sustained by, readers who engage in the activities described in this book.

This book is dedicated to the
multiple generations of my family
and is in honor of
Dr. Jan van Wagtendonk (1940–2022)

INTRODUCTION

Yosemite is awe-inspiring. Iconic, spectacular, amazing—a land of superlatives. Globally important, spiritually encompassing, a relatively intact treasure chest of the region’s nonhuman inhabitants. A bastion of natural and cultural preservation. And the center of my universe. Was it fate or destiny or good luck that I was born in Yosemite Valley and then lived most of my life inside the park? And what about finding purpose and place in one of the most important natural sanctuaries in the world? Obviously, my parents had a great deal to do with it, but maybe there was more to it? This astonishing place, this universal treasure we call Yosemite has a lasting effect on all who visit, but I seem to have won the grand prize. Gifted with circumstance, fate, and perhaps a genetic pathway, my years are coming to a special end, having allowed me to spend a lifetime in one of the earth’s most extraordinary places, Yosemite National Park, protecting its most remote corners. Lucky me.

This book tells some of how and why that happened, and of some of the family of similar souls whose paths also brought them here to the park. It tells how we have come together to control the impact of the flood of humanity on this wild spot. It tells of the hope of many of the best public land managers in the nation that we are doing the right thing for generations to come. It tells some of the stories of what it’s like to live and work and play in the undeveloped and wild parts of Yosemite National Park. I can’t tell every tale or list all the people who have been and still are a part of me and of Yosemite—this place attracts some of the world’s best thinkers, athletes, protectors, artists, nature lovers, world citizens of all sorts. It is also disappointing to me that my memory, from which most of this book is written, is fading with the realities of age and time. It seemed important to finally write this manuscript. Now it is a history book, a recounting of a certain era in Yosemite. Things have changed, but much is still the same.

Many people think only of Yosemite Valley when they think of Yosemite—the views from that magnificent 1-mile-wide-by-7-mile-long gorge ringed with waterfalls, granite cliffs, spires, and domes (or partial domes). Yet Yosemite National Park is about the same size as the state of Rhode Island. The land beyond those valley walls is filled with a multitude of similar scenic wonders and unique residents—it is the Yosemite Wilderness, comprising almost 1,100 square miles, or 94.2 percent of the park. This book will take you on a journey into that realm, to recount some of those memories from my past.

I’ve always been a private person for the most part—you don’t spend your adult life wandering around the backcountry alone if you aren’t. The wild parts of Yosemite are sacred to me and must be used carefully, if at all. It scares me that in writing this book I may have opened a door to secrets and places I have held dear for a lifetime. Or that I may encourage the use of land that should be for self-discovery. I eventually decided to use my life experiences to tell the story because I felt it was so important to continue teaching about the value of intact nature and how to care for it, and my story would be an avenue to that end. The health of the earth is critical to our lives and the lives of generations of all species to come, and this book might be a way to shout that message out. When you go into nature, I hope you share those values and mindfully consider your activities and their consequences. I hope this book inspires you to act on ways to protect the health of the earth through support of conservation and preservation. To teach your children about the importance of nature. And, of course, I hope if you go to any of the places in this book, you will treat them with reverence. Please.

The story opens with a telling of my last wilderness patrol, an expedition across the entire length of Yosemite National Park in 2007, when a group of us took a 10-day backcountry journey all the way across the park. The unfolding of those glorious days is peppered with the free-ranging commentary of a guided adventure from someone who spent her adult life working and living in Yosemite’s roadless expanse. It shares the natural wonder of this remote treasure and introduces the reader to a variety of colorful humans. Examples are given to explain a bit of the effort needed to keep those wonders and stories intact. The narrative shares some of the reasons I and others get stuck here, spending much of our lives devoted to the place.

The second part of this book holds essays about the years that led up to that remarkable patrol—the evolution of my life and of my role as the first woman in the nontraditional position of a full-time mounted back-country ranger and as Yosemite’s first female wilderness manager, caring for that part of the park that is beyond Yosemite Valley. The essays tell of the effort to protect both the physical and the experiential wonders of the backcountry during a period from about 1970 until 2010, years during which I grew as a person and wilderness policy developed in Yosemite.

This was my path. All of us have individual passageways in our lives, the journeys of our families, to both set and follow. Past generations have led us to this exact point just as we will set the stage for the future. My path left me in the fortunate position to live a life in which I could make some small positive steps toward the well-being of the world. I hope we all will strive to take those types of actions in whatever way we can. Even small steps can make a difference. I hope the paths you set for your family will lead them to such satisfaction.

My belief in the importance of generational ties and the connection of families to this land runs deep not only with my own history but also with the history of Yosemite. Generations of Native Americans lived in these mountains and surrounding foothills for thousands of years. As non-Indigenous populations increased and wild lands became threatened with more and more change, the land and the lives of those who lived there were significantly altered, often tragically. Lawmakers realized, and focused on, a danger of irreparable loss primarily to unique natural areas. Historic human-related aspects of these changes were a concern to some extent, but things like the loss of giant trees and the commercialization of spectacular nature seemed to take precedence. We now appreciate the value of both natural and cultural components of this treasured land.

Yosemite was designated a national park in 1890 and initially administered by the military. In 1916, Congress passed the Organic Act, creating a civilian organization, the National Park Service (NPS), to oversee these special lands of the United States. By the 1950s, it was clear that more needed to be done to protect America’s natural wonders from increasing population and mechanization. In 1964, Congress passed the Wilderness Act, mandating even further protection for our country’s most pristine public lands. These lands now number over 111 million acres in 800 areas nationwide. The vast majority of Yosemite National Park was eventually designated Wilderness under the California Wilderness Act of 1984.

While the National Park Service’s Organic Act promoted the mandate of preservation, it allowed for development. Wilderness designation focused on naturally functioning ecosystems, unchanged by human activities. People are welcome—the benefits of spending time in nature are clear. However, developments in Wilderness are prohibited for the most part, and specific restrictions promote naturalness over the encroachment of civilization. Cultural resources were included in the language of the law but would need to be further addressed by other legislation. The Wilderness Act is primarily about wild free nature.

There is so much that is important about these areas. As resources are consumed, populations expand, and generations pass, natural areas are even more essential. Too often civilizations of today are irresponsible and near-sighted regarding the use of the nonhuman world around them. We need it to preserve life and sanity and science and human well-being. It will be needed for things we aren’t even aware of yet. Too often it is nonrenewable.

Protected areas provide some hope for the future. They are the keepers of naturally functioning ecosystems and cultural integrity, optimistically large enough to serve their role for the long run. The existence of these wild spaces won’t change the world. Hopefully, they will serve as mostly intact sanctuaries for the thousands of nonhuman species in each protected system. For the human species, they will be havens for past, present, and future knowledge, enjoyment, and spiritual renewal. These large tracts of land are our holdouts for respite from the modern world—our health depends on the health of our environment.

Nature and wildness are everywhere—our environment is the one thing we all share. Its value doesn’t have to be found only in the spectacular parts, the protected islands of public land, the Wilderness areas with a capital W. Every bit of the natural world is a wonder in and of itself. Sometimes we must remind ourselves to pay attention to the rest of our surroundings. Nature is goodness for countless reasons—it makes us better people, makes us happy and healthy, brings out our better selves. Our future depends on it, so it’s in our best interest to take good care of it.

This book follows one journey, a lifetime’s work, taking care of one place—Yosemite’s Wilderness.

• PART ONE •

THE LAST PATROL AUGUST 1 - 10, 2007

The Southern Yosemite Wilderness taken from Electra Peak: The Clark Range, Half Dome, and some smoke from a wildfire can be seen on the skyline. The Lyell Fork of the Merced is in the foreground.

L. PANTILAT

We gathered at the historic Wawona Stables. It was a clear blue sky day, promising to get hot, in early August 2007. The corrals, dusty and well worn after long years of service, harkened back to an earlier, simpler era. We were there to start a journey—Wawona to Hetch Hetchy, a 10-day patrol, a horse-packing trip, from the southern end of Yosemite to the farthest north we could get on a trail before exiting. We would cross the entire park, from one end to another, traveling for days and days through Yosemite’s magnificent wilderness, wild country mostly unchanged by civilization.

This was a particularly important trip for me. Having lived inside the park for all but a few years of my life, I felt like this expedition was a fitting climax to my adult life and National Park Service career. I had risen through the ranks of the Backcountry/Wilderness Management operation in Yosemite for the last 31 years, eventually becoming the park’s first female wilderness manager, responsible for oversight and supervision of the public’s use of Yosemite’s designated wilderness area. This was my last official patrol, a “turning over” of the care of land I had cherished and protected for my entire career. It was, of course, an event both sad and filled with wonder—a life’s effort summarized in one exceptional expedition, a grand tour all the way across the park with people I had partnered with for as long as three decades.

Six of us started the trip, to be joined later by others. Dr. Jan van Wagtendonk, the park’s renowned ecologist and chief scientist, was our elder—wise, articulate, a champion and respected visionary in our nation’s effort to understand human effects on the natural world. He was the mastermind of the Yosemite Wilderness Management program, as well as the architect of Yosemite’s oversight of these wild areas. He drew the wilderness boundaries and developed the capacities for appropriate public use of the roadless portions of the park, and then he used science to defend it. He was also a nationally recognized expert on wildland fire and ecological processes. He was my mentor and my hero for all sorts of reasons; plus he was a great guy and dear friend.

Another member of our group was Chief Ranger Steve Shackelton. Steve was raised in and near the park and at the time held the daunting job of supervising the Yosemite protection rangers, those park staff responsible for emergency response, law enforcement, fire, dispatch, and wilderness management. Eloquent, capable, and fully in love with the park, he was always good company. We had met in fourth grade at Oakhurst Elementary School. Who would have thought we would be riding the backcountry together almost 50 years later? He could perform all the duties of the staff he supervised, as well as fluently represent the National Park Service in venues from local business communities to Washington, DC, policy discussions. He was also a champion of the metaphor, equating the ranger staff to a symphony orchestra in which both the lighter woodwinds and the heavier brass work together to make the music of the ranger protection division. I was flute-ish myself.

The park service maintenance division was represented on the trip by three very capable staff. Tim Ludington, trails expert and program manager, started working as a laborer on a Yosemite backcountry crew at age 18, right out of high school. He progressed quickly and within a few years oversaw a National Park Service and California Conservation Corp (CCC) trail crew in the deep wilderness. He spent his adult life building and maintaining the pathways of Yosemite. He was a good friend, respected and admired in the park, and a true leader of a very complex, hazardous, remote, and nationally renowned trails operation. Handsome, tall, fit, and soft spoken, “Lud” was always a gentleman, always there to help if needed.

Stables forewoman and horse and mule expert Johanna Wheeler, also a child of Yosemite, was raised in Yosemite Valley. She was the first female corrals boss, and the animals, her staff, and her coworkers loved her for her calm expertise and good nature. She knew the horses and mules as well as the backcountry—it was a treat to have her along. Statuesque—a natural beauty in a country down-home style, blond and graceful in her jeans and long-sleeve shirts—she had a management style that revolved around love and respect for the animals, capable leadership for her human staff, and benevolent patience for those of us not as skilled or experienced but thrown into the horse and mule world by our jobs.

Chance Heppner worked as an animal packer for Johanna and had countless miles in the saddle throughout the Yosemite Wilderness. Although he generally worked to supply the trail crews in remote locations, he was also a great addition on these administrative outings. Modest and capable, a man of few words (at least around us), he was kind of like the movie cowboys, the tall silent types, with knowing eyes under his Stetson hat. He would manage the four-legged members of our group, leading a pack string of five mules and helping with the horses as needed. His skills required many years of background and training, as well as a great deal of backcountry common sense and a special appreciation and understanding of the ways of the animals. Strong and stocky, he could pack a mule in a matter of minutes.

It was a gathering of some of the key players in the effort to manage Yosemite National Park’s wilderness at that time. Our years of service were measured in decades and how far back our memories could reach in our tales and reminiscing. We had spent most of our adult lives protecting these remote parts of the park. Combined, we had at least 200 years of Yosemite work experience.

Building on the research of people like George Briggs, Dan Holmes, Jim Absher and R. G. Lee, Carl Sharsmith, and many others, Yosemite staff had spent decades considering the complex interrelationships between use and human-caused change to natural systems. Those of us traveling that day had used that interrelationship as the basis to define and manage the number of people who would use the roadless areas of Yosemite and how they would travel through it. We enabled the dual mandate of preservation and use. It was our passion and our life to work in these mountains, and we knew these backcountry places better than almost anyone else at that time. It was a great honor and pleasure to be in one another’s company. Who better to go into the wilderness with in 2007?

Johanna and Steve on the Trail—Day One.

J. VAN WAGTENDONK

Our journey started in Wawona, as far south as we could get on the trail system. Wawona is a small community just inside the southernmost boundary of the park at an elevation of 4,000 feet. We would enter the watershed of the South Fork of the Merced River and follow trails that lead into the South End, as this part of the park is commonly called. It is a quieter region, less visited than those areas out of Yosemite Valley and Tuolumne Meadows. We left the summer lowland heat in the morning, enjoying the luxury of riding rather than hiking up that first steep climb. The mules carrying all our gear made this ascent even better. The old backpacker in me felt a little guilty about it being so easy, but I got over it quickly. It was a big trip—I would need my strength for the rest of the way, I told myself convincingly. Although many of us had been on numerous trips into the wilderness that lasted as long as 10 days, none of us had ever traversed the entire park, so we were excited. We chattered at first and then often fell silent, mesmerized by the rhythm of hooves on the trail, our emotions softened by the warmth of the day.

One of the highlights we looked forward to on the trip was experiencing the biological diversity of this grand park. At first, the trail climbed up through chaparral, manzanita, and ponderosa pines. We left the heat and noise, roads and buildings behind, moving into a different world almost immediately: pine scented, quiet, often shaded from the brilliant sun. The southern portion of the park is generally lower in elevation, not as sculpted by the dramatic uplift and glacial scour of the loftier areas to the north and east, and the granitic landscape is not as dominant. There are deeper forests, more soil and less rock. Travel is easier on dirt trails, and the smell more organic and earthy. As we passed into higher elevations, the towering pine and fir forests gave way to lodgepole pines and mountain hemlocks, interspersed with lush wildflower meadows. The lakes we passed were mostly hidden in dark pockets of trees, their shores grassy and without beaches. We were surrounded by the serenity of the original forest. It was a special peace, one of the few places in the world that has never been logged or had its trees harvested. The ancient balance of the woodland was intact here.

It was unchanged, tranquil, with little or no sign of human activity or development—we felt transported to a simpler time when horseback travel was the norm and life seemed slower. It was 17 miles to our overnight destination, but our day’s journey passed peacefully. After a lovely lunch and calm passages through the woods, through wildflower meadows, and across pea gravel—decomposed granite—on ridgetop trails, we were starting to feel like we had entered the 1930s when we eventually got to our first night’s destination at Buck Camp.

The 1930s was a notable, even dramatic, era in the southern portion of Yosemite. In 1932, the Wawona basin (8,785 acres) was added to the park by acquiring claims of existing settlers. The primary visitor activities were road based and aimed at increasing tourism—the Wawona Road and Wawona Tunnel had just been dedicated. Park users were being encouraged to visit Glacier Point and the Mariposa Grove of Big Trees, where Big Trees Lodge camp, cabins, and cafeteria had been erected in the Upper Grove. Park visits totaled 372,317 in 1935.

Attendance was over 3.5 million in 2007, the year of our patrol, and reached 5.03 million in 2016. The roads in the park teemed with cars, the Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias needed major restoration from trampling and overdevelopment, and parkwide management actions addressed impacts from crowds rather than encouraging use. Things were very different now than in the 1930s in the front country of the park, but the Yosemite wilderness felt little changed. It was quiet, undeveloped, primitive. People were visitors here, the minority, the “seldom seen” in this area.

The Buck Camp cabin was the hub for personnel visiting this part of the park. The two-room log structure was built in 1931 for snow surveys and ranger patrol headquarters and was still staffed for at least a few months during the summer. There were occasional visits from artists and storytellers, woods workers, trail crews, big-shot management types, small-shot management types, park donors, stray backpackers, a variety of rangers, and locals on horseback—all living the psychological escape of the absence of a more civilized world.

The small cabin was a welcome sight for us all after a long day and seemed to grow out of the red fir and lodgepole forest as we approached, the weathered vertical log walls of the building blending with the forest around it. The cabin has two rooms. Metal shutters cover the screened windows, and there is a small porch looking out toward the canyon of the South Fork of the Merced. A very nice outhouse is up the hill, and the tack room and large corral stand adjacent to a multiacre fenced pasture. The spring runs strong and cold nearby, even in drought years. The surrounding meadows were thick with wildflowers and mosquitos that buzzed our ears and face as we approached. They obviously liked it here too.

We tied up to the hitch rack—unloading and unsaddling the animals is the priority on a trip like this. Regaining the use of our own bodies had to occur first, however. For the nonprofessional riders among us, getting off and walking around after a long first day in the saddle set a pitiful scene—we weren’t much help for a while. Tim and I often walked rather than rode to backcountry destinations, so both of us had worn-out and troublesome knees that were stiff as a board at that point. Jan and Steve spent most of their current work time either at a desk or walking on paved ground, so they weren’t much better. It is a truth that any part of your body that hurts will hurt more after a day in the saddle. Bad back? You will know it! Ankles remembering those sprains? You bet! Knees grumpy from basketball games? You can depend on them becoming stiff within a few miles! Except for Johanna and Chance, the rest of us hobbled around pathetically until our joints recovered sufficiently to carry loads to the cabin. As the aches and pains resolved, we could start enjoying life on the ground.

Sleeping spots were set up on the few flat areas under the pines, most of us using our saddle pads for insulation from the ground (ah, the scent of horse sweat—there’s nothing like it). It made me appreciate the big bedrolls the packers traveled with. My down sleeping bag seemed very thin despite the manty tarp that separated it from the saddle pads. Hoping the mosquitos wouldn’t last long into the evening, we opted to go without tents so it would be a starry night for us. No one really slept that well the first night out anyway—I never sleep well on the first night, even in a fancy hotel—so we all just got our spots ready for whatever the night might bring. It would feel good when we could finally lie down after a long day.

There were steaks for dinner to celebrate our first night out, so we lit the fire and commenced making perfect cooking coals. The cheery flames during happy hour turned into a bed of glowing embers just right for grilling, and our dinner, like most meals in the backcountry, was extra delicious, enhanced by the day in the great outdoors.

As we chatted around the campfire, we told stories about living in the south end of the park. Tim had been on many trail crews who lived in places like Moraine Meadows, a few miles from our location, where the camp was tucked off near a little waterfall on the creek and the stock often escaped after their bellies were full. Steve told the story of a search for a young girl who had disappeared from her campsite on the South Fork of the Merced—I remembered that one too, as I was assigned to a team with bloodhounds to track her. It was particularly memorable because the poor dogs were accustomed to running through fields and orchards in the San Joaquin Valley, not the tumble of river boulders in a High Sierra streambed. We found the girl, but we almost had to rescue the exhausted dogs. I remembered long days of hiking or riding during the summers I was assigned to the South End, living in this cabin and trying to cover the entire 200,000 acres that made up my assigned patrol area. Johanna and Chance could relate, as many of the trail crews they needed to supply might be 25–30 miles from the barn in this part of the park.

We talked about the peaceful rhythm of solitary life, of waking with the first light, listening to the noisy quiet of the natural world around us. Although that sounded tranquil, and was most commonly my state of mind, living alone in the backcountry wasn’t always without fear. When I thought about those scary times, one night in particular was notable—my night of terror here at Buck Camp. I decided to tell the tale around the campfire that night:

It started one night while I was assigned at Buck Camp for the summer. Something hit the screen windows of the cabin late in the evening. Then it happened again, a “thunk” I had never heard before. It made me nervous, made me feel vulnerable, a woman alone in a tiny remote log cabin deep in the woods. The kitchen was well lit with the gas lantern, so I felt very exposed and visible through the large screen windows. I hated the idea of someone watching me. The big metal shutters could be closed to block out the night and whatever was out there, but I would have to go outside, into the profound darkness around the cabin, to close them. The light would make me stand out in the blackness of the surrounding woods. I would be a clear target for anyone, or anything, out there, but I had to do it.

I strapped on my gun, grabbed the Coleman lantern, took a deep breath, and went into the darkness. I closed the metal shutters as quickly as I could and scurried back into the cabin. I tried to settle down, calm myself, but then . . .

A terrifying noise began . . . scratchhhhhhh . . . the sound of fingernails intermittently scratching on metal, oddly timed with periods of silence. Raw fear. My mind raced with images of a deviant trying to get in, scraping and tearing at the shutters.

I couldn’t escape my fear. I took my pistol and moved to the back room, curling up in a ball, hiding in my bed, my heart pounding. I was 26 miles into the backcountry, all alone. The woods around the cabin had gone silent, now gloomy and deeply dark. My ears strained for any noise; my blood pulsing in my head. The lack of sound was deafening, broken periodically by the sinister long scratches that made my skin crawl. Even the ringtail cats and large rodents that normally raced overhead in the attic area were listening. Could I possibly fall asleep? Would it be light soon? Would I survive the night, or would the perpetrator rip down the metal shutters?

It was interesting to be so afraid. I did have other fears while alone back there, mostly about my own abilities, my own mental/physical insufficiencies. Those fears were more about whether my chronically damaged ankles would support me for another 5 days with this 50-pound pack. Or would I slip off this steep snowbank and crack my head open on the rocks below? What if my horse fell while traveling over glacially smoothed, sloping rock trails? And while these things made my heart race and could be terrifying, they were somehow more pure, not sinister.

But crazy or mean people—that’s a whole different deal, and that was what I was imagining outside. Very few people are sinister, especially those I encountered in the backcountry of Yosemite. It helped calm me to review a few facts about my predicament. People were always a major part of my job, as I had spent my career in one of the most heavily used wilderness areas in the world. I was a trained professional: an educator, a cop, a rescuer, an interpreter, a host, a wildlife manager, a clean-up crew. I was a guide and speaker of backwoods truths. I picked up tin cans and toilet paper and broken bodies. I talked to thousands and thousands of enthusiastic backcountry users over the course of my wilderness career, shared stories, laughed, talked about bears and drinking water and “How far is it?” I spent countless hours helping people understand the meaning and importance of wild areas, of what their part is in this wonderful idea of preserving nature.

The events of the evening so far didn’t really fit that scenario.

So, there I was, huddled in a ball, my covers pulled protectively over me, fervently hoping it was a nice park visitor making those terrible-sounding scratches, not someone or something trying to get the metal shutters off the windows. I had to face the reality of really being alone, of no one there to help if I needed it. The opportunities for solitude the wilderness provides didn’t sound all that great then.

I fell asleep at some point and woke the next morning with gratitude. I had survived unscathed, and the light of day had returned. I made my way into the kitchen and started a fire in the woodstove. I put the coffee pot on the Coleman stove, wondering if my fears were a nightmare or real.

And then . . . scrrratchhhhhhhhh. From right under the kitchen counter! From the metal garbage can? I looked in and saw the real cause of my fear: a mouse, jumping desperately to escape the trash can it had fallen into, scratching its little claws against the metal on the way down, the noise amplified by the can.

My tripmates laughed at my predicament, and it seemed like a good way to end the evening. Luckily, there was nothing to terrorize us that first night out on our expedition, but we slept the sleep of those who live outdoors—one ear open, just in case. Who knew what would greet us on the next leg of our journey?

Jan checking the results of the restoration program.

L. BOYERS

It wasn’t sinister garbage-can scratching that woke us the next morning, day two of our journey, but da-ding, da-ding, da-ding. . . . The bell on the lead horse coming into the corral for morning grain signaled the end of the night. No doubt to the disappointment of our pack animals, who had enjoyed the lush meadow pasture, we were not to linger at Buck Camp, opting to leave the comparative backcountry luxury of a cabin stay. Buck Camp not only had a shower with hot water on the front porch but also featured one of the nicest outhouses in the backcountry. Small things like these can make a difference out here. But we had miles to make, and it was time to move on.

After a hearty breakfast around camp central (the large firepit with cut log chairs and benches situated between the cabin and meadow), we packed up: duffels of personal gear, panniers of camp gear, food boxes for us, and bags of grain for the animals. Chance and Johanna were first-class packers, and their sense for balance and security was critical both to the animals and to our stuff. They were incredible to watch, swift and precise, making it look easy to load 100 pounds of gear on a mule. The animals knew them and were calm. Despite the cinching up and placing of loads, this was just part of their job. Another day at the salt mines.

The trail from Buck Camp ranger station immediately enters a meadow with tower delphiniums and tiger lilies, some as high as the mules’ heads, gracing both sides of our route. The sweetness of the sight and smell of this blossoming extravaganza lifted our hearts for the day’s travel. Passing through the gentle rolling landscape, we were reminded of past travelers of this route. The south end of the park had been used for millennia by members of the Miwuk, Pomo, and Paiute tribes. It was likely they moved through here across the Sierra for trade, for hunting and gathering, or to escape summer heat. They left little sign of their passing.

At the turn of the century, this area was used for grazing by Anglo settlers from nearby foothill gold rush towns. Cattle and sheep were driven into the meadows and gentle watersheds. The meadows were lush and stayed green most of the summer, but there were also hazards for these early wilderness users. One sad story relates to the killing of a grizzly bear near Buck Camp in 1887, perhaps one of the last grizzlies in Yosemite before going extinct in the Sierra in 1924. The stockmen got tired of the bear’s predation of their domestic cattle, easy pickings as they grazed. The men staked out a calf and waited, hidden. When the bear arrived, they shot and killed it. This heartbreaking metaphor illustrates the change that Anglo occupation brought to the natural world, the need to overpower nature. It wasn’t sad for the herders (or the calf)—they were using the land for their needs. They used the area in multiple ways, each having its own effect on the nonhuman world. For the bear, it marked the end of its life and perhaps even threatened the existence of its species. It is a sad instance of conflicting priorities and an example of one of the reasons parks were established. This was the bear’s home—the stockmen were the visitors.

Our trail led us across to the South Fork of the Merced River. Soda Springs, a delightful stop in the south end, was our first destination. Like the soda springs in Tuolumne Meadows, the bubbling pools here are the result of carbon dioxide gas of volcanic origin continuously seeping upward through sediment and into the bottom of the pools. These springs were probably well known to the local tribes for their bubbling waters and mineral healing powers. Native Americans excavated saltier springs to the north to aid in the gathering of minerals left behind after evaporation. It is likely these springs here on the South Fork were frequented by early travelers as well. The rust-colored effervescent flows are a curiosity in the backcountry and still attract humans. Although some claim to like the taste, I find it metallic and odd, and I was never one to drink much of it. We modern travelers apparently get our minerals in other ways. It is wonderful to imagine past people here, using these resources, knowing their bodies’ needs for such a powerful drink. Tim and Jan had big gulps of it—perhaps it made their bodies stronger. The rest of us chose to pass on the afternoon soda springs cocktail.

We didn’t linger, as we needed to head out to Chain Lakes, where we would evaluate the effectiveness of campsite restoration efforts and gaze at Sing Peak, the scenic crag overlooking the lakes.

Tie Sing, for whom the peak was named, was a Chinese American cook for the US Geological Survey. That the peak was named for him in 1899 during the height of xenophobia against Chinese Americans is testament to the recognition of his love for the backcountry and devotion to his job. He served as head chef for US Geological Survey for 28 years, no doubt pleasing many a mapmaker along the way. In 1915, he cooked for the Mather Mountain Party. Stephen Mather, who was to become the first director of the National Park Service, led an expedition to map and explore the wild areas in and around Yosemite. This area had been designated a national park in 1890 and had been administered by the military, but troops were needed elsewhere. Mather pushed Congress to establish the civilian National Park Service in 1916, the year after his expedition with the US Geological Survey.

Sing may have contributed substantially to the preservation of the park during this survey, as Mather and his team documented Sing’s ability to provide spectacular food in the backcountry. Mather recognized that no matter how beautiful the landscape, if you “give a man a poor breakfast after he has had a bad night’s sleep[,] . . . he will not care how fine your scenery is.” Mark Twain had a similar statement—nothing improves the scenery like bacon and eggs. Good advice.

Sadly, Sing died in a backcountry accident, perhaps from a cooking gas explosion, after years of roaming the mountains of California and Nevada.

Chain Lakes, our afternoon destination, are located below Sing Peak and feature popular camp spots. The area is remote, but increased visitation had left unacceptable impacts and made it a good candidate for more focused management. We were pleased to see that the restoration efforts implemented at Chain Lakes had worked well. What had been a basin filled with sprawling, ugly, blackened firepit monuments dotting the lakeshore was now cleaner, wilder, a place you would be happy to camp in—a reward for the work of getting to that spot. Park wilderness rangers and restoration crews, many subsidized by Yosemite Fund (now Yosemite Conservancy), had been keeping the area in good shape.

Wilderness staff at work restoring a campsite. Properly disposing of large amounts of charcoal was often problematic in heavily used areas.

NPS PHOTO

Campfires and water quality protection were priority concerns in managing overnight use in the backcountry, and the consequences of the impacts of both issues were highly dependent on the location and condition of the campsite. An existing campfire ring served as tacit approval for backcountry users to move into that spot and build a new fire, regardless of the appropriateness of the ring’s location or condition. The closer a campsite was to a lakeshore or creekbank, the more likely its use would degrade water quality. Loss of vegetation, compacted soils, human waste concerns, and aquatic impacts at the water’s edge were likely. There are experiential impacts as well—a site right on the shore reduces the naturalness of the area for all other users who can see it from anywhere around the lake, and sites along a river impede the travel and enjoyment of those hiking it.

However, telling people not to camp right next to a beautiful lake or singing stream was like telling the tide not to go back out to the ocean. We had to eliminate temptation! Sites closer than 100 feet from water were always targeted for removal. The City of San Francisco was also paying Yosemite a significant amount of money to protect the quality of the water flowing into Hetch Hetchy, a primary source of drinking water for that major metropolitan center. While this is no doubt in part because clean drinking water is a wonderful thing, it was also a matter of law and policy. Paying rangers to protect the watershed met a legal Clean Water Act requirement that allowed the city to avoid building a major water treatment facility, at least for a time.

Campfire rings also engendered another problem—campfires themselves. These small fires are one of the visitor activities that cause lasting impacts to the terrestrial as well as the aquatic world. This damage includes fire-scarred rocks, proliferation of charcoal often mixed with poorly burnt trash, and areas stripped of burnable wood. Dead and down wood is needed for purposes such as animal and insect habitat, soil development, and shelter from the elements for smaller plants. Lower branches are stripped from nearby trees, leaving an unnatural “grazed line” to the forest around heavily used areas. Heat from a campfire often sterilizes the soil beneath it, and visitors trample trails into the surrounding forest for firewood collection. Improperly extinguished campfires have also resulted in wildfires.

The use of campfires was gradually being phased out throughout much of the Sierra Nevada, particularly at higher elevations where firewood is scarce. For many people, however, it was an essential and central part of the experience. Many equate camping with campfires, the image of a crackling fire providing light, warmth, and protection against the black of night. Noted Tuolumne Meadows naturalist Carl Sharsmith used to call campfires “the TVs of the backcountry” because they are mesmerizing to sit around and stare at for hours. Fires are allowed below 9,600 feet in elevation in existing, legal sites in Yosemite.

Some hikers insisted on building their own campsites rather than using the recommended existing sites—perhaps it is a primitive calling from somewhere deep in their genetic memory, or perhaps it is something they thought would make their backcountry adventure more authentic. We were making headway in our efforts to reduce the number of sites, however. Over the course of 28 years, a campsite-monitoring program measured the effectiveness of restoration management. The results showed that the combination of increased education, restoration, and policy changes reduced both the size and the number of sites, resulting in cleaner, healthier, and more attractive camp areas.

Staff could reduce the number of sites and make the best one attractive, but we couldn’t completely erase the signs of nights spent around a campfire. Charcoal deposits burned onto rocks were hardest to deal with. We did what we could—the only real way to clean charcoal-burnt rocks is to throw them into fast-running water, which unfortunately was impractical in most situations. We could decompact and camouflage hardened ground; bring in duff, rocks, and logs to provide shelter for new plants to “naturalize” the site; and block off and disguise use trails to repair other impacts of a campfire location. These efforts would help discourage continued use of the spot, but the campsite (and fire ring) often came back into use. In truth, such sites were often great places to camp and had been used in some cases for thousands of years. They just weren’t legal now. Somewhat paralleling the cattlemen killing the bear, backcountry campers were changing the natural area they found, leaving a sign, a scar, in their wake. As managers, we had to find a balance and accept that our human presence would impact the natural landscape.

Restoration work was a necessary result of our management decision to allow wilderness travelers maximum freedom. It kept the burnt rocks and waterside campsites to a minimum. Trailhead quotas, permits, and education, backed with field contacts and enforcement, were also keys to success. We made these compromises to balance the integrity of the wilderness and the enjoyment of the public. The management program to limit or disperse use that Dr. Jan van Wagtendonk, our group elder, had developed in the mid-1970s is still the critical foundation to this multifaceted effort today and was well accepted after the first few years. Although I remember being one of the many who said I would never get a permit to go into the backcountry in my younger days, it seems we all got used to the program and its merits and supported it. Controlling use has been a significant management concern in most parts of the park for decades. Yosemite has been at risk of the proverbial fate of being “loved to death” by a public eager to enjoy its wonders, and park managers have tried a variety of options to protect resources from overuse. Determining the appropriate number of visitors has been controversial, particularly in Yosemite Valley, and the decisions have been the subject of lawsuits. Quotas for the number of visitors allowed in the backcountry were set after considerable research and applied to our management system. Those numbers have never been legally challenged, high praise for a system that restricts visitor access in a such a popular place. We all congratulated Jan on his good thinking—he seemed to like that.

After a quick patrol of the area, our group moved on to Upper Merced Pass Lake for the night. Time for a swim to wash off the trail dust, get dinner going, and make our sleeping spots in a lodgepole needle bed under the trees. We were already falling into the pre-technological rhythm of time, where the day is determined not by watch or phone but by the level of the sun, now reflecting low across the mountaintops.

As the stars emerged in the night sky and the campfire flames, and a little “firewater” warmed our souls, it wasn’t surprising that we brought up the topic of Lower Merced Pass Lake, just a half a mile away. It was the scene of a notorious law enforcement incident in 1977 when a smuggler’s plane filled with drugs crashed into the lake. Many stories had circulated about it over the last 30 years. Steve’s father, Lee Shackelton, was the chief of the law enforcement staff at the time, so Steve had an insider’s perspective. As the chief ranger himself, Steve also understood the complications of the incident. I had even used the incident as a teaching tool to examine how the Wilderness Act applied to unique situations on the ground, and a few books (including Nevada Barr’s High Country) had been written about the drug plane crash. Our campfire tale for the evening was set.

Steve recounted the incident.

A drought in 1976/1977 had left the high country of Yosemite almost dusty dry, and in January 1977 the upper reaches of the Sierra were accessible without skis or snowshoes. Concession employees backpacking on their days off came upon a disturbing sight—an airplane wing and debris scattered among the trees at a high-country lake. They notified the park service, who sent in a helicopter to investigate. Most of the plane had ended up in the lake, which was frozen by then, but mangled wreckage and much of the plane’s freight lay strewn along the path of the crash. The cargo? Burlap sacks of marijuana—eventually estimated at almost three tons of pot.

Efforts over the next few days to find and retrieve the smugglers’ bodies and collect the payload were mostly unsuccessful. Winter closed back in on the site, and authorities decided to return in the spring. This was a fateful ruling for a small community of climbers and winter employees in the park. A few interesting coincidences started catching official attention as time passed. All the maps of the area sold out from local mountaineering stores. There was an unusual amount of vehicle activity at the trailhead to the lake. Gossip about “high country highs” and a mother lode of easy money filtered back to park personnel. There was a noticeable change among the clientele at Camp Four, the climber camp in Yosemite Valley—lots of new climbing gear and tents, old vehicles replaced with new ones, no shortage of money for drinks at the Mountain Room Bar—and apparently no shortage of available pot, even if some of it was soaked in aviation fuel.

When official staff were sent in to covertly investigate the crash site, one ranger said there was a “small village” on the shore where entrepreneurs were mining the frozen lake, even abandoning camping gear there to carry more marijuana out in their packs. When a helicopter was finally sent in with law enforcement staff, the “miners” scattered—NPS had reclaimed Lower Merced Pass Lake and its contraband. Steve noted that Lemoore Naval Air Station, US Customs Service, the Drug Enforcement Agency, the National Transportation Safety Board, and the Federal Aviation Administration all became involved with the National Park Service to handle the incident.

The park service cleaned up the site, and burlap bags of soaking wet marijuana were removed from the backcountry and stored in the Yosemite Valley jail until they could be disposed. Staff reported odiferous pot-infused water soaking through the floor of the holding cell and into the firehouse below, much to the consternation of Don Cross, the gruff fire management officer at the time. Guards were posted at the lake, and the well-worn path into the area from the trailhead returned to its previous barely used status.

The Lockheed PV-1 had been under the control of an ex-Vietnam pilot and a copilot. They were on their second trip across the border from Mexico that day with a full load of marijuana when they plunged into Lower Merced Pass Lake. Much of the cargo was never salvaged and seems to have disappeared into the drug-fueled environment of the late 1970s in and around Yosemite. The pilots’ bodies were finally recovered in June 1977, but their story lives on.

We all remembered the legendary incident. As we finished the evening and slipped off to bed, we hoped the ghosts of the pilots who died in the crash weren’t hanging around. It was a little spooky to think about those lost souls who might be just over the ridge, a little something to ponder just as we slipped off to sleep in the nighttime forest.

Chance, Tim, and Johanna celebrate reaching the top of Red Peak Pass. The summits of the Cathedral Range stand tall in the background.

L. BOYERS

The next day, we left our campsite at Upper Merced Pass Lake and set off to cross the Clark Range. This spur off the main crest of the Sierra is a colorful mélange of stone and snow. Like a watercolor palette of earth tones, it is rich with reds, golds, and deep browns, its texture loose with small rocks. These peaks are mostly composed of metamorphic rock, so they look and feel different from the more common granitic landscape.

The mountaintops of the Clark Range line up like soldiers, standing at attention, their summits defining the horizon. Red, Grey, Merced, and Triple Divide Peaks and Mount Clark divide the watersheds of the Illilouette basin and south fork and main stem of the Merced River. These summits are slightly lower in elevation than those in the neighboring Cathedral Range. Once a land flowing with rivers of ice, the Clark Range is dotted with scoured-out basins and punctuated by scenic horns, its glaciers long gone. Glaciers remain, dwindling, under nearby Mount Lyell and Mount McClure in the Cathedral Range. Even those ancient flows have lost 67–78 percent of their surface area since they were recorded in 1883, and the Mount Lyell glacier is now considered a stagnant ice field because it is no longer moving. These features will probably be gone soon as well, perhaps even in the next 5 to 20 years, according to park geologist Greg Stock.

Galen Clark, for whom the peak and range were named, was the sort of guy we all envied in a way. Stricken with consumption (tuberculosis) at age 43, he headed for the mountains. He ended up in Wawona in 1856, a time of gold rush expansion. While exploring the ridges around him, he came across a giant cinnamon-colored tree—in fact, a large gathering of them. Now called the Mariposa Grove, Clark used his voice to protect these stunning stands of ancients. He was the first European American to tell the Anglo world about the giant sequoia. Clark became the guardian of the grove and eventually was deemed the guardian of the Yosemite Grant, which included Yosemite Valley, and his writings were instrumental in the eventual preservation of what we now know as Yosemite National Park. He lived to be 95 years old—apparently, there is nothing like mountain air to cure what ails you.

All was not quite well in this story, however. The traditionally associated tribes of the Yosemite region had been stewards of that amazing grove of giant trees, and of Yosemite Valley, for thousands of years, but their voices were not heard in this period of park history. The very protection of Yosemite contributed to their eventual banishment from their homelands. Now Native American voices speaking of their ties to this land are finally being heard. Today their stories live in interpretation, education, and planning efforts in the park. I wonder what their original name was for the Clark Range.

We would not be considering the name of this range as we traveled that day, however. Members of “the Big Trip,” as Jan had named our little expedition, were about to get up close and personal with the Clark Range in a different way: up and over it. Crossing Red Peak Pass, the sole trail to the other side, was always memorable. Like the high passes in the steeper mountains of the southern Sierra Nevada, it seemed impossible that a trail could go up the sheer rock wall rising to a ridge above Upper Ottoway Lake. Anticipation always built as the trail approached the pass. As we started to gain elevation, I couldn’t help but wonder about our route. I had forgotten how exposed the trail was. I found myself thinking it can’t go up that steep, featureless expanse of rock—and yet it does.

We started up. Switchbacking, hairpin corner after hairpin corner, the cliff dropping below us. As hooves slid on dirtless rock, the sinking, slipping feeling and sound of metal losing traction took our breath away and tightened our stomachs. We gained elevation. I remember at one point looking essentially straight down at Chance the packer with his line of five mules, the string on three different narrow switchbacks, still tied head to tail, the slope falling steeply for hundreds of feet below them. Chance had two key personality traits necessary to be a good packer: He was calm, and he was competent. As I looked down at him from this perilous spot, I could see he was completely focused—his eyes and body were intent and alert. His outward demeanor was quiet—he seemed confident and in control. I’m sure the animals perceived this quality as they worked as a unit to get up the treacherous section of trail. If Chance had freaked out, they would have freaked out. It was an impressive feat of horsemanship and packing skill. My heart was in my throat just riding up it.

The view from 10,300 feet at the top of Red Peak Pass, looking into the Merced Drainage, with Mount Ritter, Mount Banner, and the Minarets in the Ansel Adams Wilderness in the distance, was glorious and stunning. Rock and ice in their most dramatic forms, forests growing green only to the timber line, the Merced River watershed curved and flowing below us, the vastness of Sierra Nevada granite spread before us. The view was improved by the reality that we had survived the trip up. It was a relief to get to the pass.

For a moment, I fell into a little personal musing. I was thrilled at the privilege and responsibility I had been given to oversee this natural treasure spread before me. Although I was uniquely qualified to serve in this role as a “trailblazer,” I often felt I had to try harder, to prove myself even more because of my sex. At this time, women were infrequently hired into most positions of authority in the National Park Service. The backcountry had been a man’s world, and there was an expectation that women did not have the physical strength or perhaps the interest in living a life outdoors. Only a few women had entered the workforce in the roadless parts of Yosemite. I was unique not only in my role as the first female full-time mounted wilderness ranger, but also in the ten years I served as Yosemite’s first female wilderness manager. While I sometimes felt the sting of increased scrutiny, I felt strong in my heart and soul and body. This was the course I had chosen for my life, and I knew I could do it. I never really doubted that. It could be intimidating to stand up as a female in this male-dominated world, but I don’t remember ever feeling overt resistance. I was certainly harder on myself than anyone else was, knowing I had to set the highest standard and lead by example. In the end, I felt I had blazed a trail for other women to follow in land management. That was an honor in and of itself. In a way, reaching the top of this pass on this final patrol was an apex moment that summarized my effort. It wasn’t always easy, but it was wonderful and worth it.

The expansive view from the top of the pass stretches beyond our management boundary, out of the park and into Inyo National Forest. Yosemite is not just one isolated open space but part of a 2.5-million-acre roadless sanctuary set aside for the American public specifically to preserve its wildness. Encompassing some of the most spectacular parts of the Sierra Nevada, this large block of contiguous United States Forest Service and National Park Service Wilderness is exemplary in scenic wonder and rare in its size.

As land managers, we strived to protect these millions of acres cooperatively and with similar regulations, even though administrative responsibilities were spread over two national parks and 13 US Forest Service districts in four different national forests. That number of governmental entities working together could easily have been a bureaucratic disaster, but we had a common cause. The guidelines set by the Wilderness Act were the overarching philosophy. Different interpretations of phrases such as “untrammelled,” “wilderness character,” or “minimum requirement” sometimes resulted in small variations of policy. For both wildlife and humans, however, the interconnectivity of the land for use and preservation is vital. This vast tract of land is im-measurably valuable for all sorts of reasons. It was great to work with our neighbors as well.

Duty called, and our office for today was outside, on top of Red Peak Pass. It was time to pay attention to our descent. Reluctantly, we left our breathtaking view and worked down the rocky trail into the gentler surroundings below.

As our group passed Red Devil Lake, we laughed about how a person’s imagination could really get going on that name. No laughing matter, said I, and told them about a night in the distant past when I had camped there. Sitting alone in my little campsite those many years ago, I saw something move out of the corner of my eye. As the light faded, I kept trying to catch a glimpse of that ominous dark moving lump. Was it getting closer? I think so! Did I just see it inch forward? It’s closer, I know it! What should I do? Fear is an interesting emotion. It is part of what makes wilderness wild—the unknown, the adrenalin, the challenge of being in an uncertain environment. Perhaps it is part of our genetic programming, to react, to become better survivors. It takes us to our core, to the basics of life. The next morning, I saw that the creeping lump was just a dead tree, securely rooted to the ground. Silly me and my imagination. At any rate, I never camped at Red Devil Lake again.

That night, we travelers stayed at Steve Lynds’s trail crew camp on Triple Peak Fork. Like Tie Sing’s influence on Mather’s survey party, a stay in a trail crew camp is always uplifting, and Stevie, the crew foreman, was always a gracious and wonderful host. Stevie had been working these rugged expanses for many years and was tough as nails physically, his body wiry and strong, paired with a big heart and friendly demeanor. He greeted us enthusiastically. Tim was the boss of the trails operation for the park, so it was a bit of an event for Stevie to host us in camp.

As a good supervisor, Tim visited the backcountry crews regularly, so he knew the crew, but the rest of us needed a few introductions. They were a robust group, tan and strong, healthy, seeming to be an integral part of the granite flat they inhabited and the winding trails they built. It was always a pleasure to be in their company.

Trail crews, generally a group of about 8–15 men and women ranging in age from their 20s to their 40s, live life in the wild all summer. They work hard, sometimes hiking 12–15 miles a day just to get to and from the work site. Once there, they spend their day moving stone and earth, building the walls, causeways, and drainage structures we often take for granted—along with pathways that allow for safe passage for the rest of us while protecting the land around it.

A well-constructed trail is the most effective means of achieving this dual benefit of user safety and wildland protection. Most of us follow these trails without hesitation, even without conscious thought. Use is concentrated along that tread, leaving the surrounding soils and vegetation unchanged by our presence. Folks don’t get lost or get into dicey situations but stay on the path, moving securely from campsite to campsite along these rock and dirt passageways. Trails are the primary management tool of the backcountry.

This trail crew camp, like many others, was characterized by large yellow tarps set up to protect and define key functions of the operation. The cook tent was the favorite, of course, with a propane stove/oven, lots of counter space, pots and pans hanging from support logs, and dishes in mule-packable cupboards. Behind the kitchen, the back part of the cook tent stored boxes and ice chests of food, kept as safe from wildlife as possible—there was no end to the effort of foiling both rodents and bears. The more experienced trail crew cooks were masters of their trade, which required not only the safe storage of goods necessary to produce three huge meals a day for 10–15 ravenous workers but also the expertise to know how much food to order through the once-a-week pack train that brought the groceries. Storage of food items requires special considerations while deep in the woods. You don’t want to have too much or too little of anything, and you don’t want the animals to get into it. A good cook is a highly prized employee.

The kitchen at the Triple Peak Fork trail camp, aka “Stevie’s Camp.” Large tarps protect the work area, while a more enclosed tent in the back is used to store food and other supplies.

L BOYERS

Stevie’s camp was set up the way most backcountry trail camps are. The “jungle fire,” a carefully constructed firepit that serves as the heart of camp for all sorts of purposes, is generally located near the cook tent. This is not the round ring common in most campsites. It is long, deep, and rectangular, open at both ends for maximum oxygen draft efficiency and for adding or subtracting burnables or their remains. The jungle fire is also a key source of hot water. When possible, a gravity flow water system is hooked up with a hose to bring water into a 30-gallon metal garbage can that was placed on steel rods over one end of the firepit. This setup provides hot water for cooking and cleaning up, a necessary luxury in the backcountry. A ladle is hung on a pole near the firepit, reserved for dipping hot water into either the large dishwashing bins or individual wash pans. Frequent handwashing and good sanitation is mandatory in camps, especially around the kitchen. Other functions are located farther away from camp central. Deep holes were dug well away from the kitchen area for gray water disposal and another deep hole prepared even farther back for latrine use. In another part of camp, a large tarped area is set up to house tools and equipment. In a sheltered area nearby, a holding area is designated for the stock animals, the four-legged workforce that carried in weekly camp supplies and helped move dirt and stone.

Crew members generally set up their private sleeping spots somewhere out of sight of camp. They worked hard as a crew, as a team, all day but cherished the perfect campsites they picked out for their nighttime homes. These folks were strong, dedicated, and rare. They are at home in tents on decomposed granite platforms among boulder outcroppings. Rolling rocks and building or repairing trails, consuming and burning 5,000-plus calories a day, bathing in icy creeks, playing music or telling stories around the jungle fire at night under the stars, they would come back for more every day, year in and year out. A unique bond develops when humans spend time together out in the natural world, even over just a few hours or days. It is easy to imagine the special relationship these women and men have cultivated over the course of their trail crew career, working hard and living as they do. Lifelong friendships are built along with the trail tread.

Like others in the park, I always had a particular fondness and appreciation for trail crew men and women—they are an exceptional group of people I am grateful to have known. It was always a pleasure to spend some time in a trail camp, especially after traveling alone while on patrol. Some were academics, holding advanced degrees in disciplines such as landscape architecture, anthropology, or one of the physical sciences. Most were scholars of another type, educated by the land, who knew how to cut a rock using ancient tools, channel water through a wall or off a trail, or build steps that could last for decades while taking the repeated impact of 1,000-pound stock animals. They knew how to save a tree by building a path that protected it. They knew the lay of canyons, where the best swimming holes were, where to find good shortcuts when needed, and the rhythm of seasons. They weren’t obsessed with the media or politics and worked in harmony with one another toward a common goal. They worked hard all day, ate well, and stayed strong like the rock they shaped with stone tools.

There were often three or four different crews scattered throughout the backcountry, so I would plan to stop by whenever I could while on patrol. When visiting a trail camp, it was best to bring in goodies such as candy, whisky, and a Sunday San Francisco Chronicle—treats from the front country that weren’t available through the government commissary that filled the food orders. It was also important to work the dishwashing line after every meal, helping to ensure you’d be welcome next time—plus the warm water felt good, and your hands would get really clean for a change. You got to eat some great food and spend time laughing and talking. Trail crew life was a whole backcountry culture of its own, and it was nice to be a small part of it.

I wonder if things have changed much back there since I’ve been retired—I’m sure the men and women patrolling Yosemite’s wilderness and those working the same backcountry trails are telling similar stories and making memories for themselves, living the life out there.

Wilderness has a timelessness—it is one of its great values. Different generations will achieve the same benefit—witnessing the wonder of nature, of intact ecosystems, of living and breathing and enjoying open space and wildness with one another, or even while alone. That’s the idea in the legislation, in the management, in our hearts.

Stevie’s camp was lively that night. Visitors were somewhat unusual and generally a fun distraction for the crew, and we all enjoyed the comradery. We stayed up well into the evening around the fire, basking in its wonderful glow—full bellies, a crackling and toasty fire, music, and stories, of course.

That night, we heard some tales of a favorite backcountry character still on the job nearby. Stevie was very good friends with Fred Bertetta Jr., the wilderness ranger who was stationed at the Merced Lake Ranger Station, 7 or 8 miles downstream. Fred was a favorite of many and unique as an old guy among the cadre of young, uber-athletic staff that normally held that sort of position. His father had taken him to Merced Lake High Sierra Camp as a boy, and he never forgot it, vowing that someday he would return as the guardian of the area. It wasn’t until he was over 50 years old and owner of the largest private oil company in California, Olympic, that he jumped through the hoops to become a ranger, getting his emergency medical training and law enforcement commissions with all the other young aspiring recruits. He reveled in hosting the public, congressmen, and trail crews at his campfire at the ranger station, often providing fine wines, good cheer, and unexpectedly cosmopolitan and thoughtful conversations. He famously covered his patrol area with determination, sometimes taking experimental routes to see what wonders, or hazards, they held, a proclivity that probably saved the life of a lost hiker who had wandered far off the trail by Turner Lake. Unconventional, he wore a slouch hat rather than the traditional flat-brimmed ranger hat, traveled with a short stogie in his mouth, and often loose-herded his mule, Gem, letting her wander along behind him and his horse without being restrained by a lead rope. Luckily, the remote nature of his duty station allowed him to get away with these slights against the strait-laced norms of National Park Service standards. He was colorful and effective; loved the park, the public, and his job; and gave much to the backcountry, so those slights were generally overlooked. A character indeed. He was certainly a favorite of mine.

It was late in the evening when I finally got to bed, my sleeping bag next to a big boulder, the sound of Triple Fork Creek in the near distance. My mind strayed for a few minutes to my more conventional duties, to the four walls and what they held in my Yosemite Valley office—I couldn’t help it. The song of the creek brought me back to my piney woods bed, the tumbling lullaby of the tumbling water soft and complex, unique but repetitive. I eased into grateful sleep.

The classic beauty of the high country below the crest of the Sierra Nevada.

L. PANTILAT

Our expedition headed onward again the next morning, after a hearty trail crew breakfast of course. The view was indeed improved with eyes opened by a strong cup of coffee and belly happy with the delicious meal. Both Mark Twain and Stephen Mather commented on the value of good food while out in the backcountry, and for that, there’s nothin’ like a stay at a trail camp.

We left Stevie’s camp at Triple Peak Fork and took the High Trail. This route contours along the shoulder of the peaks above the upper reaches of the Merced River at 9,000 to 10,000 feet. It is quiet, with few visitors, and the trails and campsites are not patrolled or maintained as regularly. This is a remarkable and little-used part of the Yosemite Wilderness.

The trail passes along the benches above the canyon floor of the head-waters of the Merced River and brushes up against the alpine zone of the Cathedral Range rising above it. As we entered the watershed of the Lyell Fork of the Merced, we glimpsed tantalizing vistas of both the crest of the Sierra and the highest elevations of the Cathedral Range. Mount Lyell is the loftiest point in the park at 13,114 feet in elevation, and it is strikingly beautiful from the southwest. It serves as one of boundaries between the Merced and Tuolumne River drainages. The view was rimmed with dramatic peaks like Florence, Electra, Rodger, and Mount Ansel Adams, bare stone escarpments jutting into the horizon, defining the edges of the sky and the land of ice and snow. Juniper patriarchs stood ancient watch on the open granite slopes leading up to the summits. A broad glacial lake basin glistened below snowfields. This basin, in turn, drained into the Lyell Fork of the Merced, one of the major stems of the Merced Wild and Scenic River rushing toward Yosemite Valley.

We dropped down into the Lyell Fork on a rough patch of trail, so we had to pay attention to our footing rather than the beauty around us. I was glad Johanna and Chance were with us, as this stretch of trail had experienced some rockslides in the past and could be dicey for the stock animals. The route had improved since the last time I traveled it. I had come through this spot a few years prior to this trip with Gil Guerrero, who was working to remove fallen trees across the trail at the time. Gil had been a sawyer and packer for many years and had traveled all the trails of the park, removing downed trees and bringing materials and food to crews working in the remote parts of the park. He was so skilled and good natured that my boss had often assigned new mounted rangers to accompany him so they would “really learn the ropes” of traveling, working, and camping with stock in the backcountry. The rigors of a 10-day tour with a packer/sawyer were brutal, but Gil was among the most benevolent trainers despite the long and hard days. Rangers came away from these assignments tougher and wiser—and exhausted! Gil was remarkable—even the 20-year-olds couldn’t keep up with him. Although I had not been on a training trip at the time I had joined up with Gil, I always learned things just by watching the way he handled the stock. I felt fortunate to be with him at this hazardous point on the trail.

We were both on horseback with pack animals, but it was one of the many times I wished I was backpacking—it would have been so much easier. We came down the trail to a fresh rockslide covering both sides of about 20 linear feet of our route. The jumbled pile of rocks seemed impassible to me, but Gil was steady and experienced, having traveled many rough trails over the course of his years in the backcountry, and was not about to turn around. He told me to get off my horse and climb over the rock debris and boulders. He then cautiously and smoothly worked both his animal and mine through the slide. A slip, a broken leg, an animal down would have been disastrous and possibly deadly. It was terrifying to me, but Gil stayed calm, worked the animals up, around, and over the debris and large boulders, and we all lived to tell the tale. I could not have done it without Gil. His expertise is yet another example of the excellence and skill level of so many of the people who have worked in Yosemite.

On our current trip, our group eventually reached the riverbed at the floor of the canyon, where we stopped for lunch. We had traveled down the trail without incident up to that point, but that didn’t necessarily mean we were home free—we still had the unbridged stream to cross. The Lyell Fork could be a formable obstacle or an easy wade depending on the season and size of the snowpack. Although there are bridges on more heavily used trails, some remote areas, such as this crossing, were left in their natural state.

I would guess that many participants in a particular mid-1990s Yosemite Association (now Yosemite Conservancy) hiking seminar would remember this spot. That group was in the middle of a weeklong midsummer backpacking trip offered by the organization. Ginger Burley and I had led several such hikes. I always felt she was the brains and I was the brawn on those trips, so I guess we made a good team. On this backpacking adventure, runoff was still high from a moderately heavy winter, and we had to get 12 hikers across the unbridged and swollen Lyell Fork. We didn’t want to backtrack, so we made the decision to cross it—it would just be dicey. This was a case when it wasn’t an advantage to be a backpacker and on foot.

Ginger and I performed an on-the-spot safety lesson: To safely cross an unbridged creek on foot, you should (1) try to avoid getting in deeper than your thighs or you will lose your body weight advantage, (2) always unbuckle your backpack and be ready to slip out of it if you go down, and (3) use a walking stick as a “third leg,” face upstream, and step sideways, moving one point of contact at a time. If someone can get across and establish a high line, tying a fixed rope at a height well above the crossing can add security, but it is sometimes tricky to get in the right spot or even to use it. Never tie yourself into a rope—it can pull you down and drown you. Put on water shoes if you have them or get your boots wet—don’t try to cross barefoot. Sometimes there is strength in numbers—three people crossing in a triangle holding one another up works in some situations because each person can take advantage of the stability of the unit. In other cases when the current is perhaps stronger, it can work better to line up behind the biggest and strongest person to block the rushing water, which can be reassuring. With this single-line method, you can hold onto the person in front of you, holding them up while being supported by the person behind you. These techniques are tricky when you can’t see the boulders and rocks below—sometimes it’s safer to be on your own.

Yosemite Association group crossing the Lyell Fork during early summer runoff, facing upstream and using walking sticks for stability.

L BOYERS

Facing our fears, we decided the best option at this crossing was to stay close to one another but not linked, with spotters below for the weaker members of the group. We worked our way across, almost losing the smallest person in our group at one point. The rushing current did come up to our thighs. The water was snowmelt a short distance from its birthplace on the peaks around us. Our feet felt like blocks of ice, but we couldn’t afford to stumble—luckily, we finally got everyone to the other side.

Our only casualty was a Teva water shoe, which got loose and vanished downstream in an instant. It was sobering to see how quickly it disappeared. We were all exhilarated by the adventure and danger, or maybe it was because the icy water had caused a brain rush unlike any other.

Our Big Trip group in 2007 didn’t have the same worries since we were on horseback and the water was low that summer. We stopped for lunch at Doc Moyle’s Camp just above the crossing. The creek near the camp was crystal clear and fine, and we could see trout near the bank. Jagged peaks and lush meadows surrounded us. Doc Moyle was a veterinarian from Merced, and he loved to come to this spot every summer, maybe up until the 1960s. It was a stunning campsite, the high country at its best. Johanna may have heard stories about Doc and another famous character, Johnny Jones, who used to pack into these perfect campsites in the south end of the park and stay for extended periods. Johnny ran a pack station just outside the park and brought the wonders of the backcountry into the lives of many guests. These men were part of a certain era in Yosemite, before things like wilderness permits and quotas and lightweight camping gear. No doubt it was quite a good life if you like that sort of thing, which both Johanna and I probably would have.

Large horse-packing or hiking groups traveling together would sometimes stay weeks in a spot. Participants would come to know the land like an old friend, learning its nuances. They would establish camps for long-term use—erecting tables attached to trees, building benches, clearing tent platforms, and splitting rounds of wood for campfires or auguring them in for seating. Large tin cans of food would be brought in to augment trout from the streams. There was always a big fire ring that ended up loaded with charcoal after being used for many years.

But those days are past. Those big camps with built-in furniture, caches of gear, huge firepits, and can-filled trash dumps were from another era once backpacking became the majority use in the 1970s. Now most of those big camps have been rehabilitated and naturalized. The campsites are still used, just in a different manner, with less stress on the land. Doc Moyle’s Camp is even hard to find these days, and current users can feel like no one has been there before them. Despite increased numbers of wilderness users, the backcountry feels much more pristine these days thanks to such restoration efforts.

Tim, Jan, Steve, and I itched to hike up into the wonder-filled, glacially carved lake basin upstream from us, but we had to make it to Lewis Creek for the night. There just wasn’t enough time to explore the stunning vistas of the glorious amphitheater only a short hike away. Perfect rock stairways, benches of granite with dripping gardens of wildflowers, mini waterfalls, and tarns that reflected the peaks around them beckoned. Maybe next time—or not. Maybe they will just have to live on in our memories.

Back on the High Trail, our path mostly followed the 9,600-foot contour through a shadow-filled lodgepole forest, the light almost indigo in the distance. To the east, we were treated with glimpses of peaks such as Mount Florence and Cony Crags. We rode in companionable silence, our souls filled with the beauty of the day and the remarkable circumstance and fortune that we were there. At least that’s how I felt, anyway. I’ll bet my companions felt the same.

My thoughts returned to the stream crossing we had just passed. I was thinking about how the Lyell Fork of the Merced (and I guess that shoe we lost 10 years ago) flows east to west, headed for the San Joaquin Valley and eventually into the Pacific Ocean. It was humbling to be at the headwaters of this mighty river. The upper reaches of the Merced are not only incredibly important to the storage of clean water but also almost as beautiful as Yosemite Valley, the river’s downstream sister. We were just higher up on the glacial chain.

This vital gift of water plunges through the splendid upper canyon, through Yosemite Valley, down to the foothill reservoirs and into the farms of the San Joaquin Valley to feed a growing population and sinking water table. It eventually joins the San Joaquin River delta. Some of it—less and less these days—gets to the Pacific Ocean.

There is no underestimating the importance of these snow-filled catchments of water. Widespread drought, almost surely affected by climate change, is evidenced in the smaller snowpacks that are melting earlier each year, lowering the water levels of aquifers, lakes, and streams. Nature is dynamic, and changing conditions are common, but running low on water is a major deal. As a species, we might want to get ready to make some adjustments. Innovative thinking and some sacrifice may help if humans continue along this trajectory. The required solutions are as complex as the number of people using and needing water, and there are no easy answers. We can help by being aware of our habits and making conscious decisions to reuse or reduce. We can minimize our need for more—always more—things in our lives. We can live simpler lives, using the land gently.

I thought about the basic biological imperative regarding our response to change—adapt, migrate, or perish. It seems clear when we start considering the availability of resources such as clean water and air, for instance, that we better start adapting soon. This, at minimum, would include the practice of reduce, reuse, recycle for us common folks. We also need to support those who can do more to preserve the quality and quantity of life-providing resources by voting and supporting initiatives that protect these assets.

Migrate? At some point we will run out of places to move or find those places used up or unlivable. Outer space and the oceans seem unlikely destinations for most humans, but they are the frontier and perhaps our future. Migrations of both humans and nonhuman species seem constant as all of us strive to improve our living conditions. The competition for the best spots and the resources held within them will be endless.

And what about the third part of the imperative—perish? Over the long run, we are no doubt facing very serious consequences. I think the younger generations are probably much more aware of this than any other group so far. I hope they figure it out. Maybe these protected places will remind them that naturally functioning ecosystems are key to human survival, that the consequences of overindulging in the world’s resources may be dire, that the supply of life-sustaining properties is not bottomless and cannot support unlimited growth and consumption. Perhaps even that there are just too many people in the world.

In the real long run, that of geologic time, humans are likely a short-lived species. The mountains around us have been watching over this landscape long before humans roamed these paths. It is likely they will be here long after humankind burns itself out of existence, one way or another. Maybe that’s another reason to revere these lofty peaks surrounding us.

Our group needed to get to our camp for the night on Lewis Creek. We were still within the Merced River watershed—and still under the spell of the Cathedral Range. We would spend a couple more nights in the grace of this range, this place of worship. Our camp that evening would be at an elevation of about 9,600 feet near the spur trail to Bernice Lake. We would do a quick patrol to the lake in the morning.

We arrived at our campsite, a nice spot near Lewis Creek, and got the stock unpacked and settled in. It was time to wash off the trail dust, find and make our beds, and then start into camp chores. We had to fetch water from the creek, unpack panniers, and set up the kitchen. There was a rhythm we had already adapted to make or break camp. It was just part of life on the trail. Steve Shackelton served as the dinner chef that night, so we were all looking forward to something tasty.

As Steve prepared the meal, we talked about our upbringing and our families. Steve’s mother had been a teacher for many years at the elementary school in Yosemite Valley, and his father had overseen the Yosemite Law Enforcement Office, so Steve’s relationship with the park was deep. My parents started working in Yosemite as teenagers, and my mother’s family had ties that ran back for generations in the gold country just south of the park. My great-grandfather had welcomed President Theodore Roosevelt to Raymond, rail’s end, when he and John Muir came to Yosemite in 1903. My great-grandfather also served park visitors at a waystation, a small lodge just outside the park where the stagecoach brought early Yosemite tourists. Mom and Dad came to serve visitors as well, working for the park concessioner. They had their children in Lewis Memorial Hospital in Yosemite Valley and raised them on the Ahwahnee Meadow, with Half Dome in the front yard. Although I spent my school years in the foothills just outside the park, I came back to live and work here as a teenager myself, never to leave the park for more than a few months at a time since then, almost 60 years ago now.

We talked of that, and of the consequences of growing up with nature in our lives. Steve and I were both products of previous generations who made choices that led to our lives of service and adventure in the outdoors. We both felt it was a natural progression.

Our early lives in Yosemite Valley or in the nearby foothills gave us a special advantage—we felt like we belonged here. We had a unique “ace in the hole” emotionally when it came to dealing with the park and its issues, and that made a difference. Steve was smart, charismatic, and athletic, giving him great personal power in his difficult job in the park. He cared deeply about both the human and the nonhuman aspects of the place and often seemed overwhelmed with a type of joy that was contagious. His upbringing shaped his unique outlook.

I know my years here shaped me. Some may feel this lifestyle has left me naïve about the rigors of the real world: that I am a Pollyanna, steeped in optimism, seeing with rose-colored glasses. That could be. I have certainly been sheltered from much of the hardship others have experienced. Having traveled the world, however, I’ve seen many aspects of the human condition. I am also very respectful of the incredible complexity of human travails—that these large problems are far beyond my comprehension, that there are no easy solutions. I feel, however, that living in and with nature has made me more at peace, more understanding and generous, less angry with the world. Nature’s physical and biological forces improve me while I am in it. The sense of inevitability, a calm rhythm over the eons that includes the reality of constant change, is often with me. These emotions counter stress and make me more grateful, more respectful of my surroundings, more reverent of life. I hope that others might receive this gift from the nonhuman world, or at least teach their children the same lessons in other ways. It seems a fortunate way to live. Steve and I certainly considered ourselves very lucky.

The star-filled nighttime sky, free from artificial light, was endless above us. The bedtime comforts of pure quiet beyond a gentle rustling of the creek and the windsong in the trees, the warmth of a down sleeping bag against the alpine chill, and the relief of lying down and stretching our aching backs after a hard physical day were our rewards that evening. It felt good to go to sleep.

Vogelsang High Sierra Camp (at over 10,000 feet in elevation) is dwarfed by Fletcher Peak.

NPS PHOTO

When we woke that morning in our little camp beside Lewis Creek, the day already felt different. We would be traveling back into civilization, at least for the night. Tuolumne Meadows was about 11 trail miles away, basically just over Vogelsang Pass. Although we were still in very wild surroundings, a different state of mind set in, and we were all a little subdued, not ready to reenter the hustle and bustle of the front country.

To distract us, I shared a couple of local memories, like the time I found an unopened cold beer in the creek near this camp (it sometimes pays to be a trash collector), which of course I had to drink (while in uniform) rather than pack out, giving me quite a buzz at almost 10,000 feet in elevation. Or the time Jan and I hiked across the lake basin just uphill from us while out on a resource impact survey and got waylaid after making a not-so-good route choice. Jan was a very strong hiker, and knew the trails well, but he often enjoyed an alternative to the formal trail when possible. He suggested we cut across to the pass, skirting the valley (and trail) below. While it looked like a good route at the time, it was one of those shortcuts that turned into an ankle-bending, cross-slope grind that took longer than we expected and made me limp before it was over. It was actually more of a “long cut,” a common malady of cross-country travel and, indeed, even life. Sometimes you pay an unexpected price for taking an alternative route. We still enjoyed it, and always saw something new, but I had to remind Jan of his questionable leadership on that one.

Our first business after breakfast was to check Bernice Lake. This lake was named for the wife of W. B. Lewis, superintendent of Yosemite from 1916 to 1927. Those must have been heady times for early park managers. Maps were still in the process of being made, and those in charge could label things what they wanted to, apparently disregarding Indigenous names that may have already existed. The politics of the era resulted instead in assigning a lake the name of a boss’s wife. It wasn’t too surprising since we were in a creek drainage, Lewis Creek, named after him, a superintendent.

A more common, and perhaps more fitting, appellation in this area was Vogelsang, a German word meaning “a meadow in which birds sing.” That sounds nice, but the Vogelsang used here was the name of the California fish and game commissioner in the early 1900s. It made me wonder about our tendency to humanize nature by labeling peaks and lakes and rivers after now obscure managers—and their wives. I liked “a meadow in which birds sing” a lot better. It was more poetic, more like what the native people would have called these mountain glades.

All was well at Bernice Lake, and after some minor trash collection and surveying of campsites, we returned to camp, packed up, and headed out. We would cross Vogelsang Pass, which was under Vogel-sang Peak, and go past Vogelsang Lake to Vogelsang High Sierra Camp. Perhaps the reason “Vogelsang” was used was not to honor a fish and game commissioner but because it took too long to say A Meadow in Which Birds Sing Pass or Peak or Lake or High Camp. I don’t think that was the case, however.

We left the crest of the Cathedral Range behind as we crossed the 10,670-foot pass and entered one of the most heavily used parts of the Yosemite high country. This relatively accessible area within a day’s walk of Tuolumne Meadows has some of the park’s most spectacular scenery. Horns of granite called “nunataks” spike into the horizon, once surrounded but unchanged by the ancient ice. Crags resembling a train are recognized as Choo Choo Ridge, while other peaks stand isolated, like pinnacles in the summer sky. Basins, scoured out by glacial forces, beckon from all four directions, some filled with lakes, some filled only with the history of another age. Meadows of sedge and tiny alpine-adapted wildflowers make pockets of green that burst with color along snowmelt crystal streams. Whitebark pines grow in picturesque clusters, forming small pockets of shelter from the intense sun. Clark’s nutcrackers fly among them, gathering and spreading seeds for future habitat, their presence flashy and boisterous. Wind and sun are constant companions in these open spaces, a reminder of the proximity to the summits of the Sierra Nevada.

In the middle of all this splendor is Vogelsang High Sierra Camp. Most visitors find the camp and its influence both alluring and distracting in the alpine wildness. The stone kitchen/dining building, surrounded by 12 tent cabins, is found in an open plain near Fletcher Lake at just over 10,000 feet in elevation. A large bathroom/shower house and the corral area are adjacent to the main building of the High Camp. Not far away, a backpackers’ campground adds to the civilized feel with a large composting toilet and food-storage boxes among the worn campsites. Use trails, or those paths that develop by repeated walking across the same route, meander throughout constellations of white bark pines toward the lake. Add a concentration of visitors to the mix, and the place is like a little town. In fact, backpackers often stop by the dining room to buy a candy bar or other necessity. I’m guessing the camp itself is in a similar state (apart from an upgraded sewage disposal system) to how it appeared in the days when my father oversaw the operation of the High Sierra camps in the late 1940s—deliberately rustic, which is the point.

Vogelsang is one of five High Sierra camps found on a 49-mile trail loop around Tuolumne Meadows. The camps sleep and feed between 20 and 60 people during the two to three months they are open in summer. They were built between 1916 (Merced Lake Camp) and 1961 (Sunrise Camp). Their use, supply, and maintenance had a considerable effect over the years on their surroundings and the primary trails that serviced them. Although the camps are popular with guests, controversy about their appropriateness has waxed and waned. The camps were designated as Potential Wilderness Additions in the 1984 California Wilderness Act, small pockets in the greater Yosemite Wilderness. They were to be managed, per the published congressional intent accompanying the California Wilderness Act of 1984, “as far as practical as wilderness” despite their developments. Not surprisingly, this verbiage proved problematic, as various managers interpreted the threshold differently. The potential additions would also be designated as Wilderness without requiring congressional action when their use should cease, presumably when the camps were closed for good.

In the years following the congressional Wilderness designation, there was considerable difference of opinion about whether the legal intent was being met regarding management of the area as wilderness. Some felt the benefit of getting people who wouldn’t normally go into the backcountry without support outweighed the associated environmental impacts. Others felt that many users of the area in and around the High Camps were being adversely affected for the good of a few. The introduction of water and wastewater utilities, requiring large amounts of non-native materials and buildings incongruous with the surroundings, presented major issues regarding levels of development and are still problematic. The camps are a magnet for many less experienced hikers, a safe alternative where there are facilities, campgrounds, and other people: an attractive nuisance, impossible to ignore if you are a bear or a human in that part of the Yosemite Wilderness.

As managers, we sought to reduce the negative effects of the camps. They have been a strong presence in the heart of the Yosemite Wilderness and still retain some historic cachet. Upper management has generally been resistant to making significant changes to them or even closing them. Jan, by contrast, certainly would have liked them gone. Out of all of us, he had the purest values regarding wildness and felt strongly the camps had a substantial impact on wilderness values. Steve and I were a little more moderate in our approach and worked to find a reasonable compromise in the debates about the use and development of these special enclaves. Johanna and Tim were the practical members of our group. They were aware of the impact on the trails and on other users caused by supplying the camps, but they managed to fulfill their mandate of providing public service and protecting the environment as much as possible.

The day we arrived at Vogelsang High Camp, a rescue was in progress, exacerbating the jarring return to civilization after four days in the deep woods. A helicopter had landed near the tents, offloading medical staff. The “ship,” as it was called, was a relatively common search-and-rescue tool. During my career, I spent many hours flying over terrain through which I had laboriously hiked or ridden, peering out the bubble window high above the forests and canyons. We could be straining to see a scrap of color or movement on the ground while looking for a missing person or memorizing the lay of the land while being transported to an emergency deep in the wilderness. The ability to see thousands of acres at one time as a large geographical unit is both mind-boggling in its scope and beauty and illuminating to me as a manager. To the sick or injured person being treated by emergency workers, the ship may have been lifesaving.

Helicopters are commonly used in fire management for a variety of purposes, including reconnaissance, mapping, and personnel support. With proper consideration (we hope), helicopters will continue to be used for certain park purposes, such as wilderness snow surveys if necessary due to extreme avalanche danger or if they are deemed the minimum tool required to accomplish a necessary administrative function such as moving steel bridge stringers that could not be packed on a mule. It is scary, thrilling, exhilarating, and wondrous to fly around this park. I also could get very airsick, especially during searches, which was not popular with pilots.

Helicopters are excellent tools, but they are expensive in terms of both monetary cost and the experiential impact they have over a large area. The distinctive whop-whop-whop of their flight can be heard for many miles, compromising the silence of a wilderness setting. The sound breaks the spell of the woods. Like a siren heard on a highway, the sound causes our minds to race to possible scenarios of what might be wrong. The very presence of the ship intrudes on the mental relief, a prime value of wilderness, of being away from the often-jarring demands of the mechanized world.

Helicopters are also dangerous, and it is sort of amazing that we can hop in and out of them so cavalierly. We had to adhere to strict safety precautions when working in and around them. While on the ground, we always approached them from a certain direction, in view of the pilot, and always ducked low when the blades were whirling. I remember one nearly tragic search near Vogelsang when a mentally disabled young man wandered away from the Tuolumne campground and became lost. When we finally spotted him from the helicopter and landed nearby, he came running toward us, seemingly right into the blades. Luckily the angle of the ship was such that we could hop out and stop him before he was injured. Thank goodness it all ended safely.

I remembered another lost young man who came running toward me about half a mile from Vogelsang High Camp. It was very early summer in a heavy snow year, and the High Camp had not been set up for the season yet. A Boy Scout was reported missing. He had been separated from his troop in the subalpine zone at 10,000 feet and spent the night lost and alone. The winter’s snow still covered much of the area, obscuring trails and making travel difficult. Park staff set out on foot, hastily searching the most likely spots. I was sent up the main trail toward Vogelsang High Camp. As I came up the hill, I saw a small figure running toward me across the snowfield. It turned out to be the little boy with his great big pack and great big tears in his eyes. “I just need directions, I just need directions . . .” he said to me. What a brave little guy.

As our group passed through the area in 2007, we hoped the patient involved with the helicopter that day was okay but were glad to leave the excitement of the rescue behind as we continued down the hill to Tuolumne Meadows. Considered by some the largest subalpine meadow in the Sierra Nevada, Tuolumne is a series of meadows 12 miles long. Its unusual expanse dominates the landscape and has drawn humans to it for eons. Trails, like watercourses, seem to flow into or out of this sprawling grassland. It is a magnificent place, ringed by granitic domes polished to mirrorlike surfaces by glacial action and jagged spires that have survived unscathed above that ice. No wonder it has always been so popular. As an added benefit in these modern times, you can even drive to it, with wilderness right and left the whole way. Think about the value of that.

The stunning variety of Yosemite’s high country—Tuolumne’s peaks, domes, and meadows in winter.

NPS PHOTO

As we left the alpine zone, we traveled the worn trail, beaten by thousands of boots and hooves, into the bustling Tuolumne area. The trail tread was wide: exposed rock polished in places from so many footfalls, alpine soil churned to dust—it was such a different type of path than what we had traversed so far. The number of other travelers increased instantly, moving intently like ants in both directions on the trail. We were joined by High Camp guests, day hikers, novice and experienced backpackers, and a supply train of stock loaded with goodies.

As we neared the developed area of Tuolumne Meadows, we started hearing the front country—truck engines, maybe even campground noise, or was that the wind in the lodgepole pines? Whoops of a young man jumping into the icy waters of the Lyell Fork of the Tuolumne River made me smile. Getting back to civilization didn’t. We were almost back to a road, at least for the night.

The Tuolumne River, springing from Mount Lyell at 13,114 feet, here on its way to Hetch Hetchy, 9,000 feet below.

NPS PHOTO

After a night in the front country, including dinner at Jan’s research cabin in Bug Camp,* we continued our journey. I was glad to be back out, and it was good to get going somewhat early to beat the worst of the crowds on the Glen Aulin Trail.

No matter how many times I have been on that trail, I’m always thrilled by the stunning views of the Tuolumne River and Cathedral Range—it is world-class scenery—Wild and Scenic Tuolumne River and a National Scenic Trail indeed. It never ceases to take my breath away. It rarely stops being busy, either, as the route is also the main artery to the northern Yosemite Wilderness. It can be a wonderful place for a day hike, but hikers can go as far as Canada following this route, the Pacific Crest Trail. Throw in some overnight destinations, including Glen Aulin High Sierra Camp, and there is quite a bit of action on this first five-mile section of trail beyond Soda Springs in Tuolumne Meadows. It can get downright crowded.

All of us on the trip had a long history with this part of the trail. It is like a border town in a way, overflowing with frenetic and diverse local traffic and congestion until you get through it. Not only had we all traveled it almost every time we went into the north end of the park, but this first section of trail was also a work magnet due to its heavy use. Almost constant stock traffic from day rides and High Sierra Camp supply requires crews to pay significant maintenance attention to the trail, so they know almost every inch of it. Hundreds of day users and overnight hikers crowd the trail daily, drawing the increased attention of protection staff, so rangers patrol the route regularly. Studies and projects are often done in the area, particularly regarding water quality and meadow restoration, so resource management, maintenance, and science staff can commonly be found here.

Construction projects require significant administrative travel to the High Camp as well. The ever-ongoing effort to provide sewage disposal to the camp and adjacent campgrounds has resulted in an evolution of “fixes” over time. Some solutions have been more successful than others—and some more intrusive. Human waste disposal is among the most problematic of all recreational issues, especially in areas of concentrated use, and all public land managers must deal with it. Remote locations provide an extra layer of complexity, as does the responsibility to try to maintain some semblance of wildness at these popular destinations. It isn’t easy. At over 20 feet tall, the looming composting toilet building in the backpacker’s camp at Glen Aulin is always shocking to me in its size and presence. This building and the mound of imported materials to service the flush toilets at the adjacent High Camp are examples of the lengths management has gone to accommodate this level and type of use even in a Potential Wilderness Addition.

Luckily, our task for the day was not to deal with poop but to move along on our adventure and continue our patrol. We left most of the crowds behind and headed up Cold Canyon, en route to Virginia Canyon. An old cavalry trail, situated higher in a canyon slightly to the east, follows Alkali Creek without dropping down to Glen Aulin. It was probably a pretty good shortcut. We could almost transport ourselves back to the days when the US Army oversaw the park and soldiers spent weeks on patrol, blazing new routes, charting this wild and untrailed countryside, living out of their saddlebags. And while it felt good for me to be back on the trail again, I was glad to have a few more comforts. Those cavalry guys must have been so tough.

Our next highlight was Smokey Jack Meadow. This is one of my favorite spots, its lush openness a physical and emotional tonic from the muted overtones of the lodgepole forest we had been traveling through. It is a rich green color and soggy wet in places, and high and dry with ruddy swaths of grassland on decomposed granite in others. The summer sky opened above and around us. An ephemeral creek crossed the trail and flowed toward the Tuolumne River, passing an old trail crew camp as it meandered.

Smokey Jack Meadow was named after John Connell, the Irishman who hired John Muir to help tend his flock of sheep in 1868/1869. In his letters, Muir noted that Connell lived mostly on beans. After breakfast, he would fill his pockets with the dripping beans, which he would eat by the handful while following the sheep. His pants and boots became saturated with the juice of his meal. As he sat to rest, his bean-soaked pants became embedded with all manner of materials from the world around him and, instead of wearing thin, grew thicker and stouter. Muir said these garments grew to have a rich geological and biological significance.

Muir later bemoaned the damage caused by sheep—“hooved locusts,” as he called them—to Sierran meadows. This description and Muir’s observations were probably instrumental in the eventual protection of the high country after Muir took this concern to politicians and statesmen. Our attention to the health of meadows has continued into modern days. We now focus on stock use rather than sheep, however. Horses and mules can damage those lush green parts of the meadows, leaving hoof cuts (which can kill the roots of plants), compacting the soil in areas of heavy use, and “removing biomass” as they eat and roam the meadows. “Hooved locusts” devouring the meadows seems an easier concept to understand, though unacceptably nonscientific compared to “biomass removal,” the metric of the current times that measures the amount of vegetation lost to grazing, but we have scientists working on it today.

The clearing at what we now call Smokey Jack Meadow seems a spiritual place. An enormous boulder, about the size of a two-story house, rests on the edge of the forest. Perhaps it is a glacial erratic—it certainly is an anomaly, seeming out of place all by itself on the fringe of the glade. It must have been an important spot for the first travelers who likely passed through here, who probably camped within its shelter 6,000 to 8,000 years ago. I had stayed here several times, and the visiting public often comes under its spell, spending nights in one of the well-established campsites along the tree line.

Camping at Smokey Jack did not come without adventures for me. One summer, I got as lost as I have ever been while checking Virginia Lake, a large water body nearby. Cutting cross-country from the Grand Canyon of the Tuolumne, relying on my intuition, and basing my path on a paper 7.5-minute topographic map, commonly carried for route finding in those days, I misjudged my route. I spent several hours trying to figure out my position, moving from where I thought I was only to wind up somewhere else. Unfortunately, the canyon above Return Creek near Virginia Lake gets very steep, as wild and unvisited as almost any part of the park. I never got to the lake that day and managed to scare myself with the realization that I could indeed get myself in trouble much easier than I expected. It was a great relief to get to my little camp at Smokey Jack that night. The misadventure allowed me to relate to others who get lost in the woods. While I am not a great fan of GPS in the wilderness, old school that I am, it probably would have helped me that day. I had been carrying my park radio, but there are many “dead spots” with no reception in the backcountry, and I would have been loath to call in that I was lost with everyone listening anyway.

This little adventure also highlighted the potential perils of traveling alone. Had I been injured, I would have been very hard to find, but that didn’t stop me from taking routes like this one. People often wondered how I felt about being alone so often in the wilderness, but I was rarely scared or unhappy and even more rarely lost. I could easily spend 4 to 10 days traveling alone, not seeing anyone for long periods of time, even for days. Because I was raised in the mountains, in nature, by remarkable and supportive parents, I developed a different mental adaptation to my surroundings than the average person. As a child, I spent considerable time alone playing on the river or somewhere outside, entertaining myself with the wild woods around me. As my identity evolved, I found I preferred the company of the great outdoors. It was peaceful—I wasn’t competing with anything or anyone, I could move at my own rhythm, untouched by expectation or pride, greed, lust, wrath, gluttony, or sloth. Or most other sins, for that matter.

And because I found myself at ease in the mountains and maintained a sense of familiarity with them, I had a great deal of confidence going out on my own. I felt at home. This confidence kept me, mostly, from becoming lonely. Loneliness springs from needing or wanting a change in one’s circumstances—“if only someone else were here, I would feel better.” I was in good company in the woods, and although I often thought about sharing something with a friend or lover or family member, it wasn’t a sad feeling, but rather an excitement about what I might tell them when I saw them. At least that was the case most of the time. In truth, there were times when I was overcome by the need for another human, for comfort or protection or even entertainment. I remember traveling down the trail beside Illilouette Creek one day when I was overcome with emotion, and I cried for miles, sobbing in the saddle.

Most of the time, I was just fine with it. Being alone, being quiet, provides special access to one’s psyche, one’s soul. Much of the cacophony of human input eventually becomes secondary, if not absent, after a few days, allowing the mind to focus, which increases in intensity the longer one spends alone. Spending many days, or even many hours, without the intrusion of other people’s presence and priorities is a type of meditation, with its particular rewards and challenges. I could ponder the universe, consider the lint in my navel, or hash out a bureaucratic conundrum with spontaneity. Problems became less daunting, solutions could be finagled out the chaos, and peaceful calm prevailed more times than not, allowing my mind to settle to the point where I could truly enjoy the scenery, notice the wildlife, smell the flowers.

Being alone also built my self-confidence and forced me to become more creative, more self-sufficient in all my dealings. I’m sure I wouldn’t have done certain things, or tried to fix various objects or situations, or stood up to certain challenges if someone else had been there to do it for me. Completing those tasks gave me far more satisfaction than if I had been a bystander or just a helper. Being the sole proprietor is a strong form of ownership.

Was I more aware of my senses? Probably, because being alone eliminates so many distractions. We tend to take our senses for granted, not really paying much attention to the world around us. In the front country, I would often have to tell myself to breathe deeply, to try to determine the source of a specific smell, to tune my ears to a certain sound, to mentally appreciate the wonder of seeing, much less the beauty of what I was seeing. Probably the sense that sharpened the most for me was hearing, which is not surprising. Sitting in a camp alone, I focused on the noise of the night. This is surely about a fear of darkness, being ready to spring into action to defend myself. My other senses were affected as well. I strained to see through the darkness at night but was bombarded by the panorama of broad vistas during daylight hours. My sense of taste likely improved as I worked hard in the fresh air, developing a ravenous hunger. I devoured many meals with gusto that would not be quite so delicious in other circumstances. And my sense of smell developed a different palate as I breathed in the lovely, sweet, fragrant, woody, organic odors of the wilderness. I always noticed the chemical smells when I left the backcountry.

Being alone also offers the emotional benefit of freedom and spontaneity in movement and thought. My mind can roam freely, unhindered by social constraint. I can change plans and actions on a whim without endless discussion. I can follow my impulses when changing conditions present new intriguing possibilities. There is a special liberty to traveling alone. You just have to be careful not to get lost.

One of the wonderful aspects of this Big Trip in 2017 was that I wasn’t traveling alone but was in the company of dear friends and workmates. Our group would have a slightly different composition from this point on, however. Steve Shackelton, Yosemite’s chief ranger, who had been with us from Wawona to Tuolumne Meadows, was called back to the office, so he would no longer be accompanying us. We were about to gain two important new members at this point in the trip, however—Mark Fincher and Ken Watson.

Ken and Mark were key players in the wilderness operation. They were smart, fun, and my officemates in our daily operations. Ken supervised the wilderness permit system and maintained the smooth functioning of four visitor contact stations, a complex computerized rationing system, and a group of enthusiastic employees. He was good natured, competent, and, because he had worked at the Grand Canyon, inured to large amounts of hikers. He understood the technology of the day, which was a blessing for someone as inept at computers as I was. The operation he supervised was the primary interface with wilderness visitors. A member of each hiking group had to come into a station to pick up a wilderness permit before a trip and personally talk to someone Ken supervised. The quality of that interaction was significant to the safety of the visitor and to the backcountry. Yosemite attracts seasoned veterans of the trails who don’t need much input, but it also draws a high percentage of rank backpacking beginners who need a crash course on the intricacies of the Sierra Nevada. The ability to deliver important messaging is often coupled with the capacity to appropriately field questions like: Will there be mosquitos? Where are the geysers? Where can I see a bear, or where can I avoid bears? Ken served as the coach for those who coached the public—it was a big and important job.

Our new traveling companions, Mark and Ken, shown here on foot patrol in the Northern Yosemite Wilderness.

L BOYERS

Mark was my intellectual and philosophical sounding board and advisor, a partner in many decisions and wilderness adventures. He did a little of everything—he is wilderness wise in action and mind and was often called on for tasks ranging from park planning for projects that affected wilderness lands to teaching new employees about the esoteric values of wild places and the nuances of managing them. He is an avid outdoorsman, a skilled climber and skier, and a practitioner of outdoor ethics. His skills as a tracker, coupled with his knowledge of the back-country and search-and-rescue techniques, have proven to be invaluable in many emergency situations, and he has frequently been called on to train others. He is also the most well-read advocate of wilderness theory and philosophy of anyone I know, a valuable asset to the park. His voice is well respected locally and nationally, and his approach is always highly valued. Many of us considered him a wilderness scholar. He served a key role in our organization.

We were to meet up with Mark and Ken at Castle Camp, a well-used and designated stock camp in Virginia Canyon. They would join us for the remainder of the trip, performing the duties of a foot patrol. This arrangement would allow them to check places that were either inappropriate or unsafe to take stock along our route, and we would enjoy the benefit of their company and input in camp.

As the trail drops into Return Creek in Virginia Canyon, stands of mountain hemlock and stately red fir are juxtaposed along the trail-side, classically beautiful, smelling of the freshness of the deep forest. Mountain hemlocks seem almost lacy with nodding crowns and branch tips. Their short needles brim from their stems in all directions, giving the trees a softer, rounder, more lush appearance. Hemlocks have been called the most beautiful of all California conifers, the ladies of the forest. The north-facing trail is a perfect environment for them, holding heavy snows until late in the summer. Rusty columns of mature red fir—with its distinctive bark, reddish brown and thick, rich in color, and deeply furrowed—join the mountain hemlocks. The fir’s sloping branches hold nuthatches and chickadees next to its unique cones. These cones sit upright on the branch, sometimes reaching as high as nine inches. The cones disintegrate on the tree and send large, winged kernels whirling to the ground in fall and winter, a banquet for many seed eaters below. Western white pines are often found in this environment as well. These large, dramatic, five-needle pines often stand alone, their mosaic bark adding contrast and color to the dark-sap green of the hemlocks around them.

The wild ecosystem around me is essentially a neighborhood, the relationship among plants, particularly trees, a society. Science has found a physical connection, a mycorrhizal network in which parts of a fungus join the roots of groups of trees. This network allows the plants to communicate and assist one another. Mother trees, the ancients of the forest, can share carbon, water, and nutrients through these networks to assist others in need. Trees also exude chemical compounds that affect us. I wonder if my comfort in the woods without other humans around made me more receptive to the company of trees. They were certainly welcome daily companions.

The forest is always diverse, always fascinating—rare and valuable in its mere presence. These remote woodlands of the park are one of the few places in the world where the forest has never been manipulated by humans—the grand trees live and die on these hillsides, wild and unchanged. Times and the earth are changing, however, and a different kind of modern threat has emerged. Drought, fire, disease, warming temperatures, and insect infestation, all the result of a changing climate, are altering the forests of the world, and of Yosemite. In 2017, officials found 2.4 million dead trees spread over just 131,000 acres of the almost 750,000 total acres of the park. This is the worst die-off ever recorded in the park. The dying needles of the red fir give some of these giants a sad orange tinge. It is a sign of the times. Even the white bark pines, the hardy survivors of the highest elevations, are threatened by this shift in climate and associated hazards. The giant sequoia here and the ancient bristlecones of the nearby White Mountains, the most iconic of our forests, struggle with these modern threats. As much as 19 percent of the world’s giant sequoias have been lost to forest fires in recent years. These ancient trees continue to decline in number, victims of changes to their climate.

Our knees ached from the switchback descent into Virginia Canyon after a long day’s travel, and we were glad to reach flat ground. Ken and Mark, the foot patrol rangers ahead of us, had already stopped by the campsites of the few backpackers along Return Creek, sharing information about their trip, bear activity, and answering any questions the campers might have. Most of Yosemite’s current wilderness users seldom venture farther than about 10 miles from the trailhead, and we had just traveled about 15 miles when we pulled into our evening destination at Castle Camp, so it wasn’t unusual to only see a few other campers. It was good to reach our camp and get in for the day. The day’s travel through spectacular scenery, our lively conversations about a broad range of topics, and the physical well-being of living a life outdoors felt like this was what it was all about on this grand tour of the Yosemite Wilderness, and we were tired and happy.

Footnote

* Bug Camp was established as the insect research station in response to the needle-miner moth larva infestation and was operated from 1959 to 1963. The area now serves as housing and facilities for scientific or resource management staff in the government employee housing area of Tuolumne Meadows.

Crossed sabers—the regulatory blaze left by the cavalry in the early 1900s. Lists of rules were sometimes posted nearby for early backcountry travelers.

NPS PHOTO

Many had passed this way before. Virginia Canyon is a corridor, a passageway in the Sierra Nevada, a path used by those who know the way through and across the mountains. The trail from Tenaya Lake to Summit Pass via Virginia Canyon was much used by Native Americans, sheepherders, and miners. Perhaps they had passed by the very campsite we occupied in Virginia Canyon on that sixth night of our journey. It was a great place to camp—a large open flat, sheltered by the nearby canyon wall, surrounded by lodgepole pines, not too far from Return Creek. As lodgepoles can live 400 to 600 years, some of the trees that now shaded the site might have been seedlings in the understory as some of these early travelers passed through. There is a sizeable meadow nearby, a required stop for stock animals or sheep, so it is likely many had even camped here through multiple decades. Imagining those historic groups sitting at this very spot was a very interesting tidbit to consider over breakfast that morning.

As we packed up and saddled our stock, we were glad there weren’t flocks of sheep or herds of pack animals in the meadow, not only because of the logistical difficulties of traveling with large groups of animals but also due to the impact they would have had on the meadow. During the first decades of the 1900s, even the venerable Sierra Club traveled in large groups. Outings with as many 150 people, supported by pack animals (mostly burros), traveled through the wilderness, often staying for many days in prime spots such as this one.

Regulations establishing the maximum size a group could be were set at 15 people and 25 head of stock by the 1980s. That seemed like plenty, especially to those passing through these same areas on foot. I remember an administrative pack trip when it was more than plenty to one backpacker. We were coming out of Benson Lake, deep in the wilderness, on a trail our 2007 party would be using later that day. We came across a single hiker, carrying a large pack, clad only in a bright-red Speedo swimsuit. I was toward the back of the group with the pack string, there to assist in case problems arose on this very steep stretch of trail. As the rest of the party continued on, I stopped to do damage control, a generic backcountry ranger term meaning to deal with whatever issues might be affecting a visitor, which in this case was likely to be this hiker’s discomfort with having to share the trail with our group. Many hikers are not comfortable around stock animals and resent the effect, such as manure on the trail, that a pack train has on their experience. It occurred to me that there might be more to this story—that perhaps the last thing this hiker wanted to see was a ranger and a bunch of cowboy-type people on stock, especially while he was clad in such non-western attire. He had begun to fume by the time four or five riders passed him, ranting about the stock and why the park would allow this type of activity. As it happened, our group included some of the park’s highest-ranked scientists and supervisors, and we were there to assess our grazing management strategy, so he was slightly appeased when I told him the nature of this trip. I still think standing there in a skimpy Speedo was part of the problem, however. If it was me, I would certainly feel awkward under those circumstances.

For the next few days, we would be traveling the canyon country that so typifies this part of the Yosemite Wilderness. The rugged terrain of the northern portions of the park is characterized by long steep canyons running southwest from the crest of the Sierra. Cut by eons of snowmelt flowing off the jagged peaks and down rough, narrow gorges and eventually into the Tuolumne River, some of this country is extremely steep—rough and tangled with rock walls guarding both sides. Passage through places like the lower portions of Return Creek, Virginia Canyon, or Matterhorn Canyon was more trouble than it was worth. Wildlife, Native Americans, sheepmen, and the cavalry who tracked those shepherds didn’t venture past a certain point for the same reason—the going was just too difficult. Scott Weaver, a long-time and very experienced member of one of the trail crews, attempted to reach the Tuolumne River via Return Creek in the 1980s. After a harrowing and death-defying effort, he finally reached the river alive and promptly christened the area No Return Creek.

For most of the same reasons, current recreational users stay on the marked and maintained trail that follows the more reasonable route of the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) and avoids this deep dive into Return Creek. The route of this major trail would seem reasonable except that it basically travels at right angles to these canyons. A day’s journey is a constant up-one-side-and-down-the-other trek as the PCT heads north. Our party would leave Return Creek and Virginia Canyon, go up to Spiller Creek, drop in and climb out of Matterhorn Canyon, cross Wilson Creek, and then travel over Benson Pass and down to Smedberg Lake. There we would take the big descent into the basin that holds Benson Lake.

As our route fluctuated between about 8,600 feet to over 10,000 feet in elevation, we were treated to a changing landscape of forest types but primarily traveled through lodgepole forest. Despite the implication of their common name, the lodgepole pines at these higher elevations more resembled their Latin name, Pinus contorta. Their trunks were often twisted and bent by mountain snowslides resting on their hillside perches. They were lashed by the wind and shaped by the rocks around them.

Today, it is a federal offense (and an awful thing to do) to deface any object in the park, including trees. However, before there were maps, routes through the woods were marked by blazes, a language carved into tree bark. An X might denote a good creek crossing, a directional arrow or pointing finger might indicate a desirable route change, and certain blazes, such as a large square in a prominent tree at the edge of a meadow, could be seen from long distances across open space. Those who carved blazes preferred lodgepole pines for this use due to the ease of cutting into their relatively thin bark and the tree’s slow growth rate.

Thanks to Jim Snyder, James Murphy, and Bob Barrett, many Yosemite blazes were recorded and evaluated during the Wilderness Historic Resources Survey in 1988 and 1989. These men, a jackpot of backcountry knowledge, were old pals. Jim Snyder had been a trail crew foreman from 1965 to 1988. He also was a scholar of Yosemite history, especially the roadless areas. He spent decades building and maintaining trails while combing the park for the story of its human past. Despite finding his nature occasionally irascible, I hung on every word when he talked about Yosemite’s history and its relation to current times. He knew it like no other and always made connections that brought a richness to the stories.

Hard-working Jim Murphy was a colorful art teacher from Merced who started working trails in 1951, became Snyder’s first crew foreman, and later worked as the Snyder/Murphy Trail Crew backcountry cook every summer for years. He was full of life, full of jokes and puns, full of stories. He always wanted to make us laugh.

Bob Barrett had been coming to these mountains since 1948, started packing for the Park Service in 1956, and spent a lifetime of summers using horses and mules to supply trail crews and backcountry projects, all while keeping an eye out for the history of the area. Bob had a deep voice that resonated with the sound of the country he lived in, where horses and mules and cattle, not rushing traffic or city clatter, were the norm. He was a horseshoer and pack saddle maker—the real deal. (In the following photograph are two other men: Walt Castle was the corrals foreman for decades, and Ron Mackie was my boss and long-time wilderness persona as well. More about these key players in the park’s backcountry later.)

These men had lived in the local mountains for years and understood the rhythms of human passage. They were able to learn a great deal about how the remote areas had been used by the first non-Native travelers, and they documented proof of their findings within the survey. This research is a cultural treasure to the park. A day spent with any of these three men was a treat, and I always learned something new from them. I found their information fascinating and always kept a keen eye out for historic blazes, old camps or cabins, or signs of Native American presence.

Backcountry legends (L to R)—Bob Barrett, James Murphy, Walt Castle, Jim Snyder, and Ron Mackie.

R. TANAKA

I particularly like looking out for blazes because they are relatively numerous. Jim wrote that most of these marks are either directional or descriptive. Directional blazes could be as basic as chip blazes, hatchet-sized chunks in the bark used to mark a route before trails were established or maps were available. More distinctive marks followed the establishment of trails. Today, most who travel the Yosemite trail system are familiar with the “T” blaze made by the cavalry and the “diamond” blaze made by park service trail crews to signal the route.

Perhaps more interesting are the descriptive blazes that can be found throughout the backcountry. Some are of a personal nature, like a name and date to mark a person’s presence, somewhat like graffiti tagging, in which “signatures” are spray-painted on walls or freight cars. Other blazes depict recognizable images. Some have a picture of a person (an Asian man with a pigtail in one, a woman in Victorian dress in another), and some even illustrate sexually explicit fantasies. The Basque sheep-herders carved many crosses to mark their grazing areas. Some carvings just seem to be doodles, just-standing-around-in-the-deep-wilderness-with-nothin’-to-do-but-watch-these-sheep-eat-so-I-guess-I’ll-carve-on-this-tree kind of behavior.

Some blazes are of a regulatory or warning nature. We saw the crossed sabers of the cavalry on a regulation tree near Smedberg Lake. Such regulation blazes were often large square cuts in the bark where a listing of park rules was posted by the cavalry (and later by early park rangers). The regulations were printed on a long roll of muslin material. A sheet could be cut off the roll and tacked to the tree, although they were apparently torn down rather quickly, as if ignorance of the law was an excuse for bad behavior even back then.

This part of Yosemite north of Virginia Canyon had been well used by Native Americans. Hunting blinds and pieces of obsidian, the volcanic glass used to make tools, marked their popular camp areas or travel routes. Sheepherders and those seeking profit from mining or other activities passed through the same ways, leaving blazes and simple log and rock structures now decaying with time. These lasting signs are an important part of the human record of the park and confirm the value of preserving the cultural heritage that park and wilderness designation provide. Our route that day was rich with the evidence of each wave of wilderness users through time.

Along with looking for these markers of the past, we were also enjoying the view. Perhaps all the others who had traveled this route had done the same. The scenery around us was constantly changing, each vista ageless in alpine perfection. As we traveled up and down the dramatic canyons, the views from the top would take our breath away. We would go from one panorama to the next—those who have had the good fortune to travel the Pacific Crest Trail in this part of the park know what I’m talking about. On to Benson Lake for the evening.

The Pacific Crest Trail into the northern Yosemite Wilderness.

L. BOYERS

Since we were camped at Benson Lake, it seems appropriate to recognize Colonel H. C. Benson, for whom the lake was named. In the late 1890s, Colonel Benson and his cavalry troops patrolled the rugged canyons of Yosemite’s high county. They were blazing trails and looking for sheepmen grazing illegally in the newly established park. They were also carrying modified milk cans filled with fry, or baby fish, to transplant into the waterways of the backcountry. These trout could have been carried all the way from the Wawona Fish Hatchery, which opened in 1895.

The steep topography of the park keeps native fish from moving past Yosemite Valley on the Merced River or the Grand Canyon of the Tuolumne River, so the waters above 4,000 feet were fishless until the arrival of Euro-Americans. Besides their patrol duties, Benson and his men were there to improve the backcountry and ended up setting the stage for the ongoing practice of stocking trout for recreational use. The National Park Service estimates that 33 million fish were stocked in the lakes and streams of Yosemite between 1887 and 1991.

Thanks to generations of stocked trout, fishing was decent at Benson Lake—it is huge, remote, and very deep, with excellent spawning conditions. Fish did well there. Stocking ended up being a bad idea, however, unless you are a fisherman or you get to enjoy the amazing experience of eating the freshest of fish while in the backcountry. The introduction of trout, a voracious predator, upended—perhaps forever—the aquatic balance of backcountry waterways. These non-native hunters significantly impacted the native aquatic and associated terrestrial species, including insects such as mayflies and caddis flies, along with frogs and their tadpoles. This in turn resulted in the decline of insectivorous birds and bats, as well as amphibians. The number of frogs living in the high country plummeted. Rapacious fish were a big part of this decline. Colonel Benson had introduced a very effective predator.

Although fishing has been a popular pastime for some Yosemite enthusiasts, it became clear that providing a non-native species for the purpose of recreational hunting did not fit the park service’s mission of preserving natural systems, especially when those “planters” or their descendants were found to be deadly and disruptive. Fish stocking in Yosemite was limited to 10 high country lakes in 1972 and discontinued completely in 1991. Non-native fish populations still exist in as many as 250 water bodies and over 800 miles of rivers and streams, and fishing is encouraged and legal. Efforts to eradicate fish populations by more aggressive methods such as gill netting were implemented for a short time in Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks, and eventually in Yosemite, in an attempt to restore the fishless aquatic ecosystem. These efforts were short lived and relatively unsuccessful.

Many of the frogs who escaped being eaten were later decimated by the chytrid fungus. This fatal infection was likely introduced into Yosemite’s water bodies in the 1970s, perhaps by backcountry travelers or even through fish stocking. The rapid decline of frogs and toads became such a concern that special steps were taken to reduce the spread of the fungus and protect the amphibians. This effort included educating hikers and stock users about the possibility of spreading contaminants. Frogs were moved, often unsuccessfully, to try to isolate the infection. Toads were also at risk. Certain meadows were closed to stock grazing so frogs and toads or their burrows wouldn’t be stepped on by grazing horses and mules. Hikers were cautioned to make sure their boots and camp gear were clean as they moved around the backcountry. Perhaps these efforts slowed the decline. There is recent speculation that some amphibians are developing a resistance to the chytrid fungus, a hopeful development in the restoration of wild ecosystems.

These amphibians probably would have been fine if humans hadn’t encroached on their habitat. We humans need to be cautious. We must maintain a careful watch and continue to fix our mistakes. We need to maintain humility and understand that we don’t have all the answers or fully understand our surroundings or our long-term impacts. It is essential that we continue to reassess our actions with the future in sight, retuning our perspective about our relationship with the natural world. Certain people might say it’s too late in some cases. We might meet the fate of the frogs if we don’t try.

We needed to tune our message further on this trip, and our group always had lively discussions about policy—past, present, and future. The political idea of Wilderness might be considered a place untouched by humans, but what should be done to “correct” things like fish planting or decades of fire prevention? Wilderness is supposed to be unchanged, but nature is constantly changing, evolving, so what era do we harken back to? The Native Americans lived on these lands for millennia, altering them, shaping what we now call the primeval character, an “unchanged” condition we imagine existed prior to European settlement. Are the effects of Indigenous people’s use and management of the land part of wilderness as we understand it? How does modern recreation fit into the modern mandate that humans are visitors who do not remain, even though current users leave their impact behind despite our management efforts? These are some of the questions we have strived to answer over our careers. Some answers seem unattainable, the questions circular.

Our discussions would have to continue while on the trail—we needed to move on. Although Benson Lake is a choice spot for a layover day, we would not be fishing or exploring side canyons. The campsites at the lake were quiet, mostly unoccupied, and the normal patrol duties of checking in with visitors were limited to only a few backpackers despite the popularity of this destination. One summer in the early 1990s I took a patrol from Tuolumne to Hetch Hetchy with Brent and Tory (Capron) Finley. It was a fabulous trip, but there weren’t many tourists out. We only saw 10 people once we cleared Glen Aulin, and eight of those were at Benson Lake. I remember my dismay at being assigned a horse named Misery by Walt Castle, our long-term corrals/packer foreman, for that trip. It made me wonder if Walt really favored the packers, thinking that most of the rangers weren’t real horse people. Assigning me a horse named Misery for a long arduous trip like that gave me a feeling of foreboding. I was so concerned about it, and so convinced Misery had gotten its name for a reason, that I fretted and even cried the night before the trip. Was Walt trying to make me fail? It turned out that Misery was very sure footed and experienced with the steep and rocky trails we had to cover, so, in truth, Walt did me right. I still think he probably favored the packers, but he truly cared about the operation, even the rangers, and certainly helped me succeed. Thanks, Walt.

It was time for members of the Big Trip to saddle up and take off on that summer day in 2007, however. Johanna generally rode in the lead, followed by Jan. Tim and I often rode toward the back with Chance and mules. Mark and Ken had already scampered up the switchbacks, setting their own pace on foot. The trail climbed out of this lovely bit of paradise and passed into the next canyon, still at a right angle to the lay of the land. We would cross Seavey Pass into Kerrick Canyon and then travel over another ridge to drop into Stubblefield Canyon.

Stubblefield is sort of the “Lava Falls” of those northern trails to me. I could equate that gnarliest of the Grand Canyon rapids to this gnarliest of trailed canyons in this part of the park. It was the threat that loomed ahead, the feature to survive passage through, the spot you worried about as you approached it like that huge rapid on a rafting trip. Notorious for its remote ruggedness, Stubblefield is dangerous and daunting for those descending that canyon. It is steep and deep and rough, and I had been afraid going through it on patrols. The trail is essentially all rock, with no off ramps, no soft dirt to the side. On this trip, there were places on the trail where the stock had to leap and lunge over steep and jumbled rock from small landslides. I’m sure Tim and Johanna were marking these spots in their minds, although it would likely be many years before any major trail repair or reconstruction might occur here. This was a lightly used trail, almost as deep in the backcountry as you can get, and limited budgets, a workforce already busy on other miles of trail, and difficult support logistics for these more remote areas mandated trail resources be spent where they would benefit the most people. Stubblefield Canyon would continue to be a wild adventure for those who passed through it.

This part of the park is characterized by a vast, relatively treeless granitic landscape, born of magma trapped underground. Although the word “granite” is frequently used to describe the igneous rock found here, granitic rocks are generally classified by their mineral proportions and given names such as granodiorite, tonalite, and diorite, according to NPS geologists. Not being a geologist myself, I simply find it easier to generalize and say “granite,” admiring the large grains of glassy quartz crystals or the sugary feldspar found in the rock around us. Mica (often called fool’s gold) shines brightly, and hornblende minerals (common in granite) are dark, providing contrast to the lighter minerals surrounding it. We admired its beauty even if we weren’t completely accurate in our classification or nomenclature.

Granite epitomizes the high country and is an almost constant companion at the upper elevations. Yosemite is renowned for its spectacular granitic landscapes, perhaps most famously in Yosemite Valley or Tuolumne Meadows. The panorama we were enjoying in Stubblefield Canyon was just as remarkable. The scale, the hundreds of acres of exposed and glacially carved rock, the unnamed cliffs and formations as striking as some in Tuolumne or Yosemite Valley, can be mind-boggling in the remote north end of the park. Topographic treats peer out of canyons. It is wild and open and exposed—dramatic, stark. Pockets of snowmelt-fed grasses or tough stunted trees growing from joints in the rock seem rare and tenacious. As much as 70 percent of park land above 7,000 feet is essentially a soil-less rock habitat. We were traveling in that zone.

This also meant the character of the trail changed substantially. Thank goodness for Yosemite’s world-class trail builders, as routes over these rocky expanses require special skills to traverse. The best trail routes have been traveled for thousands of years, as the one we were on likely had been. Eventually recreationists replaced foragers and workers, but the routes remained rough and dangerous. As formal trails were developed for less skilled or less experienced visitors, trail crews were enlisted to make the routes safer. The stonemasons who built and maintained trail structures such as riprap sections, causeways, or carefully placed steps were among the best in the world at what they did. Although this part of the park gets comparatively little attention due to the small amount of public use it receives, the fruits of the stonework experts’ labor allowed for relatively comfortable passage for those of us lucky enough to journey across these wild spaces.

An NPS trail worker lays riprap—which is like a geologic jigsaw puzzle—making a stone pathway safe for travelers.

NPS PHOTO

Trails are works of art as well as engineering solutions. The path of a well-designed trail flows through the countryside, functional and protective, to channel both water and users on their intended course. Trails could not just pass along these dramatic open granite faces, however. Steep sections had to be terraced with steps or platforms to protect travelers from injuries or falls, or to allow stock to travel along them safely. In dangerous spots, large boulders are muscled or pried, dragged or rolled into place, and secured on steep parts of a rock slope, sometimes with pins drilled into the bedrock. Large rocks serve as keystones to anchor a tread of smaller rocks, which fit together like a jigsaw puzzle. This technique is called “riprap.” In some places, rock walls were built to be filled with crushed rock and topped with soil, providing a relatively flat trail tread. These are called “causeways.”

This level of construction sometimes came under scrutiny, at times fostering tension over how extensive the trail work should be in wilderness. Some felt trails were overbuilt, intruding on the wildness, inappropriate to the landscape. Routes used to support a long-term trail camp frequently had to be rebuilt due the heavy stock use necessary to supply the crew, which almost seemed self-cancelling. Yosemite trails were built to last decades or more, however, and were known to be robust, solid, and generally durable.

One of the primary concerns of trail builders was preventing destructive runoff from channelized water, a trail’s worst enemy. If water breaks are breached, any loose dirt is sluiced away. Gullies can form, or set rocks in the trail tread can be loosened by erosion. Unchecked, trails can wash out or fill with several feet of water as soil is lost. In wet areas, causeways filled with small rock are designed so water can flow through walled pathways, allowing the natural hydrology to continue uninterrupted by the linear trail.

These and other construction techniques have been passed along to trail builders over generations. The results have mostly been functional and durable, hopefully to last many lifetimes beyond the builders. The almost 800 miles of trails and rockwork throughout the park are often artistic and graceful: practical sculptures, gracefully snaking through the wilderness, beckon travelers around the next bend. They are a product of many years of dedicated labor by a highly skilled and dedicated group. I was grateful to them as we slipped and slid up and down these steep canyon trails.

Tim, as the park’s trail crew foreman, was constantly evaluating trail segments as we traveled along, no doubt cataloging future work sites and projects. This task required a complex set of considerations. He would need to consider how much person power it would take to repair a spot and how extensive the repair should be, as well as where to camp to be close enough to the work site and a trailhead. A 15-person camp required running water, a supply of firewood, and a holding area for the stock animals, likely for weeks at a time. Sometimes trail crews would have to hike 5 to 8 miles one way to get to their project—imagine that commute after busting rocks in the alpine sun and wind all day. Tim also had to consider what necessities he would prioritize, as shrinking budgets, housing shortages, and hiring difficulties affected jobs farther from the flagpole more than front-country operations. There was always more need than workers available, and trail work requires a special type of person, just to complicate the matter.

Mark, Ken, and I would be assessing the trail with a ranger’s eye. We would be watching for problematic places where visitors might become confused, lost, or injured. Trails need to be obvious enough that they can be followed easily, almost mindlessly, even over open granite. We were looking for good campsites that should be used as well as bad campsites that should be restored or blocked off. We were also keeping an eye out for user trails that would lead visitors off the main route or become confusing. We would be thinking about the physical challenges of the route, how that might affect other users, and how the trail moved across the landscape. These ongoing surveys were an important component of our jobs. It was important to remain vigilant despite the temptation to experience the outdoors in the manner of nonprofessional users. This would include focusing on more immediate and personal circumstances such as enjoying the scenery, deciding whether a blister was developing on your heel, and wondering how much farther it was to the top of the next ridge or when you could eat again.

It was almost blissful to traverse the floor of Stubblefield Canyon after the harrowing trip down its canyon wall. We unwound as we meandered alongside Rancheria Creek, the trail through the aspen groves soft and level, covered with leaves. It was shady, quiet except for birdsong and the rhythm of our passage. The smell was organic, of soil and decomposition, of wildflowers and fern gardens. Our bodies relaxed, grateful for the calm.

We took a brief stop—Tim and Chance probably pulled a little chew of tobacco out of a back pocket, their Levi’s imprinted with that familiar circle of the tin. Jan and I pulled out a snack from our saddlebags and had a deep drink of water. We both had dry mouths after our tense ride down into the canyon. Jo stretched her legs and checked out a nearby camp, apparently nonplussed by the last section of trail—she was a professional, that’s for sure. Eventually, we started back out of the canyon, up the trail to our next destination. Luckily the north side of Stubblefield had fewer scary spots, and going up is always easier on tricky terrain with gravity to stabilize you rather than pulling you down those slippery slopes.

Once we got to Bailey Ridge we would be traveling mostly among trees and across soil rather than bare open rock. We would descend from the ridge into the Wilma Lake basin and Jack Main Canyon. We looked forward to it. The long days over steep granite trails were stressful even though we were somewhat hardened to the rigors of the trip and tougher than when we started out. Nonetheless, the clattering of metal horseshoes slipping on rock had taken our breath away several times that day as we lurched across precipitous slickrock sections of trail. It was nice to get back to dirt!

As we traveled through one of the least-used areas of the Yosemite trail system, some of the residents became more visible. More than 400 species of vertebrates live in Yosemite. Here in the subalpine zone, we were likely to see yellow-bellied marmots, with their stout bodies draped on their lookout rock perches, their high-pitched whistles filling the air as we passed. We were lucky to see a pika, a rock rabbit, peeking through a talus pile, alert, its winter food stash cut into hay piles drying behind it.

Mark and Jan likely had a conversation about the fate of pikas, which live in cool moist areas in this subalpine zone. Pikas, also called coneys, have thick fur and work tirelessly in the summer to stockpile food. They shelter in rock piles instead of burrowing into the ground. As the climate changes and temperatures rise, pikas have few options for refuge—they can’t hide from higher temperatures, and they can’t migrate to cooler climates because they can’t survive the heat of lower elevations to get there. Pika populations are already declining. It made me sad, and I hoped somehow we could slow or stop this warming before it’s too late.

Meanwhile, we kept a sharp lookout for other animals, particularly the more unusual residents. A red fox was recently photographed high in the mountains near the eastern boundary of the park. I sometimes felt like mountain lions were watching me as I passed. One of my favorite wildlife sightings in the backcountry was a badger. I was hiking cross-country near Nelson Lake and saw it just as it emerged from its broad hole. I was fascinated by its flat body and fierce face. It reminded me that it is imperative to succeed in protecting the wild places on which such animals and certain plants depend.

Other animals are more common. In the lower, forested areas, lively chickarees—or Douglas squirrels—watched from the treetops. Golden-mantle ground squirrels seemed to know when we stopped to eat and sometimes fearlessly approached us as if they were used to picnics in this remote part of the world. Lodgepole pines were marked by the gnaw marks of porcupines or the territorial scratch marks of black bears.

Above us, Clark nutcrackers, juncos, rosy-crowned finches, and chickadees seemed to be everywhere, along with other feathered friends. As many as 69 different bird species have been recorded in Tuolumne Meadows, which is similar in elevation to the canyons we were in. The surroundings were rich with life, even in the higher realms where most aspects of daily living must be performed during the short months of summer before winter snows and freezing temperatures disrupt food procurement and mating.

One of the greatest treasures of wilderness areas is that they are places that allow the natural world to exist as it has for millennia. They are reservoirs of biological diversity, itself threatened globally. We need to eliminate the impact of humanity’s presence on the nonhuman world as much as possible to allow these systems to determine their own future, to evolve naturally. Our future may depend on it.

Onward to Wilma Lake and the snow survey/patrol cabin located just beyond it. As we dropped down to about 8,000 feet, things changed dramatically. There was soil, and big trees, and wildflower gardens in the meadow, and excellent swimming holes in Falls Creek. This was the gentle Sierra Nevada, at least in contrast to our day’s travel across the land of rock and snow above 9,000 feet. The cabin would be a cozy spot for a layover day, when we planned to travel to Dorothy Lake Pass, the farthest north we could reach on any Yosemite trail. Once again, it was good to get in for the night after a splendid day in the high country.

Wilma Lake Cabin—a warm and safe overnight stop for Yosemite’s first all-female snow survey crew: Louise Johnson, Tory Finley, and Ginger Burley (not shown—Laurel, who took the picture).

L. BOYERS

We woke to the bright sun of a perfect Sierran high country morning. It was chilly, so a jacket felt like a warm hug, and the air was crisp like a fall day. We gathered in the cabin for breakfast and to prepare our plan for the hours to come. The Wilma (or Wilmer, depending on who you talk to) cabin was originally built as a snow survey shelter by the California Department of Public Works in 1945. Its users were there to gather data on the depth, water content, and density of the snowpack, the information necessary to manage the Hetch Hetchy water system and its supply of water to San Francisco. Ironically, the original cabin fell victim to the snowpack when it was destroyed by an avalanche in the winter of 1985/1986. A few summers later, an interdivisional team of National Park Service, City of San Francisco, and California Department of Water Resources staff worked together to rebuild the cabin in its present form. It is sited near the old cabin, deeper in the trees, hopefully a less dangerous spot.

The new cabin was constructed using logs from the dead trees downed by the avalanche and some of the stones from the original entryway. As a young and enthusiastic patrol ranger stationed in the area prior to the building of the new cabin, I was cleaning up among the wreckage of the entryway and found a box of old blasting caps. I left them alone for the time, but eventually I was able to ask a respected member of the park forestry crew about it. He assured me the caps were benign, but I have to say I was skeptical. The day I packed them out, I couldn’t stop imagining blowing up my poor mule. The journey back to the trailhead felt like it took forever, with each rough trail section jostling the load, my normal awareness heightened by the knowledge of the panniers’ contents. The mule and I obviously survived it.

The rebuilt Wilma Lake cabin was now the newest in the backcountry. It is a relatively small one-room log cabin, filled with the usual assortment of backcountry living requirements. A big, beautiful cast-iron woodstove, used for heating the space and cooking, dominates the room. Fairly uncomfortable bunk beds line the walls, so it was always a relief to get out of bed when the unshuttered windows let the morning light in. It is often better to just sleep outside on the ground in the summer because the mice aren’t as picky about the comfort of the beds and often moved into or onto the mattresses. Wooden storage cabinets work well to keep the resident rodents from the food and dishes, although even a hanging shelf is occasionally breached by the clever critters.

Water has to be brought up from the creek in summer or melted from snow in galvanized steel buckets during winter snow surveys—you become very aware of your water use and needs when you have to lug it so far from the creek or slowly melt it from the snowpack. The usual assortment of hardware odds and ends and patrol tools can be found stashed under the beds, and the food cabinets had leftover cans of Spam, Dinty Moore Beef Stew, and mushy canned vegetables from another era of surveyors. The snow survey cabins also had rafter storage and a snow door, which was necessary for second story entry back in the days when there could be 10 feet or more of snow surrounding the cabin and the front door was inaccessible.

Luckily, we took our trip in the summer, so we didn’t have to climb up a large snowbank and into a second-story door when we got to the cabin. Instead, we could enjoy the fruits of last winter’s snowpack in Falls Creek’s beautiful pools and waterfalls, which were a stone’s throw from the cabin. Wilma Lake, a short distance away, is partially surrounded by lush grasslands, the summer green turning to a lovely golden yellow ochre as the grass ages, contrasting beautifully with the silver blue gray of the lake’s surface. This is a wonderful part of the Yosemite backcountry.

It was good to not have to pack everything up that morning and leave. We would spend a layover day here, but we had a mission. Our travels would take us upstream to Dorothy Lake Pass, our northernmost destination. It was 9 trail miles to the pass, so we would have a long day, 18 miles round trip. The route followed Falls Creek all the way to Dorothy Lake and was generally gradual, gentle, and pleasant.

Some trails in the area are not quite as benign. As we passed the junction to Tilden Lake, I was reminded of the worst stock wreck I had ever directly been involved with. It was probably in the late 1990s and six of us, including Hetch Hetchy Water and Power personnel, were on a sanitary survey to inspect the watershed. San Francisco Public Utilities worked with the National Park Service to maintain the highest levels of water quality flowing into Hetch Hetchy Reservoir, a primary drinking water supply for the Bay Area. The park is given a substantial amount of money every year to protect the watershed so the city can meet its obligations to the Clean Water Act. It was important for members of the San Francisco–based staff to understand what protecting the watershed entailed. This sanitary survey was not only an inspection of onthe-ground conditions but also a show-me trip for a new public utility upper-level manager.

The survey wasn’t an easy excursion for those not used to traveling in the wilderness. Luckily, the new public works manager was a good sport. Thank goodness. On that trip in the 1990s, the sanitary survey turned east off the Pacific Crest Trail and headed to Tilden Lake. The group had to cross a short but dicey piece of slanting slickrock, a flat granite slab angled at about 15 degrees, smooth and treacherous to horses and mules. To the stock, shod in metal shoes, these spots are like sloped ice rinks. Baldy, one of the beautiful sorrel horses from the NPS stable, slipped—tumbled completely, hooves out from under him—and flipped upside down. The poor horse ended up wedged against a steep rock on one side and sloping slickrock on the other, legs flailing in the air. Unfortunately, he was being ridden by the new water official, who knew enough to jump clear just in the nick of time. No one was hurt so far.

We did have a stuck, upside-down, terrified, dangerous saddled horse, however. Fortunately, Oscar Chacon, one of the many amazing Yosemite animal packers, was with us, and he took control of the situation. Like most of the packers, Oscar had spent years working with horses and mules and had traveled dangerous trails more than a few times. As Johanna would say, most people would consider this situation unusual and terrifying, but for the talented packers, it was just another day at the office—anything can happen, and anything can be overcome. I certainly had never dealt with a fully stuck upside-down animal before, but Oscar used a rope to temporarily control Baldy’s legs, managing to turn the horse in a direction that would allow it to regain its feet and get safely back up. It was stunning and scary and perilous, but skill and trust prevailed, and Baldy was eventually back on all fours and unharmed, at least physically. I’m sure neither he nor his rider will ever forget that section of trail.

Hurray for the brave packers—that wasn’t the first time they had saved the day in one way or another on a backcountry trip. Corrals bosses Walt Castle and later Steve Ybarra and Johanna spent many years ensuring that Yosemite had a first-class stock operation. All of us who used horses and mules in the backcountry generally stayed safe thanks in large part to their guidance and supervision. I always learned from the packers when I went out with them, traveling these trails with animals.

Luckily, on our ride to Dorothy Lake Pass, we didn’t have to go up that dangerous side trail. And we had been free of stock wrecks so far on our Big Trip.

There were a few visitors to talk with at the lake, all of whom had come into the park from Forest Service trailheads on the east side of the Sierra Nevada crest. Food storage violations, dogs, weapons, and even snowmobile trespass in the winter are more common close to the boundary of the park, so it was important to make friendly and effective contacts. All was well on this trip, and visitors were glad to exchange pleasantries. Dorothy Lake Pass beckoned, so to complete our mission for the day, and of course to accomplish more of our official duties, we moved on to the pass to make sure the boundary signs were in place. Somebody’s gotta do it, right?

As we reentered Jack Main Canyon on our return from Dorothy Lake, we dropped into Grace Meadow. Meadows are always a joy—they contain the greatest diversity of plants and animals of any of the upper-elevation environments. They only make up about 10 percent of the high country, so each is special. Grace Meadow is broad and open, with steep walls leading to Bigelow Peak to the northwest. This area serves as the headwaters of Falls Creek, and Dorothy Lake and Grace Meadow provide holding basins for water that reaches Hetch Hetchy and eventually flows out of the faucets of Bay Area kitchens.

Grasses and sedges grew richly here, swaying in the cool breeze. Alpine wildflowers sheltered close to the ground from the wind and intense solar exposure of the high country, providing only quick glimpses of their beauty. A sparkling creeklet meandered through the meadow, the small quartz rocks under the crystal-clear water glowing golden or pale white, some even a particular burnt sienna, a warm reddish orange, browned from the mineralization in the nearby peaks. We watched for little trout but didn’t see any—the local population of aquatic organisms is mostly small and hard to see without a much closer look. The travel was easy—the terrain was mostly flat, with only a few rocky spots to negotiate along the trail. We had time to look around and enjoy the view.

Grace Meadow is also the location of a California snow survey site. For those measuring the snowpack in the Falls Creek corridor of the Tuolumne River watershed, Grace Meadow is the top of the line, the highest of the snow survey sites, the turnaround point if one is on skis or the helicopter drop-off point when using the ship. There were times we couldn’t safely ski the entire snow survey route. When winter storms piled significant amounts of fresh snow on these canyon walls, the chance of avalanche increases, but we still had to record the data. We would use the helicopter to fly the Falls Creek courses in such conditions. Sometimes I wonder if smart skiing might be less dangerous than flying and landing the helicopter numerous times in these high-altitude snowfields, but at least skiers are out of the avalanche path in the ship.

I was reminded of other snow survey hazards, such as the precipitous drop into Falls Creek in the canyon below Wilma Lake. Skiing didn’t seem like the safest option at that spot during the second All-Women’s Snow Survey, looking into the churning water below. That spot was scary even without a sheet of packed snow, but it was avalanche danger that launched the helicopter, not icy slopes. The winter’s snow surveys were rarely easy and often an adventure, but they were necessary to manage California’s precious water supply.

It was almost evening by the time we got back to the cabin. The light in the forest was softening, the shadows growing, the chill in the air reminding us we were at almost 8,000 feet in elevation. Alpine glow, the rosy blush covering the distant ridgetops, would grace the view soon. It was time to be in for the day. Luckily it was July, and the days were longer, the mountains more forgiving.

The Grand Canyon of the Tuolumne River, here over 5,000 feet deep.

M. OSBORNE

I was up just as the sun began to lighten the sky and went quietly into the cabin to get the coffee pot on. If this had been a trail crew camp, the cook would have been up long before me, so the coffee would have been at its prime. It was cowboy coffee, where you throw a few handfuls of ground coffee into big kettle on the fire and let it boil. Timing is important. It’s got to cook for a while; then it’s perfect and we all come and drink it. If there is any left, the last of the brew gets thick and packs a kick. You never drink all the coffee in your cup because there are always grounds at the bottom; that’s just how cowboy coffee is—kinda chewy sometimes, with a wallop.

When staying at a cabin, the ranger generally serves as the host, so I had the very important duty of getting up at the crack of dawn to get the coffee going and breakfast started. Mark Twain’s and Tie Sing’s overtures about breakfast improving the scenery would not be ruined by me sleeping in. I got the fire started in the woodstove and put the pot on the Coleman gas stove to speed the process. I was going to make cowboy coffee, too, but it wouldn’t have the flavor advantage of boiling over the campfire. Everyone would be glad I made it, though. Ron Mackie, my wonderful boss for 20 years, had been known to treat his companions to a cup of coffee while still in their sleeping bags. This is the epitome of backcountry deluxe—drinking a cup of joe while you roll out. It was so typical of him to provide this little coffee service. I can see his smile, as he loved the backcountry and the people in it. Johanna and Chance were already working to get the stock ready that morning, so Ron certainly wouldn’t have caught them still in their bedroll if he had been on this trip.

I had no intention of sleeping in either. This was the last day of my last patrol. My stomach was tight, there was a flutter in my soul. I was tempted to cry, certainly willing to be depressed, except that would have been a waste of this precious time. I can’t even remember what we had for breakfast—maybe oatmeal—us and the mules. My thoughts for the next 12 hours would range from today to decades long past and to the future. It was overwhelming—no wonder I can’t remember the breakfast menu.

The mules may have liked the idea of heading back to the barn, but I wasn’t looking forward to it. Although still deep in the backcountry, we would traverse the dusty and relatively unvaried miles over Moraine Ridge, dulling our senses, giving our minds the time and space to leap forward into all the things we had to do when we got back. Scenarios we hadn’t thought of for 10 days would sneak to the front of our consciousness—of unfinished business, demands of self-imposed deadlines, worries about what-ifs. . . . Coming back to civilization was sort of like being jarred awake from a beautiful sleep by the troublesome noise of a busy day. A little excitement about being home would occupy some of our thoughts. Getting back meant tortilla chips and a cold beer, sleeping comfortably in a soft bed, a reunion with family and friends and pets, a hot shower to soothe those aches and pains and really wash off the trail dust. That actually sounded pretty good, at least in the short term. It was astounding how quickly these thoughts entered my mind that morning, long before I reached the trailhead, long before I needed to think about them.

But it also meant the end of the journey. Everyone has felt this same emotion at some point in their life—the completion of something monumental, or even just something important, can leave us feeling both elated and let down. Wasn’t it wonderful that we accomplished whatever it was—but what now? Hurray for us—but now looking ahead is kind of boring. In a few days, our adventures would seem like a dream, memories already crowded out and hazy. No one else would truly be interested in our stories, at least not for long, nor would they really understand how wonderful it had been. Soon photos would replace the extraordinary days. The gratitude in our hearts would remain for a lifetime but would be stacked in our minds among the litany of other events or overshadowed by the most recent drama.

These emotions applied to my career as well. My years here would meld with all the events and characters of Yosemite. The Cause would be taken up by a new set of managers, scientists, trail crews, packers, and rangers. Crisis management would overshadow the day-to-day slog of bureaucracy. I thought about how things had changed during my time here. Hopeful trends had emerged. Despite vastly increased use, Yosemite National Park, especially the wilderness, is in better shape for the most part than it was 50 to 60 years ago. Science is watching over its systems and providing rationale to adjust to emerging realities. Visitation is capped despite increasing demand from local and global populations. Restoration efforts and policy changes have addressed previous mistakes in judgment or improper predictions of the future. There is more public input to management, more planning, in the park. There is more buy-in to the idea of wildness.

In other ways, Yosemite is not as wild or protected as it used to be. Threats from the outside had increased, many that we had no control over. Climate change is already affecting plant and animal residents. Other pressures include developments and human populations moving ever closer to the park boundaries, which influences all manner of things, from wildlife behavior to funding priorities. Polluted air is free to waft up from the busy lowlands around the park. There is almost constant aircraft travel over the park, and natural quiet and darkness have become scarcer. Technology now takes some of the risk and some of the skill out of time spent in the woods. Social media influences the why and where of a wilderness visit, changing users’ perception of what they are doing there—is it to experience nature or to say that you did?

For users, there are more restrictions protecting the wildness than there were 50 years ago. In my era, backcountry/wilderness permits became necessary to manage use. Limits now expand to other types of visitors. Day-use reservations are required to even enter the park. A big-wall climbing permit system has been implemented to protect the wilderness found on Yosemite Valley technical climbs. Commercial use is limited. Increasing demand from an interested public makes these sorts of management actions inevitable. The regulations of today are to safeguard basic values that the area was set aside to preserve. The public seems to understand this and support it. Luckily for those who prefer less restriction, other federal wild lands, such as those managed by the US Forest Service or Bureau of Land Management, allow pets, hunting, use of motorized vehicles, and larger groups, among other things Yosemite forbids. We need the spectrum—various public lands serve different purposes for the world.

Women have been hired into all levels within the service, many in management positions, jobs traditionally performed solely by men only a few decades ago. There are more females recreating in the woods, many more traveling solo or with other women. And although this situation is slowly changing, most wilderness use is still dominated by the demographic of young white men. There still aren’t many people of color using the park and particularly the backcountry, despite efforts at outreach and inclusion. Demand for access from all age groups has gone up as more of the public realize the benefits of nature and the population density increases. Families are taking their kids into nature as a tonic for both generations.

Technology is pervasive and addictive, and I fear its influence. We live in an electronic age, most of us held captive by our phones and computers. I don’t know what that means for everything else. Will people continue to value other living things if they have no real physical connection with them? Will artificial intelligence or manufactured environments replace experiences in the natural world? Now backcountry users submerge themselves in square screens to perform route finding, search for the best campsites while on the trail, take self-congratulatory pictures from a mountaintop, and obsess about connectivity and charging their batteries. Just the knowledge of the phone in their pocket takes them away from the very primeval benefit of appreciating the wonder and immensity of the natural world we live in. Perhaps we will eventually realize how much we need to immerse ourselves in nature to reground ourselves, to rejoin the grace of appreciating the world around us. Much will be lost if we don’t leave technology at home—use our core instincts, focus on what we can see and smell and hear, make our own decisions instead of what a machine might tell us to do. I do realize, however, that I am already a relic of the past, that this is the new norm that works for the way life is now. I’m just sorry about that.

Life is always evolving, and hikers are unlikely to give up their phones. The world changes around me. How will we respond to these differences? Do we manage for here and now or the future? Do we err on the side of human or nonhuman well-being? Will we leave the wilderness self-willed, unchanged by human intervention, or will we try to correct changes wrought by humans, such as controlling invasive species or replanting giant sequoias ravaged by fire? These questions and many others still loom beyond the basics of managing recreational use.

I hope we realize that naturally functioning ecosystems are required for all life, and unfettered consumption of our resources is not sustainable. Our world is a small place, not limitless. We need to understand and believe that the benefits provided by the natural world will be necessary for and must be available to future generations; that those values are worth it to live a simpler, less consumptive life, to appreciate what we have and protect it. I have no idea what the lives of the next generations will be like, but I continue to hope the timelessness (at least from a human perspective) of places like Yosemite’s wild corners and other primarily natural areas will endure for the benefit of our world.

So my career, and this last patrol, was almost over. What would be next? It would certainly be different, because life is change, life is a cycle, life is every organism’s journey through time. Life is a Big Trip. We are witness to such a tiny part of it.

Mark and Ken, intrepid foot patrol rangers that they were, had started off before the riders. It was a long way to the trailhead on a hot summer day, but they were tough and would likely beat us to Hetch Hetchy. They could also take a shortcut down the granite slabs to Vernon Lake, whereas the pack string would have to go over Moraine Ridge on a dusty trail—cross-country shortcuts were one of the advantages of traveling without stock.

The 16-mile trip down Jack Main Canyon and on to Hetch Hetchy was about one-third wonderful, following the lovely rock/pool/waterfall-filled descent of Falls Creek; one-third hot and dusty and somewhat monotonous over Moraine Ridge; and one-third filled with the growing recognition of returning to civilization. Once in that final section, the number of hikers increases, it gets even hotter, and the trail ends up on an old, partially paved road over the last four miles to the parking lot at the end of our trail.

We didn’t relish heading to lowlands—it was hot, dry. The heat shimmers off the rocks; the vegetation gets scrubby and tough looking. The birds are generally quiet in the high temperatures, and at times you could almost hear a sizzle, or perhaps that was the sound of grass-hoppers rubbing their wings together. The invigorating cool breezes we had been enjoying were replaced by an atmosphere that seemed heavy and oppressive, maybe even stale compared to the crisp clean air of the upper elevations. Or perhaps that was just my mood about leaving the high country—it was always hard to return to the trailhead, particularly on this trip.

It was also hard to return to the developed world. Human activities were always so busy, so noisy. We had been surrounded by untold thousands of organisms diligently accomplishing their life cycles for the past 10 days, and yet we passed peacefully, mostly unaware. This return to human civilization would initially seem grating, almost annoying in its bustle and disregard for the life around it. It wouldn’t take long to fall back into the fray, however—to become a part of all the commotion, to forget the tranquility and wonder of being in the great outdoors.

I generally tried to reel in these mental intruders, at least until I was out of the backcountry, but, like the trail, my mind sunk lower and lower as we moved down the hill. Knees stiff and sore from the rigors of a downhill ride, the dust in our eyes and throats, our moods no longer as jovial, our attention now focused on getting it done. The dread of our inevitable return to the road and all that it implied grew until we came to a familiar landmark—Beehive Meadows.

The spring-fed lushness of summer green grass in this small meadow was refreshing and even renewing, replacing those negative thoughts, brushing at least some of the trail dirt from our minds and souls. It was cooler, an oasis in the dense and dry forest. The meadow hummed with life—there were still wildflowers in the damp fringes. The smell was rich and fragrant, moist to our dust-crusted noses. Wild azaleas bloomed along the wet margins, their scent one of the sweetest perfumes of the backcountry. Brightly colored butterflies and iridescent dragonflies joined us at the freshwater spring box where the water was flowing crystal clear and cold. My senses were revitalized—my joy restored. Such is the nature of nature.

After a snack, we enjoyed the luxury of stretching our legs and wandered around the meadow a bit, talking to visitors and Gil Guererro, an NPS animal packer headed into the backcountry with a string of mules to supply a trail crew at Vernon Lake. Beehive was a popular place for hikers, riders, and stock animals to take a break. Eventually, however, we had to mount up and complete our journey.

This was the final stage, the part I dreaded the most. Much of the trail at this point is very brushy, passing through recently burned forests, the big trees now black totems rising out of the dense sea of chaparral. Eventually the view opens to the Tuolumne Canyon below, but that gave me little solace that day. Almost insultingly, the final four miles of the trail pass on the remains of a road built to provide gravel and materials for the construction of O’Shaughnessy Dam, the great plug in the Tuolumne River that forms Hetch Hetchy Reservoir. Late that afternoon our little expedition rode across the top of that dam to the trailhead. It was the end of the line.

This trip had been an incredible journey across one of the most amazing places in the world. We had traveled through the country I had based my entire adult life in and around. I continued to wonder even more at its beauty, history, and complexity. I felt even more sure of its importance to the world. I felt a deep gratitude that I had the honor and luck, and that circumstances allowed for me, to spend a lifetime devoted to a purpose, intact nature, that I cared so much about. My heart was full. Although there were certainly things I felt I hadn’t completed, or that didn’t turn out the way I had hoped, I was happy and proud of progress we made over the past 30-plus years. I was sad that it was over, but I remembered the wonderful advice of Dr. Seuss, who suggested we shouldn’t cry because it was over but smile because it happened.

This trip was also a microcosm of the goodness of park staff, my dear friends and working partners, and their interaction with this special environment. I felt a particular closeness to Jan, Steve, Tim, Johanna, Chance, Mark, and Ken after our wonderful journey together. I was also grateful to the vast array of Yosemite employees before me that made both this patrol and my life’s work possible. They in turn have been joined every day by others across the nation, and even across the globe, to protect the nonhuman world as humans access and impact some of its most incredible and remote spots. Some of those who help care for nature interact with visitors to public land, some teach children, some campaign for conservation. I fervently hope each of us finds a way to do our part, even if only in a small way, to protect the earth.

NPS PHOTO

I cherish my days in the wilderness of Yosemite—to roam, to safeguard, to share the value of wild places. It was a wonderful way to spend my life, and I was sorry my career was over. I had a special goodbye that day, or so it seemed to me. Jack Main is a very personal kind of canyon—it is narrow, so the creek and the cliff walls are seldom far from the trail. Aspen leaves shimmer in the breeze, and crystal-clear pools beckon for a quick dip. Rock walls glow with the rusty orange of iron ore mineralization. As we moved through the talus and aspen groves along the trail, I happened to look up at the canyon wall and lock eyes with a small black bear, watching us pass. It felt like our beings made a remarkable connection. It seemed that the little bear exemplified the wildness of nature, and I could pretend it was thanking me. A work of a lifetime would benefit bears and other wild things for years to come. I felt so grateful that this had been my life, and I hoped the value of my work would continue long after I was gone.

But there is no real end to the trail, little bear. May we tread carefully and thoughtfully. Our future, and the future of generations of humans and bears and all the other inhabitants of our world, depends on it.

The good life—me in the front yard, Yosemite Valley, 1955.

K. MUNSON

• PART TWO •

Essays of My Life in Yosemite and its Most Remote Corners 1952 - 2024

With my brothers Lars (left) and Lex (right), Yosemite Valley.

K. MUNSON

• ESSAY ONE •

GENERATIONS

It was 1952. The two little boys, Lars and Lex, sized up their challenge as only little boys might. It wasn’t that high, so they probably could do it. They probably wouldn’t get caught. It looked like there were lots of handholds and places to put their feet, and then the window was right there. But which window should they choose?

The wall they were looking at was the front side of Lewis Memorial Hospital in Yosemite Valley, now known as the Yosemite Medical Clinic. The building was constructed in 1930 in classic national park style. The lower part of the outside wall was made of river boulders decoratively cemented in place. Sealskin-brown board-and-batten surrounded the windows. Those windows looked out at Glacier Point through the pines.

The boys really wanted to look into those windows, however. They had been raised rock scrambling and playing in the talus at the base of the vertical walls of Yosemite Valley, and getting up this wall didn’t seem like too much of an obstacle. The prize? They would get to see their mom and their brand-new baby sister, born just hours before. I had entered the world in one of its most magnificent places, my life’s destiny perhaps already in place. My brothers were excited to see me.

My brothers and I were lucky: we got to be kids in Yosemite Valley. It meant being raised in this incredible natural temple where the world came on vacation. It was no doubt as stunning to our new minds as it was for other new visitors. We just got to live there.

It was not surprising my family ended up living on that meadow in Yosemite Valley in the 1940s and 1950s. Mom and Dad had both worked in Yosemite in the 1930s. Karl Munson, my father, was raised on a fruit farm in British Columbia but set out for the United States as a teen. He ended up in Yosemite at age 17, washing dishes. He was so taken with the place that he decided to go to hotel school in the Bay Area so he could gain employment in guest services and management. World War II interrupted his path, but while stationed in Alameda, he met my mother, who was working in a lab for the war effort. They fell in love and married. Their Yosemite connection continued, each now with a life partner.

My mother, Suzanne Richardson Munson, also worked in the park as a young person, waitressing at the Wawona Hotel while in college prior to her marriage. She, however, had a longer, deeper relationship with the area due to her grandfather, Archibald Campbell Shaw.

A. C. Shaw came to Raymond in 1890. Raymond, the terminus of the Southern Pacific Railroad in the late 1800s, is a small town just southwest of Yosemite. He served as the postmaster, and he and his brother owned a store patronized by settlers colonizing the foothills, including miners, timber harvesters, and eventually those who cut beautiful granite slabs from nearby quarries. An entrepreneur, he did well and drove around in style in the first automobile in the town. He also started the telephone company there in 1906 and brought the first phone lines into the surrounding area, including into the park at Wawona. Little could he imagine the impact of cars and phone lines on the future of Yosemite.

As a community leader, my great-grandfather had the honor of introducing President Theodore Roosevelt to the crowd upon his arrival in Raymond in 1903. President Roosevelt and John Muir had traveled to rail’s end to begin their visit to Yosemite. Raymond was the only train stop on the president’s trip at which he gave a speech. My great-grandfather wrote that the community planned a big celebration to welcome their distinguished visitor, with an orchestra, a dance floor, races, and games. He wrote that when the president arrived around 8:00 a.m., there were about 1,500 people to greet him. I’m sure it was a rousing send-off for his trip to Yosemite. President Roosevelt later expanded protection for large amounts of federal land. In 1906, the Mariposa Grove and Yosemite Valley were ceded by the state to the federal government for inclusion into Yosemite National Park, likely due in large part to this trip.

A. C. Shaw also acquired 60 acres of land near the south boundary of the park between the present-day towns of Ahwahnee and Fish Camp in 1912. Seeing the financial potential of tourism rather than depending on proceeds from a granite quarry or selling supplies to gold miners and wood suppliers, he rebuilt the cottages at Cedarbrook to serve as a small overnight waystation for early travelers arriving via stage to the park. Cedarbrook was a two-story inn that fed and housed 10 to 12 people, and the horses from the stagecoaches were changed out there before the advent of motorized buses. Most guests were early Yosemite travelers, folks whose next stop would likely be Wawona. My great-aunt and grandmother spent many summer days there, excited about the stage’s daily arrival and the variety of visitors who would spend a night.

My mother also spent some of her young life visiting Cedarbrook and remembers watching the first cars make their way up the newly opened Highway 41 from the Oakhurst area into Wawona in the early 1930s. Apparently, a few of the first drivers were not well prepared, and my great-grandfather put caches of gas along the route for stranded motorists.

My grandmother, Elizabeth Shaw, apparently loved the foothill area and returned after she married Norton Richardson, a schoolteacher from the East. She and my grandfather tended the Deadwood Fire Lookout for many summers, living in the fire tower overlooking the Oakhurst/Ahwahnee basin. They kept a keen eye out for any smoke in the foothills south of the park and returned in the offseason to Berkeley, their primary home, which was where my mother was raised. Mom, in turn, would return to Yosemite as a young woman to work in the area just as her parents and grandparents had.

My youth, and living in Yosemite Valley, was more wonderful than I even realized, especially for my brothers and me. We were eager to take advantage of all life had to offer. The Merced River was only a few minutes’ walk from our little house, the meadow out front was filled with all manner of wild creatures, and the forests and talus slopes around us held adventure and mystery. We kids spent long hours playing with our friends, swimming, and romping at the beach with a mom or two in attendance. Most wives didn’t work at that time but were busy with the children and home life. Mom was a member of the self-described Young Mothers Club, and there were about 20 youngsters around same age as my brothers and me, so it must have been fun. My brothers explored the spider-filled caves in the boulders, raced across the meadows, climbed in or onto whatever tree or rock they could get to. They also continued their fascination with their little sister, one time bringing big rocks to show me by dropping them into my baby carriage. Apparently, the rocks missed, and baby me avoided damage on that one.

According to my mother, there were perhaps 500 year-round employees living in Yosemite Valley in that period of the 1940s and 1950s. In 2021, there were 450 year-round employees in the National Park Service alone and an additional 700 year-round Yosemite hospitality staff. In my parents’ day, most of the concession employees lived by Ahwahnee Meadow, and most of the park service staff lived by the elementary school on the other side of Yosemite Village. The Indian Village was across from the lodge until the village burned in 1969. The primary concessioner, Yosemite Park and Curry Company, often held communal events, including Christmas gatherings where they gave all the kids a nice present, and the school brought everyone together. Today most permanent staff other than emergency and critical management personnel live outside the park in the nearby towns. This geographical separation has changed the society my mother enjoyed.

Stories made the fun themed beach parties, weekly card games, and movie nights at the theater across from the chapel sound lively, and Mom’s participation in church and community clubs illustrates the tight bonds of the community. It was a small mountain town—remote, especially in winter—and she said everyone felt like family. Ansel and Virginia Adams lived just down the path on the meadow, and the Morgansons, the Woessners, and the Robinsons were a few of their neighbors and friends.

While we were playing in the river, my father went to work every day for the Yosemite Park and Curry Company. He was part of the middle management team and held several interesting jobs. His positions ranged from overseeing the High Sierra Camps to being the first manager of the new Yosemite Lodge. Mom and Dad’s very first job, just after marriage, was as the relief winter caretakers at the Mountain House, the hotel located at Glacier Point. Since the Glacier Point Road was snow covered, they had to hike in. Mom, who was fresh from Berkeley, walked up the snow-and-ice-covered Four Mile Trail in her city shoes with her suitcase. She must have been tough.

Their first summer they ran Glen Aulin High Sierra Camp. Dad’s banana cream pie for dessert at the camp became famous and was the talk of trail for some visitors, at least the hungry ones. It ended up being a bit of a tradition for High Camp guests to bring Dad bananas, not your standard backpacking fare. In the fall of my parents’ first year together, Dad was offered another job with the park concessionaire as the maître d’ at the Ahwahnee Hotel. The position came with a house on the Ahwahnee Meadow, and they settled into a fine life in Yosemite Valley. Their family expanded with three children, raised in a home on the meadow with a glorious view of Half Dome from the front porch.

One of my father’s more interesting jobs was to push off the memorable Firefall. This was a magical event that happened every night in the summer for almost a century and continues to be a favorite memory of those who saw it before it was discontinued in 1968.

It was a fantastic sight, a spectacle of glowing embers cascading down the dark cliffside from an overhanging ledge at Glacier Point. Hundreds of people gathered below on summer nights to oooh and aaah as the fire fell from the clifftop.

Old postcard of firefall preparation at Glacier Point—the production of the coals was an event of its own.

AUTHOR’S COLLECTION

My father’s part in this popular event was to first prepare the fire and then push it over the cliff. This entailed considerable work at Glacier Point. He first gathered piles of red fir bark. This was the best material for the task—it was dense and could be a few inches thick. The bark broke up into big slabs that were relatively easy to handle. He then built a fire with these large chunks of fuel and prepared a pyre of glowing coals. As darkness fell, the Indian Love Call would echo out from Curry Pavilion just below the cliff, followed by a shout from Camp Curry up the rock wall to Glacier Point—“Is the fire ready?” An answer from Glacier Point—“The fire is ready!” “Then let the fire fall!” declared Camp Curry. It was very theatrical.

My dad would take a big rake and slowly push the pile of glowing embers off in a fiery cascading fall. One night, his gold and diamond heir-loom ring fell into the pile when he took off his gloves, and he pushed it right over the cliff. I think about looking for it in moments of fancy when I peer over Glacier Point.

During all those summer nights, crowds marveled from the meadows below at the glittering cascade. This, however, became the eventual downfall of the Glacier Point Firefall. Concerns over impacts to the meadows and the realization that parks shouldn’t be entertaining visitors with human-made spectacles in an area so rich with natural wonder signaled the end of the popular show. Other such entertainment, including feeding the bears at the Curry Dump, cutting tunnels through giant sequoias, and “Indian dancing” featuring performers in Plains Indian– type headdresses, was also thankfully discontinued. An aerial tram up to Glacier Point and colored lights illuminating the waterfalls, among other ideas, were discussed but never made it into existence. These are examples of situations in which pressure to err on the side of human pleasure or convenience can overshadow the preservation of naturalness if decisions aren’t carefully made.

Nature provides its own entertainment here in Yosemite, which even includes a natural “Firefall” we delight in seeing now. This event is a gift of the wild world’s beauty as Horsetail Fall briefly reflects the setting sun for a few days in February. Those fortunate enough to catch this rare combination of the sun’s beams lighting up this ephemeral waterfall are thrilled to see the fire-colored stream leaping down the dark cliff walls of El Capitan. Sadly, modern times have caught up with this event as well. As social media spread word of its wonder, the floodgates opened to throngs of spectators and photographers, who crowded viewing areas at an unprecedented rate. Park officials have been forced to close roads, limit use, and worry about the health of the meadows below. Again.

Perhaps we Munsons thought this idyllic life would never end, but that was not to be our fate. After an extended disagreement about necessary changes to the new Yosemite Lodge, the Company decided to find someone who could make it economically viable without the adjustments my father felt were needed. Dad decided to leave and build a dream house on the Fresno River near Oakhurst, 15 miles from the park’s southern boundary. It was hard on Mom to leave. She loved the park and loved raising her children there. Yosemite was a wonderful place to live in many ways, but it was time to move on to the next adventure.

Our new home overlooked the Fresno River in one direction and the whole Oakhurst basin the other direction. It was a beautiful spot—not quite Yosemite, but pretty darn good. Better in some ways for us kids, in fact. It was private, with our own water-carved, smooth-granite river playground. It was still in the mountains, and still near Yosemite. I attended four years of grade school and all of high school while living at the house we called Rock Island.

Rock Island was a magical place, aptly named for the large stone outcrop sitting in the middle of the Fresno River. The stream would roil and rage around the rocks in the spring, flush with the runoff of the drenching winter storms. We had this riparian wonderland to ourselves most of the time, as there were only a few houses on the river at first. In a matter of about eight years, it seemed homes were popping up everywhere, at least from a kid’s perspective. The area continues to grow, as do most of the communities surrounding Yosemite. This is not surprising. What is shocking to me is how much things change in just a few generations. We are all a part of it, and we all adjust. Most people don’t seem to mind a lot of other folks around anyway—I guess that’s a good thing.

In my last year of high school, I won the title of Mountain Belle, Queen of Oakhurst. The town claimed to be the Chinchilla Capital of the World at that time. There was also a sawmill in the center of town, and logging was a significant industry and major source of jobs. For the annual Mountaineers Day Parade float, I was put on a lumber truck, wearing a chinchilla “bikini,” a crown, and my queen sash, riding next to large log, apparently bound for the mill. Although I must have looked like a cave woman, it didn’t seem like such a bizarre staging at the time.

But then, as a 17-year-old just graduating from high school, I was faced with a dilemma—should I continue my beauty pageant path (on to Miss Madera County, then Miss California, then Miss America, and even Miss Universe), or should I go to Tuolumne Meadows Lodge, back to Yosemite and the high country, to work as a maid and roam the alpine spaces of rock and sky in my time off? It seems rock and sky were my true calling, my nature, or my fate. It was also clear to me that pageants were not my future—I just wasn’t the beauty queen type in body or soul.

This decision was the conscious beginning of my lifelong love affair with Yosemite and its wilderness. I wasn’t quite 18 years old when I left my family home and dubious future as a beauty pageant contestant and returned to the park. Yosemite would be my home base from that point on. Even as I went to college and traveled around the world in the six years before I joined the park service, I returned for part of every year to work for the concessioner. It was clear to me that this was where I should be. And it turned out that my mountain-bred heart, red hair, freckles, strong body, and big smile combined for a sort of physical wholesomeness that eventually fit well as a park ranger. I think I made a very good lifestyle choice.

A classic view of Tuolumne Meadows, with the wild and scenic Tuolumne River meandering through the gentle grassland, framed by domes and high country clouds.

S. SUGARMAN

• ESSAY TWO •

ONWARD ON MY OWN

While the National Park Service has a tricky but lofty goal of conserving the park’s natural and cultural treasures while providing for the enjoyment of those resources, visitors must be fed and housed (and they generally need to buy a few souvenirs or books). These services are provided by the park concessioner, Yosemite Park and Curry Company (now Yosemite Hospitality), and the park partners, the Yosemite Natural History Association (now Yosemite Conservancy) and the Ansel Adams Gallery, which also sell goods and services. All are an integral and important component of the Yosemite experience for visitors. The primary concessioner, often informally called “The Company,” also hires the largest number of employees in the park, and summer jobs are generally available from them.

In 1970, Tuolumne Meadows was considered the prime location for summer work. I applied to work for the Company fresh out of high school, and Tuolumne Meadows Lodge became my base, the location of my transition from life with my biological family to life on my own. It was so easy . . .

At 8,600 feet in elevation, Tuolumne was the hub of the high country. Far from the crowds and heat of Yosemite Valley and livelier than sleepy Wawona, Tuolumne Lodge staff lived an adventurous life. Most daily details were overseen by Martha Miller, a steady and capable woman who was the core of the operation at the lodge for decades. Martha seemed to have been there forever. She would remember many of the guests by name and was gracious and sincere in her dealings with all of us, guest and worker alike. She was almost more like a den mother than a boss, and thanks to her leadership, the lodge functioned dependably despite its rustic nature, lack of electricity, and remote location at the end of a dirt road in the high country of Yosemite. Martha continued to serve in this role, as well as many others for the Company, for another 45 years and still lives near the park.

The lodge staff were housed in shared tents and fed three meals a day in our employee side hall. We had no bills and no responsibilities beyond our immediate jobs. We were maids, housemen, front desk clerks. We cleaned bathrooms and filled kerosene lamps and put firewood in boxes for the guest tents. We served the meals, one summer even indulging Martha’s passion for opera by waiting tables in Pirates of Penzance costumes, dragging our pirate sleeves through plates as we cleared dinner courses.

While serving in a position called the “pantry bunny,” I made hundreds of box lunches and tried to think up creative names for fruit-filled Jell-O, such as “Peak-y Peach,” “High Sierra Tropical Delight,” or “Tuolumne Sunrise” for the nightly dessert menu. If a guest dared order toast in a lodge with no electricity, we practiced the “Fred Pearson Toast Toss.” This technique involved flinging slices of bread from the pantry to the grill hood, where the slice would slide down and onto the grill. Although the slices weren’t literally covered with grease from this maneuver, we joked about not having to butter them. There weren’t many return toast customers, as you might expect. The actual Fred Pearson, the executive chef of the Ahwahnee Hotel, would have been appalled. Luckily, we never got caught.

As soon as we finished our shifts, we could hang out at the river, climb granite domes, hike to our hearts’ content in stunning wilderness, or potentially get into trouble in one way or another. Sometimes we would sneak out with the cowboys from the stable and go for wild alcohol-fueled nighttime rides, sparks flying off the horses’ hooves as we galloped recklessly along the rocky trails. Other times we would go to the Mono Inn in Lee Vining and dance the polka to an oom-pah band with the Basque sheepherders who came in for a drink and a little socialization. Sometimes we would cruise the campgrounds or hang out with the climbers and drink beer in the tents. It was a good life.

I found my niche during those summers in Tuolumne, but not my purpose. I tried working for a season at the Ansel Adams Gallery in Yosemite Valley. My parents had known Ansel and Virginia Adams and lived down from them on the row of houses along Ahwahnee Meadow in Yosemite Valley. I still have Christmas cards they sent to my folks—gorgeous black-and-white 4×6-inch prints, classic Ansel Adams work, with cheery holiday greetings inside. Mom and Dad likely would not have known how special these cards would become but probably saved them because they were beautiful.

I saved an interesting memento from my interaction with Ansel as well. While I was working at the Ansel Adams Gallery, the Adamses invited the manager and me up for a drink in the apartment behind the store. That evening Ansel took a couple pictures of me with a Polaroid camera he wanted to test. I asked him to sign one, which of course he wouldn’t, but I did get to keep them, now treasured mementos. It seems my family served as attractive subjects for him or the Gallery in other instances. In the 1940s, Mom and Dad had a yellow convertible that caught Ansel’s eye. The picture of Dad driving it through the Valley was later prominently displayed in Grand Central Station in New York. It apparently fit someone’s idea of good advertising to entice people to come to Yosemite. I was also the focus of an Ansel Adams photography event when I did some nude modeling, artfully draped only in the Indian jewelry I had been selling in the store, for a Ted Orland Photo Workshop given by the Gallery. It was no doubt eye-catching, sort of like the yellow convertible.

In addition to my summer jobs, and even though I was immersed in the sex, drugs, rock-and-roll, hippy-world-travel period many of us experienced in the 1970s, I managed to go to college. I tried Fresno State University first, spending a year experimenting with courses of study that might provide an interesting purpose in life. Would I be a speech therapist (no) or study criminal behavior (maybe closer to my final path, but an odd choice at the time)? Neither caught me. I traveled internationally for a few years and then enrolled at Columbia Junior College in the foothills below Yosemite as a reentry to academia before attending Humboldt State University. At Humboldt, I tried to pull off a dual major of music and natural resources, which turned out to be too ambitious. My college attempts were somewhat unsuccessful even though I had been a very good student in high school. My formal higher education was left unfinished and unfocused.

My path apparently led elsewhere—to exploring the rest of the world. I traveled extensively for the next 20 years or so, working part-time in Yosemite, Denali, and Grand Teton National Parks to save enough money for plane tickets and camera film. My wanderings took me to every continent but Antarctica, some a few times. I got to climb volcanos, trek in deserts and jungles, see some of the world’s most famous places, live with people from other countries and other cultures. I consider this my higher education, and I know I learned more about the world and life than I ever would have from books. It was wonderful—exciting and informative—with many important lessons, but there was still something missing.

I felt I needed purpose and place. For me, the mountains, and particularly Yosemite, provided both. It was a good fit. After working for the park concessions in Tuolumne, Yosemite Lodge, Ansel Adams Gallery, the Ahwahnee Hotel, and McKinley Park Station Hotel in Denali National Park, Alaska, and doing a variety of jobs at various ski resorts around the nation, I also tried teaching outdoor education for a winter at Teton Science School in Wyoming to pay for my travels. I found I was ready to do something more consequential with my life. I applied to my dream job, working in the wild parts of Yosemite, helping others enjoy and understand the myriad of details of the roadless areas of the park.

I was hired by the National Park Service in 1976 as a backcountry technician, and I moved through the ranks of the Backcountry and Wilderness operation for the next three decades. I also worked in fire management, resource management, and interpretation in the offseason when I wasn’t traveling. The confidence I acquired, coupled with knowledge I gained from living in the park and visiting other wild areas around the world, helped me progress within the agency. Talented women such as Claire Marie Hodges, the first female ranger in 1918; Enid Michael, the first female seasonal interpreter and a prolific writer in the 1920s; Ginny Rousseau, a very talented law enforcement ranger in Yosemite Valley, and Lora Hein, the first female backcountry foot patrol ranger, both in the 1970s, broke barriers and made inroads into this world. Their success allowed someone like me to take on previously nontraditional roles for women, such as backcountry rangering, law enforcement, maintenance, and management, at a time when the park was still learning that women could do these jobs. Other women were also gaining traction, eventually filling many previously male-only roles.

I learned early that one had to walk the walk, in this case literally, to have authority. I wanted to do my job well and safely on a regular basis. There would be no crying or excuses, no special treatment when it was time to get the work done. I was just trying to do the best I could.

I was lucky—I was destined for this role in my life. My family’s history in the mountains largely set me on this course. The career seemed to come naturally. I found not only a mental and emotional match but also a physical fit with my role in the park. I was tall and sturdy, with legs that could carry me for miles. I was happy out on the trail, often exhausted, mosquito bitten, and sore, but filled to the brim with the wonder of it all. My heart and soul were fully engaged.

I always felt great helping others not just enjoy but also understand these magnificent wild places, to love and respect them as I did. Instilling awe is easy here in Yosemite—just go outside. But commitment to the health of the natural world locally and globally; to understand the complexities of the seeming paradox of use, conservation, and preservation; to see the importance of open space and healthy ecosystems; to accept service to a greater cause—these things begin with a deeper understanding of places like Yosemite’s wilderness and of nature in general.

I spent the next three decades hoping to instill those values in others. My focus ranged from local park users to those from across the globe—employees, park visitors, management experts, NPS staff from all types of jobs, school groups (from young kids to college students), scientists, scouts, politicians, and lawmakers. Like the proverbial pebble in the pond, I hope my inspiration to honor and love the natural world has rippled outward to generations, no matter where. It is the reason I wrote this book.

The perfection of reflections—a calm day in the High Sierra.

M. OSBORNE

The original Tuolumne Permit Station with its fold-down map.

L. BOYERS

• ESSAY THREE •

ENTRY LEVEL

My first National Park Service job, in 1976, was a backcountry information specialist. This was the entry-level position in the Backcountry Unit, as it was called then. The work was in Tuolumne Meadows, the hub of most hiking in Yosemite. Eight of the park’s 10 most popular trailheads are in the area, as well as the busiest backcountry permit station.

I spent much of my workday in the permit station with an upside-down topographical map in front of me. Its color was a veridian green like young manzanita leaves, not the classic deep-sap green of the conifer forest it was symbolizing. It was covered with squiggly brown lines—elevational indicators to those who understood the language of such maps. The peaks and mountain ranges stood out, lofty and snow covered in their mapped whiteness, their squiggles close together. Dashed lines, representing marked and maintained trails, invited passages into the deeper reaches of the park’s interior. Just as a seventeenth-century map of the world informed early voyagers, this flat representation told the story of Yosemite’s roadless landscape.

My job was to work with backpackers, those present-day explorers, who were about to enter that world. There were lots of things we wanted visitors to concentrate on, but they had to be able to read the park map in front of them to start understanding it. And it had to be right side up to them.

My first workplace for this duty was a tiny building in the middle of a parking lot in Tuolumne Meadows. The kiosk was meant to be temporary—a secondhand building, maybe four feet by six feet, with a fold-down window that turned into a counter. The upside-down map provided the countertop and focal point for planning and information. Staff were there primarily to issue backcountry use permits, which had become mandatory in 1975 for all overnight use of the wilderness. This was a period of policy setting, as the permits were also studied to examine travel patterns and monitor trailhead quotas—it was cutting-edge science, pioneered by Dr. Jan van Wagtendonk, who was among the first in the nation to use computer-simulation models and multifaceted ecological parameters. Yosemite’s response to managing its wilderness as a separate and special entity began to take shape during these years.

Some visitors resented permits; some welcomed them. The reality was that up to 200 people a night were camped at places like Cathedral Lake in those busiest of times. Permits served as the public interface of a sophisticated and heavily researched quota system to prevent the Yosemite backcountry from slipping into the proverbial loved-to-death fate it was teetering on. The permit system allowed us to not only regulate use but also contact each group before they entered the wilderness.

Backcountry overnight users were required to stop at one of four permit stations in the park. There we would apply the quota system, our primary tool to stabilize rapidly increasing use, via the permit. At the same time, we would help finalize the hikers’ or riders’ excursions with information and education. We were often met with the “Plan my trip” plea, but instead we gave general guidance to narrow the choices available on 76 trailheads. Discovery is a part of the wilderness experience. It was up to them to watch their map and make good decisions based on the wishes and abilities of their party.

It was extremely important at this point to communicate basic wilderness care guidelines. We developed a pretty good spiel about minimum impact (the NPS precursor to Leave No Trace in the 1970s–1980s). People usually listened, especially to the parts about the bears. The permits could also be used as important search-and-rescue tools. They contained basic travel information, which could be used in an emergency. A missing person’s plans as well as a record of who might have been in the area could give searchers important clues when looking for them.

Not all of our work was in the little kiosk, issuing permits across the map. At least 30 percent of our work schedule was spent on patrol, becoming familiar with backcountry trails and campsite destinations. Our minimum impact spiels improved with more truth, more earnestness, after these patrols. We were also better equipped to help with hikers’ expectations in terms of trip planning after we had experienced many of the trails. Once we had hiked deep into the wilderness with 50 pounds of gear on our backs, our input on the likelihood of success on a certain trail might save a hiker from setting up an unreasonable goal or organizing a trailhead vehicle shuttle at a too-distant trailhead. Hikers had to make their own assessments of risk, but we could help with a little pertinent information.

Our official patrols were critical components of our job, and we had important duties to perform in the field such as visitor contacts, campsite and trail maintenance, and wildlife observation and reporting. Learning the lay of the land and character of the trails was also extremely important for us in order to provide accurate information or report when we returned. We all relished our time in the backcountry. Since our assignments were focused on places we had never been in the backcountry, and our patrol days were linked to our days off, most of us took advantage of five-day wilderness journeys every other week and hiked deep into the park. We generally went alone, backpacking light. At first, I used a hard-frame Kelty backpack. I usually carried a small Svea white gas stove, one pot, a bowl and spoon. Initially, we used iodine for water purification and found that a little vitamin C would absorb some of the awful chemical taste after purification. It was still nasty, though. Giardia, a waterborne parasite, hadn’t emerged yet as a threat, so we often opted to drink from the streamlets rather than swallow the iodine.

For my bed-away-from-home, I had a down sleeping bag, an Ensolite foam sleeping pad, and a tube tent. Tube tents were bright orange tubes of plastic sheeting held up by a parachute cord strung between two trees. It provided ground cover and a little tunnel-type shelter. You could close off the ends with a clothespin in case of bad weather, but if it really rained, you would often end up with a soaked sleeping bag, which is no good for anything until it dries, which can take forever. Drenching afternoon thunderstorms are common in the High Sierra, but I rarely used my little tent for those, instead huddling under the protective limbs of the biggest tree around, crouching under my rain poncho. To add insult to injury, those drenching storms were often followed up by swarms of mosquitos, which made crouching significantly less desirable. Sometimes it really wasn’t very fun out there.

Modern backpackers can appreciate the advances in gear since the 1970s and 1980s. By the time I was doing foot patrol in the 1990s, I had a Gore-Tex sleeping bag, Whisperlite stove, bear canister, and a variety of effective and lightweight shelter choices with bomber mosquito netting. But I also wasn’t as tough as I was back in the days of tube tent sleeping.

I could never pack enough food, or so I thought. I would have a hot drink and granola with yucky dried milk for breakfast, and then a variety of dried fruits and nuts, often baked into breads and bars, for lunch, usually with a hunk of hard cheese. I had chocolate or sweets for as long as I could keep from eating them all. I always made hot dinners, usually “one pots” with starch, soup, and protein combos that were calorically high but with ingredients that condensed well for packing—salami, cracked wheat or noodles, and soup mix were relatively standard fare. I would sometimes pick wild onions to pad the pot a bit. I always ate every scrap, a nourishing habit that also made dishwashing more efficient. Food and items with a scent had to be kept from wildlife, so it was generally an interesting and time-consuming challenge after dinner and before breakfast to deal with a food hang in the days before bear canisters. It also meant you spent much of the night listening for the distinct scratching noise of a bear climbing the tree where you hung your food and/or jumping out of your sleeping bag in your underwear to chase it away.

Good public contact was a major part of our job. It helped to have an outgoing personality and be dressed in a ranger outfit. In the early patrol days, we were even supposed to wear our flat hats, the classic calvary-style straw hat that epitomized rangers. Eventually management realized that these hats were impractical to wear with a backpack on, but not before many hats were ruined, bent by backpacks, pummeled by rain, or stained by dirty hands. Effective contacts could be made in an NPS ball cap, but you had to admit the image was compromised a bit.

Wilderness Foot Patrol Ranger Lincoln Else on a cross-country route. Not only were we responsible for patrolling the almost 750 miles of marked and maintained trails, but we also needed to keep an eye on off-trail routes throughout the park.

AUTHOR’S COLLECTION

We also had to take along our patrol gear, which included good maps; a combination compass/signal mirror/whistle device; a flare (to bring in a helicopter); a key to the backcountry cabins; a first-aid kit; various forms, brochures, and paperwork (it was the government, after all); a shovel; gloves; and a multitool. Most important, we were supplied with a Motorola handheld radio, which we listened to all day if we were in range. The radios were a stab at safety even though they didn’t work in most canyons, weighed a lot, and were dependent on batteries that might or might not hold a charge. It was a false sense of security in many ways, but it was the best we had. I appreciated being able to check in and out with my location when I could. I also found the radio both annoying and comforting during the day as voices communicating official business, such as traffic stops in the front country, chattered away on the frequency. After a few days alone in the woods, it was often reassuring and even entertaining to hear familiar voices coming from the radio, even if they were checking vehicle registrations.

On an average overnight patrol, we would often hike 10 to 15 miles a day. Our primary duties were to check junction signs, note downed trees or trail conditions, tally visitor contacts, and check wilderness permits. Once we reached our destination, we spent considerable time doing backcountry janitorial work: cleaning and maintaining the correct number, size, and condition of fire rings; collecting trash, from toilet paper to burnt tinfoil and cans; and removing downed limbs or small trees from the user trails around the site to prevent the formation of more trails. Your tax dollars at work.

Nightly rounds at the camp area were part of the job. Counting overnight visitors and talking with them at the destination provided important data to verify the effectiveness of the quotas and was often a source of great information to both parties. It was always a pleasure for me—I loved visiting with the campers about all sorts of things. The best time for receiving educational messages about caring for wild land is when you are sitting in it. I also served as the evening entertainment for many hikers—that’s fine too. Almost everyone was glad to see me—if they weren’t, they were usually doing something wrong.

As I became more experienced, I often took the lead in instructing new employees. Training staff to effectively perform these duties in one of the busiest backcountry areas in the world was an ongoing and critical necessity. These were entry-level jobs, and there were at least a few new folks every year. Our operation rarely had a budget large enough to fully fund all our needs, so volunteers and students sometimes filled empty positions. We trained hundreds of staff, some having never done anything like this before. We eventually had to trust them to be on their own in the backcountry, helping others. It was a leap of faith in some instances.

Map reading and orienteering were critically important skills we needed, especially pre-GPS. Safety and survival training ranged from treating insect bites to traveling over snow and ice. Public contact instruction generally involved learning how to give a friendly interpretive answer to a simple question, but it also taught you how to deal with inappropriate behavior. These young rangers could be faced with any number of things, often while alone, often deep in the wilderness.

Wilderness information specialists were not certified in law enforcement but needed to be able to address rule breakers in a safe and effective way. They were not search-and-rescue experts or park medics but were often first on the scene in emergency situations, generally without backup. They collected specific scientific data about wildlife, social interactions, and water quality. They taught thousands and thousands of park visitors about the value of nature, about Yosemite and how to care for it and other wild places. Staff had to be safe, and they had to be effective. I am so grateful to all of them over the years for their outdoor skills, common sense, and dedication. We did it because we loved the place, we loved the job.

It was a handful, though, and not without its unpleasant moments or even dangerous situations. The job wasn’t a great fit for everyone despite the romantic notion of what backcountry rangers are. When you did escape the “Box” (our unofficial name for the permit-issuing stations), a patrol in the backcountry might not be what you expected. Sometimes long, difficult days on the trail and sleeping on the cold, hard ground weren’t much fun. Heavy pack, shovel, unpleasant campsite janitorial work, real and imagined hazards like dangerous creek crossings and bumps in the night, and local pests like swarms of mosquitos and bears spending the night trying to get your food could spoil that idyllic picture of a wonderful backpacking job and adventure. Many chose to retreat to front-country positions. That was not a particular improvement from my perspective, as hordes of visitors and cars would provide their own unpleasantness, but to each their own.

What about that little “temporary” building in the middle of the parking lot in Tuolumne Meadows? It was used for at least 17 years as the wilderness permit station. By 2002, we absolutely needed to replace it.

Its replacement was mostly due to the advent of bearproof food canisters. Until the early 2000s, we were still unable to solve the food storage problems in roadless areas of the park. Bearproof canisters were evolving as the most effective method to keep hiker food away from animals in the backcountry, but we needed to obtain hundreds of them and get them into the hands (and packs) of each hiking group before they left the trailhead. The logistical problem of supplying the necessary amount of these 10-by-18-inch containers had become insurmountable out of our little hutch. Canisters weren’t generally available outside the park in the early years of the program, so most hikers needed to rent one of ours. Where would we store them? We needed to have a couple hundred canisters available to rent each day in the peak of summer. Would we bring in a cargo container or a temporary shed? How would we keep them sanitary? Where would hikers return them after hours?

Without a larger building, we couldn’t accomplish our goal of providing food storage devices and appropriate visitor education. How could we possibly provide the necessary amount of bear canisters needed for proper food storage? The bears continued to wreak havoc on food sacks put in trees, and wilderness impacts continued to concern us. We needed a clever solution to build a new station.

We had a general plan for the building, and we could come up with the funding for materials, but there was no one to do the actual construction of the building. NPS maintenance and building staff were unavailable due to other park priorities. We reached out to groups who loved the backcountry and had previously volunteered to help. Those who showed up for work couldn’t have been more different: volunteers from the Access Fund, made up of rock climbers and white-collar Bay Area professionals, and the Backcountry Horsemen of California, stock users from San Joaquin Valley, mostly construction professionals and ranchers. We all worked elbow to elbow to build our new wilderness permit center in 2002.

The new building was at least on the corner of the parking lot, not in the center, and had the space we needed. It served as a canister dispensary, an office, a wilderness visitor center, and a meeting place, all plumbed with the necessary amenities.

The one thing that stayed the same was the park map. It was still on the counter, upside down to us, the promise of future adventures beckoning.

Nearing the summit of Mount Lyell, the highest point in Yosemite.

L. PANTILAT

• ESSAY FOUR •

THE ART OF RANGERING

We were tree huggers, rock cops, speakers of backwoods truths, cleaners of campsites, holders of the coveted permit, enforcers or guides or hosts or nature defenders. We could dangle from a rope to rescue someone or find a lost kid or tack a shoe back on a horse. We were professional athletes who could shoot and dig and carry heavy loads and track the footprints of other travelers along the trail. Like parents before their teenager’s first date, we could carefully describe how to behave to prevent harm and do it again and again.

We were bureaucrats, planners, champions of a glorious resource. We were guided by a somewhat esoteric wilderness law with ambiguous language layered into the national park culture of the often-conflicting mandate to preserve and protect while allowing use. We were guardians and educators and keepers of the promise to future generations.

But for me, the best part of wilderness rangering was the ranging—the field time spent on foot, on horseback, climbing, or on skis out in the backcountry.

It was imperative that staff knew the resource, and to do that, we had to get out in it. This aspect of our management program put wilderness rangers full-time into the backcountry, ski trails, or climbing routes. The less experienced wilderness technician permit staff were assigned shorter patrols as part of their work schedule. There were different expectations, though similar duties, for the field ranger staff compared to the more novice technicians. The field rangers were generally much more experienced and highly trained than the permit staff, and they were often commissioned law enforcement officials, most with years of experience in other park service positions.

Many of the permit staff strived to graduate into field ranger positions. I managed to do it. It took several years in the Box (as the permit-issuing stations were known) and several successful patrols to prove I was not going to get myself in trouble out there on my own before I finally graduated into a full-time field position. I also had to earn a law enforcement commission by attending 10 weeks of training at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Academy in Glynco, Georgia, followed up by what seemed like thousands of hours of continuing law enforcement education. But it was worth it.

Backcountry staff, including backcountry information specialists and field patrol rangers, early 1980s.

NPS PHOTO

Wilderness rangering carries sort of a heroic panache for many people. Rangers seem to be champions of good behavior, strong, courageous, and bold, cruising around saying howdy, saving people, helping wildlife. It is a job many think they would love to have. And for me it was truly wonderful, but not always. I remember awful patrols when I experienced day after day of soaking thundershowers and never being able to get my sleeping bag dry. Or hard or dangerous or disgusting work in the field. Or hordes of mosquitos . . . or crying in the saddle out of pain or self-doubt or loneliness. Or being afraid . . .

Although most contacts with visitors were positive and appropriate, I also experienced dangerous moments. One contact with a mentally disabled man I encountered at the Merced Lake Ranger Station could have ended so much worse. He showed up one evening at the station door, asking for food because he needed “to get to Alabama.” I was alone, he was clearly unstable and wild-eyed, and it was well after dark. Staying calm, I gave him some food and gently suggested he start walking downhill and catch the bus in Yosemite Valley. He seemed appeased and went off into the night. I quickly locked all the doors and windows and mentally located available weapons—the metal fire poker was only three feet away, and my gun was in the bedroom. The radio didn’t work inside the cabin, but I needed to contact dispatch about the situation. Once again, I had to go outside in the dark, but this time it wasn’t about a mouse in a trash can.

Early the next morning, he attempted to rape a woman near the Little Yosemite campground. The law enforcement staff from Little Yosemite Valley caught him, and the Yosemite Valley rangers brought in a helicopter to remove him from the backcountry. The skilled front-country rangers were ready and able to come to the rescue. Thank goodness they were there. We were all in this together, front and backcountry, when we needed to be.

What does it take to be a wilderness ranger, to be one of those people who want to stay out there day after day, year after year? Grit and determination—is that what gets you through it? Or is it love and beauty and the joy of being out in natural settings? A mission to protect and preserve? Is it self-confidence and a wholeness within oneself that melds with open spaces? Or maybe it’s a sense of nonconformity and finding a place in nonconforming circumstances, glad to be away from the pressure of civilization? Or perhaps it’s in your genes? For me, it was all of this.

I do know that living and working in the relatively remote back-country requires one to be comfortable being alone, to have a sense of self-possession and self-acceptance. It takes not needing others, at least for certain periods of time. It takes finding pleasure in the music of a river, the ceiling of stars in the night’s darkness, the direct interaction with the earth and its community of life. It takes physical strength, and it hurts sometimes, and sometimes you cry because it is too much. It takes being brave when you are scared, and it takes knowing what to fear. It takes being calm and strong, steady when pushed to your limits. Or at least you try for all that—sometimes more successfully than others.

In my foot-patrol era, I was one of five or six summer wilderness rangers who generally worked geographic areas in the most remote parts of the park. Some of the rangers used only stock, such as oldtimers like Glen Fredy, Don Pimental, and John Hartman, or more recently Gil Young and Bob Bandy. Some just hiked, like Anne Woessner, Chuck Carter, Mark Fincher, and Mary Beth Hennessy. Some, like me, Brent and Tory Finley, Fred Bertetta, and my boss Ron Mackie, did both.

On foot we were hiking machines, and we covered a lot of ground. I attribute my later-in-life lower body degradation to too many miles with a big heavy pack, but it was worth it. Despite ongoing orthopedic issues, I was as fit as I would probably ever be after a summer of foot patrol, and I loved hiking through Yosemite’s wild places and taking cross-country adventures that couldn’t be done with livestock. It was glorious, each day different, each day rewarding. We learned the park and how to live in its wild corners like few others.

Walking through the mountains by myself had a certain magic, a unique character. My body kept a certain cadence, legs moving with the rhythm of my breathing. It was instinctual, not exactly mindless but not requiring attention. It was the fundamental tempo that carried me through the day. My mind generally wandered, subconsciously checking the status of the weather, the condition of the trail tread below my feet, my progress across the landscape. I was always on the lookout for problems, but I didn’t find many.

My focus would sway like a tree in the wind, thoughts sometimes solid like the trunk, sometimes as fluid as the boughs moving in the breeze. Often, I would find myself tracking whatever had walked the trail before me—what kind of animal was it, which direction were those boot tracks traveling, how recently had someone or something passed this way? Sometimes I focused on an unusual sound and stopped to look around carefully, but generally I slid back into the meditation of walking, of thinking and not thinking: mental freedom. I could drift from flights of fancy to work solutions to serious problems coming to my attention and just as quickly transition to something else. Often, I found I had covered significant distance without being aware of my progress after engaging so deeply in another world in my mind. Good ideas would often rise out of the chaos of my mental wanderings, only to be lost by the end of the trail.

Our hiking patrols would take us beyond the first 10 miles of trail, the one-day-out zone, into the more remote parts of the park for trips lasting 3 to 10 days. Our destinations included wonderful places like the Grand Canyon of the Tuolumne or Roosevelt or McCabe Lakes. Smedberg, Tilden, and Benson Lakes were longer patrol objectives. We were often multiple days of travel away from our trailhead, knowing we were the farthest one could get from pavement in Yosemite.

These longer trips had a unique character compared to leaving from a front-country trailhead every day or working out of a backcountry cabin. Our resource protection work was more dispersed, our patrol assignment more widespread. There was less human influence, and there were often long, lonely days when we wouldn’t see more than a few people. Project work was complicated by the distances as well, as significant logistical challenges came up if the work required more than one person to complete.

A major part of the art of rangering involves public contact. I always found it best to approach interactions in an affirmative and upbeat manner—it just generally makes things go better. Ron Mackie, my wonderful boss of 20 years, was the king of positive contacts. He was always delighted to talk with the visitors, and they always learned something from him. The love of the backcountry effervesced from him, and he was legendary. His was a feel-good message, even when addressing misbehavior, and he could talk to anyone.

Although I, too, am an optimist like Ron, and was trained by him, I wasn’t always patient with misconduct. I felt sorry that some back-country users didn’t get it about leaving nature unchanged as much as possible. Why would they do things that damaged the natural world or other people’s experience? Maybe these relatively pristine areas are so far from people’s norm that some just didn’t see it. For others, maybe they held onto leftover habits or old ways, or they felt it was too much work to abide by the rules. Maybe they just thought it didn’t matter that much or that someone would be along to clean up after them.

Wilderness ranger Mary Beth Hennessy repairs a trail sign. Signs often need to be reset, especially after a big winter, so maintenance of these key directional markers is an important duty.

AUTHOR’S COLLECTION

We hoped it was because they didn’t fully realize the consequences of their behavior. For instance, if a bear gets into food that is improperly stored or garbage that gets left behind, that bear may never stop seeking human-supplied calories. Its reproductive success and demographics can be affected. Plastic and food wrappers can plug up its intestines. Such human-caused mistakes damage the bear—it does matter. Losing your food to the bears involves much more than just losing your dinner.

Therefore, education is a huge and vital part of our wilderness program. It is particularly effective in the backcountry, where the benefit of proper wilderness care or the signs of harmful actions are real and at times obvious. Field interactions, both positive and negative, were limited in number, however, so we depended on the permit stations for most contacts with hikers. We also worked with other organizations, school groups, pack stations, and our coworkers to increase understanding of how to prevent impacts. Education does work, and I did see behavior change over time. It got to the point that I no longer had to carry gunny sacks full of trash and campfire ash to clean up popular camp areas; the bears were getting less human food; and water quality improved as compliance with human waste disposal regulations increased and people paid more attention to appropriately preventing stock impacts. It made rangering much easier, although there was still an art to it.

The art of rangering . . . it was a learned skill, and it was instinct. It was just a job, yet also and absolutely a life’s work. It was hard and it was easy. It was a privilege to perform that art in a place like Yosemite’s vast wilderness. We were the lucky ones—it was good work.

The Buck Camp cabin, built in 1931. Shown here from the back, this photo highlights the vertical log construction that makes the cabin unique.

NPS PHOTO

• ESSAY FIVE •

BUCK CAMP

There are five backcountry patrol cabins in Yosemite that are used regularly by field staff. Miguel Meadows has had a varied history, but time and forest fires have altered its benefit to the park, and its location between Hetchy and Lake Eleanor makes it more a quick stopover on the way in or out of a patrol. Vernon Lake and Wilma Lake cabins in the north end of the park primarily serve as snow survey shelters in winter, although they are occasionally used during multiday summertime patrols or by work parties. Buck Camp and Merced Lake cabins, in the southern portion of the park, were staffed through the summer when a full-time ranger was based at the cabin for 9- or 10-day tours.

Each cabin has a personality—Miguel Meadows was built as a drive-to snow survey base next to a road constructed so that materials could be delivered to workers building the dam at Hetch Hetchy. It almost felt more like a tract home except for the rattlesnake living under the front porch and the skunks and bears who visited regularly. Merced Lake is the busiest and most deluxe, a large log cabin with a big stone fireplace in the living room, a nice bedroom, and a comparatively fancy kitchen with a four-burner gas stove and oven, a propane refrigerator with freezer, and on-demand hot water. Vernon Lake and Wilma are one-room log stuctures with bunk beds, no running water, and large cast-iron wood-burning stoves for heating and cooking. These cabins are most important in winter as warm and dry shelters. Buck Camp, in the south end of the park, has its own special charm.

Buck Camp was my first cabin assignment. It was a good place for a “buck,” or new, ranger like me to learn the ropes. The huge patrol area (about 200,000 acres) surrounding the cabin tended to have the least use, and hence the least action, of other patrol assignments. The landscape was generally gentle topographically, with rolling dirt trails through miles of lodgepole and red fir forests and meadows sometimes filled with chest-high wildflowers. The rocky or slickrock sections of trail were relatively short, so newbies were less likely to get hurt. It was quiet and comparatively easy, just really remote. And vast.

It was thrilling and even daunting to be assigned to a cabin, but I knew I could handle it. On my first trip into Buck Camp in 1984, one of my fellow rangers, Gil Young, accompanied me. He was a mellow and kind person who had been the ranger there in the past. He showed me around, breaking me in, and then left me on my own. Gil moved at a slower pace and had an unflappable style. He would mosey along, quiet and effective in his own way. He was such a gentle soul that he didn’t feed his horse apple cores in case the arsenic in the seeds might make them sick. My style was considerably amped up by comparison, so I guess we balanced each other out.

I thought we would never arrive on that first trip. It was 26 miles in the saddle, starting in Yosemite Valley, me leading a mule for the first time, unsure of what was around the next corner, knees and ankles throbbing in pain, but determined to stay tough.

It was especially long considering we had to get up before dawn to start out. I remember saddling up at the Yosemite Valley National Park Service barn as the morning sky started to light up with the coming day. I also remember trying to look confident around the real packers and the pressure of making my loads, hoping I could tell whether they were balanced, hoping Speckles the mule wouldn’t kick me as I cinched her up. Finally leaving the stables, getting the feel for functioning as a unit—horse and rider and mule. Riding up the Vernal/Nevada Falls trail, my heart in my throat, looking over the trail’s edge into the roaring Merced River chasm below, fearing some innocent but dangerous hiker might spook the stock or try to pet the mule.

Finally, to the top of the falls, and out through the Illilouette Creek drainage—whew. This stretch was a breather, easy after the cliffside, slickrock, highly populated conditions of the Vernal/Nevada trail. The trail through the Illilouette drainage was long, flat, and forested, with little topographical variation—depending on your mood, this part of the trek could be a slog or a piece of cake. The drainage was unique in that managers had decided to stop suppressing every natural fire within its confines, leaving the area an example of what the fire regime, and forest, would look like without human intervention. Fire scientists and ecologists loved it, but it also meant a lot of burned or fallen trees across the trail in the spring, many requiring creative solutions to get around especially with a horse and fully packed mule.

My first trip was early June, and the sawyers, the roving park staff who cleared the winter’s fallen trees off the trails, hadn’t worked on this trail segment yet. Gil and I threaded our way through what seemed to be endless downed logs—I learned the number was over 150 when I returned to the Valley—blocking the trail. It had been a big winter, and the fire-affected forest fell easily to snow and wind. Swollen creeks, muddy holes, and wet slickrock slopes had to be negotiated as well.

Although it may seem like the horse and mule do all the work, this was not a trip for a weak or timid human. After 14 or 15 hours on the trail and getting around, over, and through countless downed logs, Gil and I finally pulled into Buck Camp. We still needed to put up the corral for the animals for the night and make ourselves dinner and a bed, so the day was not done. I did prove I could get that far, anyway. No sissy here.

Gil and I worked together for the next few days to get the cabin ready for the season. Beyond setting up fences for the stock, we needed to de-rodent the cabin and tack shed, get gravity flow from the spring into the water system, and, of course, put up the flagpole—it was a ranger station, after all. We also had to climb onto the roof to take the cap off the chimney, cut firewood, and repair the winter’s impact on the area. There was plenty to do for a season that often lasted only three months.

The Buck Camp cabin is unique in that it is the only vertical log cabin in the park. The logs stand up from the ground rather than resting horizontally. Now on the National Register of Historic Places, the cabin was built as a snow survey shelter in winter and patrol cabin in summer. The building has two rooms, both with large, screened windows covered with metal shutters. The front third of the cabin is the kitchen, heart of the home. For warmth and cooking, there is a nice wood-burning stove rigged with hot water coils, a series of metal tubes plumbed through the fire box that provide hot water. A Coleman propane three-burner stove is also available for cooking. Large, screened shelves serve as the pantry. That, and the dish cupboard, are particularly popular with rodents. They annoyed us with their poop and presence no matter how many defenses we tried to mount against them.

Buck Camp kitchen is memorable for its huge porcelain sink with hot and cold running water, its supply thanks to the famous spring above the corral. I say “famous” because during the drought of 1975/1976, this spring was the only running water in the south end of the park, including the South Fork of the Merced River. My theory was that it had a direct link to Johnson Lake on the other side of the hill. At any rate, it was heavenly to have unlimited running water after a long day on the trail. A fire in the woodstove would warm the room and heat the water-filled tubes coiling around the firebox that filled the hot water tank—it was a luxury of luxuries to have hot running water in the backcountry.

One of the tables in the kitchen serves as the office, where I would write reports, log entries, or read by the light of the gas lantern. Meeting and dining with the infrequent cabin visitors is generally done out by the camp firepit, with its carved log chairs, rocks, and seating logs. Many a story was told around that fire, often aided by a little whisky or brandy to wet the whistle and liven up the telling.

There are two beds in the back room. The all-cotton mattresses at least provide insulation from the sagging coils. Cans over the metal legs of the cots seem to keep the mice from turning the mattresses into rodent apartments. Boards placed over the springs have reduced the Grand Canyon aspect of the bed’s profile. Comfort wasn’t a problem when I slept inside because I was usually exhausted from the day’s work. The most common interference to my sleep was what I called the Rodent Olympics. This event occurred almost every night just as I was dozing off. I think it was probably wood rats or something of that size. They would gallop from one end of the attic to the other, taking care of their own varied needs. It alternatively made me smile and infuriated me to hear them racing back and forth over my head.

The back room also serves as storage. As Buck Camp is 26 trail miles from Yosemite Valley and 16 trail miles from Wawona, rangers, trail crews, and sawyers stock the place on each visit. The catch-all nature of cabin storage was a mix of “Take everything because we can’t just run down to the store if we forget something” and “Let’s leave this stuff so we don’t have to pack it in again or in case someone else needs it.” You’ll find oddball nails from past jobs, first-aid equipment in weird quantities and packaging, and way too much salt. Extra blankets waited to be used for an unexpected guest or a search-and-rescue operation, packed carefully to defend them from the mice. Bigger tools, building materials, paint, shingles, and wire that doesn’t fit in the tack shed all have a spot in the corner. Luckily the room is big, and all of us added and subtracted from the storage piles. Cluttered as it could get, you could look out the screened windows onto the meadow with its cow parsnip and corn lily forest, and the breeze would ruffle the checkered curtains. It would all feel just right, at least for the moment.

It was a great assignment for horses and mules as well. Though “meadow” and “pasture” may conjure up very different images, Buck Camp had both: a glorious meadow pasture. You can see the Clark Range from the upper end, and the ever-flowing spring runs through the corner and keeps the grass green and the soil soggy. The meadow is huge—a “Club Fed” for the stock.

We had to earn the use of the pasture, however. It usually took two of us a couple of days to set up the fence around the meadow. The three strands of wire that comprise the fence are dropped in the fall to reduce breakage. In the spring they must be pulled back up tight and secured with fence staples. This sounds straightforward, but it isn’t easy, especially with the mosquitos buzzing our ears. I ended up becoming somewhat competent with a fencing tool, but we never got the wire as tight as when the packers did it. Once the fence was up, the stock could be turned out at night to feed and rest. The large area within the fence was important to disperse the impact of the grazing animals and protect the meadow from the recurring use of the staff at Buck Camp.

A somewhat ramshackle wire corral abuts the pasture. It is loaded with conehead rocks sticking straight up from the ground, treacherous for ankle twists in cowboy boots. The strands of the fence always seemed like they were drooping, soft and oddly bent. It didn’t look like it would hold up to any sort of challenge, but I never had escapees from the enclosure. The animals loved coming to Buck Camp, I’m sure, as they got turned out into that meadow at dusk, in knee-deep grass, with acres and acres to roam. Despite differences in personality, they generally came back to the corral in the morning like good workers—or was it for the scoop of grain?

And, of course, there is the outhouse. Luckily for me, it was rebuilt during my time at Buck Camp and is very nice, particularly as out-houses go. It has a regal look—a lovely, shingled log building, unusually large for its purpose, well constructed, sitting alone up the hill from the cabin among the red fir forest. It was sturdy and pleasant in its newness, as it was made with freshly cut wood one summer while I was there. It is a one-holer, deeply dug, and you would sprinkle a little lime or ash into the depths after use. It takes a little while to get used to sitting down on an outhouse seat. No imagining what is beneath you or if spiders (or whatever) might come up from the dark dungeon below. Just hold your breath if necessary, do your thing, and get the heck out. No loitering there.

The other personal hygiene facility of interest at that ranger station is the shower on the front porch. There is a small deck outside the front door where a shower head has been plumbed, so you can stand out there, gazing at the meadow, maybe watching the sun set, and get a nice warm shower. Because the shower is outside and next to the front door, someone had set up a “privacy screen.” The only problem was that it was only waist high. As the first female resident of Buck Camp, I had to make a few adjustments.

Human impacts at destinations around Buck Camp were often barely evident or wonderfully absent, especially for a trailed section of the Yosemite Wilderness, and the bears were wild. It was not unusual to see only 600 or 700 visitors a summer, the same number that someone might see over a busy weekend on trails out of Tuolumne Meadows. In fact, I was often delighted to have someone else to talk to besides my horse and mule when I did encounter a backpacker. If I was at the cabin, a glass of lemonade could really improve a visitor contact. Hikers were encouraged to head to the nearby lake to keep the ranger station from becoming a camping area. It was much better that way. I loved having the place mostly to myself, and they needed to truly experience the wilderness.

The other backcountry patrol cabins were much like Buck Camp in theory—simple structures in the remote depths of the park’s wilderness. But like many other firsts that become a lasting memory in a person’s life, Buck Camp will always be my favorite cabin, despite that night of terror with the mouse in the trash can.

Speckles the mule, hard at work. You can just see her mischievous personality from the look in her eye.

L. BOYERS

• ESSAY SIX •

SPECKLES AND HORSE PATROL

Traveling with stock requires a special level of preparedness and awareness. I think Speckles the mule knew she had me the moment her lead rope came off the horn of the saddle. She was an old lady of the mountains, and I was the greenhorn. She saw an opportunity and took it, heading straight for the barn . . .

I was 32 years old, and it was my first summer with a horse and mule for work. I had ridden horses with friends while growing up, but I’d always been a backpacker and had much to learn about packing and camping with stock in the wilderness. We (Speckles, a horse whose name I can’t remember, and I) were on the rocky switchback trail above Buena Vista Lake, headed toward Buck Camp for a 10-day tour. As an avid hiker, I just couldn’t ride all day, and I often walked some of the uphill sections of trail to stay in shape. I would dally (wrap) the mule’s lead rope to the horse’s saddle horn, tie up the reins so they wouldn’t drag, and use the horse’s lead rope to guide the whole group up the trail—a backcountry conga line. This seemed like a good idea until Speckles, who had traveled these trails for at least 15 years, decided she really didn’t want to be pulled uphill. It was clear the idea wasn’t a good one when the not-so-secure wrap worked its way off the horn, leaving her, loaded up with all my stuff, free as a bird.

Normally mules would follow their horse, a trait ingrained from the fact that they are the offspring of a female horse bred with a male donkey. On the rare occasions when they came loose, pack mules would usually stop and grab a mouthful of grass off the side of the trail; then they would run to catch up with the horse or other mules. But Speckles was a veteran of many a campaign in the backcountry, and it would take a pretty good reason for her stop once she was given this unexpected freedom. Yosemite Valley, or at least greener pastures, beckoned.

Uh-oh. This was not a good situation for me.

Yep, I was a rookie when it came to coexisting with these large animals in the backcountry. I had gotten to the point that I needed stock to do my job, however. Those of us who patrol or care for backcountry and wilderness areas work hard physically, often alone. You need a certain level of strength, determination, and a safety awareness to avoid hurting yourself, either in the long or in the short run. My lower body couldn’t keep on doing foot patrol after hundreds of miles of backpacking circuits around the park’s wilderness.

Working with a horse and mule enabled me to continue my important work. With stock, I could perform long tours, often traveling 10–20 miles a day, day after day, for up to 9 or 10 days. It allowed me to carry such tools as a shovel, rake, and ax. I could pack food and camp gear for the three of us for multinight trips. Add some radio batteries, a first-aid kit, a book, ranger stuff (service weapon, maps, paperwork, field guide), a few clothes, maybe a little flask of something strong and some other treats if visiting a trail crew—it all adds up. Speckles could be loaded with up to 100 pounds of supplies. I certainly couldn’t carry it. As the food dwindled in the load, I filled the available spots with trash I collected in the backcountry.

Speckles was very experienced at trash collection—legendary, in fact, in some circles. She was a member of the infamous, and mean, White String: four white mules led by Raleigh “Sweet Pea” Patterson in the 1970s. In that group, Dirty Sally was always in front, with Speckles, Strawberry, and Tamocha finishing off the string (or set) of pack animals. It was an eye-catching group. Raleigh was packer enough to deal with this rowdy bunch of mules and tough enough to travel some of the roughest trails in the park with them. They packed thousands of pounds of trash out of the backcountry.

The reason Speckles, Raleigh, and their cohorts were out there is a good example of why it is smart to be conservative with your management decisions, especially as things change over time. Prior to about 1970 it was commonplace, and even encouraged, to bury one’s trash in the backcountry. Some larger trash piles accumulated in popular camping places, especially old stock camps where users discarded lots of cans. Major dumps took significant effort to remove—gunny sack after gunny sack, mule load after mule load. These dumps were a product of the first wave of present-day recreational users.

By the early 1970s, stock use had declined, and backpackers were in the majority, as they are now. Hikers don’t carry as many cans, but they always have trash. Lucky backpackers in the late 1970s got Johnny Horizon bags along with their wilderness permit. Johnny was the square-jawed mascot of the National Park Service’s anti-litter effort. Here was this great trash bag with his smiling face on it, free from your government. “Please use it to pack out your trash,” we would implore hikers when they got their wilderness permits. Change is slow, however, even generational in many cases, and I would bet there are still people who bury their trash. Johnny would be disappointed. He also didn’t have the marketing power of Smokey Bear, and the bag supply was short lived. The messaging of Leave No Trace was prominent a few years later, but I liked Johnny—he looked like a rugged individual, just the type to pack out his own trash, right? Unfortunately, there was always something for Speckles and me to pack out despite Johnny Horizon bags and Leave No Trace—it was just part of the job, and one of the reasons for using stock in the wilderness.

There were pros—beyond trash collection—and cons for using horses and mules on these trips. I loved the ability to look around at the larger landscape while riding. I always kept my eyes on the road, but I didn’t have to plan every step while on horseback, freeing me to be more aware of my surroundings. I could cover more ground in less time, carry more tools, pack in more stuff for work projects, and pack out more trash with stock. I could help hikers with a variety of emergencies more efficiently. The animals provided quite a bit of entertainment (or extra work) as travel companions as well. I sometimes chatted away to them, my pals in the journey along the trails. Even though they never replied, I’m pretty sure they were listening.

Wilderness ranger Lloyd Walker on horse patrol—this is one of the many places in the Merced River canyon you didn’t want to have a wreck.

AUTHOR’S COLLECTION

Public response to me being mounted was mixed. My interactions with hikers likely seemed more authoritarian as I looked down at the person from a 900-pound perch. People were generally fascinated by me and my loaded pack mule, often taking photos, perhaps reminded of another era, and kids loved it. They wondered where I was going, what was on the pack mule, or how I got the job. The fact that I was a woman made it even more interesting for them. My long red braid fell over my shoulder, my smile was wide, and I had the classic ranger look in the flat hat and gray-and-green uniform. If a woman was going to be found in this role, I fit the part.

Some hikers resented the presence of the animals, however, even though the horse and mule were working. Stock impacts were a chief source of complaints from hikers, and balancing stock use with the desires of all users required constant management attention. National Park Service administrative stock use was more tolerated than private use. Commercial use, however, was controversial and a source of ongoing negotiation between park managers and pack station operators. Trail impacts such as manure and urine deposits, pulverization of trail tread, and grazing impacts by a relatively small number of stock users can affect the experiences of a large number of non-stock users. There was resentment that money was being made from doing something that so negatively affected others. I understand concerns about those impacts. I felt stock use had its place in the park, however, and tried to find management techniques that allowed all of us to get along.

One of the biggest disadvantages of using horses and mules for long patrols or recreationally camping with stock was the effect on campsites. Many stock impacts stem from improper or concentrated overnight use. Physical effects such as the churning of soils and trampling of vegetation is more destructive in campsites if the animals are left tied up too long or overnight. Manure and urine concentrations make a spot unpleasant for those who use the spot later, and spilled feed such as grain, pellets, or alfalfa cubes can introduce non-native food to local wildlife or non-native seeds into the ecosystem. Stock users must be very careful to properly manage stock to lessen or eliminate these issues and restore holding areas after use.

Where designated or traditional stock camps are not available, a camp spot has to be chosen that is (1) environmentally resilient and (2) appropriate for the animals so they can stand quietly when tied up without damaging their surroundings. There has to be food and water for them and, perhaps most important, good holding, as the animals have to be turned loose at night to graze and rest comfortably. I carried grain to augment their caloric intake, but they needed bulk to fill their bellies with the mountain grasses and sedges. Keeping the animals tied up at night caused problems to them, to me, and to the environment, as they would often fuss all night, sometimes pawing the ground, sometimes biting or messing with each other, moving in frustration at being tied up. It was always a relief for them when we let them loose to move freely without the burden of their loads, graze, or roll in the dirt. The horse could be hobbled when set loose, and the mule would not leave the horse, but there was always a risk that they would disappear in the night, headed for the barn or some other desirable spot.

To prevent them from escaping, we had to find a campsite with good grass, surrounded by natural barriers, with little wind and not many mosquitos (both of which also drove the animals mad). If possible, the camp should be set up so that a physical choke point was available to cut off an escaping animal. I spent many sleepless nights listening for the horse’s bell, tracking their nightly activities, hoping they wouldn’t slip by me. There were drift fences—wire barriers strung across escape routes—in a few places where the trail crews camped. These fences have become increasingly uncommon as management has strived to reduce signs of humans in the wilderness, and most have been removed. To avoid losing your stock, it was necessary to get up just before first light, take the grain bag out, find the animals, and catch them before they got any other ideas. Then you could have your morning coffee.

Speckles had spent many nights in the wilderness. She had been relegated to the wilderness ranger staff after a long illustrious career in trails operation. She was getting on in years and was probably in her late teens. She needed to have an easier existence beyond the tough life of a trail crew mule deep in the backcountry. These trail crew mules are a part of a string—generally four or five mules that are almost constantly in motion, delivering supplies, sometimes twice a week, to camps 20 to 40-plus miles from the trailhead. Days in camp might find the mules helping move rocks with stone boats, a flat sheet of steel rigged that they dragged. The stock might also be used to fill causeways with dirt using special pack saddles rigged to bottom-dump loads of soil. Summers could be long for a trail crew mule.

Mounted rangers, however, generally take only a horse and a mule to a cabin or on a long, traveling patrol. We stop a lot to talk with the public or do campsite or sign work. The loads ranger mules generally carried on a patrol were rarely even 100 pounds, and we never made them haul rocks or dirt like trail crew mules. Most ranger-type work assignments are comparatively easy for an ex–trail crew mule.

I just could not believe Speckles would leave me, standing there speechless and mule-less on the Buena Vista Trail, when she had such a cushy assignment—ungrateful mule. But yep, there I was, holding the lead rope to my horse, in my cowboy boots and spurs, watching my fully packed mule take off in the wrong direction. I tried getting back on my horse and chasing her, but the trail was narrow and rocky, and she just stayed ahead of me.

The more I pressed, the faster she went. My mind raced: What if she gets all the way back to the barn? Not good for a first-season horse patrol ranger, especially the first woman given a full-time mounted wilderness patrol position. What if she or we get hurt in this silly chase—an even worse thought! Safety first in Yosemite, right?

OK, be smarter than a mule. But mules are pretty smart—smarter than horses, that’s for sure.

Did I have premonitions of the time almost 20 years later when I did chase a horse all the way back to the trail head? Or of the night at Buck Camp when Leon Garcia, an expert packer, walked into the cabin because his stock had disappeared, hobbled from Moraine Meadows, and he had just spent hours unhappily hiking in his pointy cowboy boots trying to find them? In that case, we found the animals the next day, still hobbled, happily grazing away in the meadow near Given’s Lake, about five miles from the trail crew camp. Was I like almost everyone who uses stock in the backcountry and loses them? It happens to the best of us, but that didn’t make it any better right then for me, alone on the Buena Vista Trail with no one to help me chase Speckles down.

It’s an interesting challenge to be on your own out in the woods, but it is also one of the benefits. Risk, adventure, the unknown, and unique challenges are valued as part of the wilderness experience. In an unruly landscape, at the mercy of powers larger than yourself, such as weather, water, wind, and fire, some backcountry travelers find satisfaction in overcoming hardship, in stretching themselves in ways they haven’t had to stretch before, having to use inner strength or genetic memory they didn’t know they had in the face of difficult or dangerous situations. The risks and dangers you face in the wilderness are much different from those in urban settings. Many users take great pride in developing their outdoor skills, honing them by taking a risk here and there, and most remember the risks they took more than the miles they walked through wildflower meadows or the stunning vistas they saw from the tops of passes. We remember the times we crossed that flooding creek and didn’t drown, or got back to the cabin in the dark after getting lost, or chased our stock down rocky trails.

Risk is intoxicating in a way, but I was on the job! I was not supposed to be putting myself or Speckles in any danger—that was the pact I made when I accepted this role. Being out in the wilderness alone, with 800-to 1,000-pound animals as your partners while traveling across slickrock trails or trying to get around fallen trees, is risky even without adding in weather or darkness or flooded creek fords. It would not do to get hurt because I had made such a greenhorn mistake as losing my mule while just traveling up a trail.

Metal shoes sliding and clanking down the rocky trail, the horse confused and anxious that Speckles was in the lead, visions of calamity dancing in my head—what was I to do? Looking ahead, I saw a potential solution. A long switchback appeared on the trail below me. If I could cut that corner, I could get ahead of Speckles. It would mean I had to get off my horse, tie him up (I wasn’t going to let them both get away, that’s for sure), scramble down the side of the mountain in my darn pointy, slick-soled cowboy boots, and land on the trail below quickly enough to stand in front of a loaded mule headed to the barn.

Though risky, it seemed to be my best option. Take a deep breath; be quick, quick, quick; hope the horse behaves; and then jump off the side of the trail. Scrambling, trying to not fall, I managed to get down the jumble of rocks to the trail in front of Speckles, who looked quite surprised to see me there.

Afraid she would just charge around me or knock me over with her pack load, I waved my arms and told her, as if she could understand, to stop. I think it was so unexpected for me to be in front of her that she slowed down and then stepped right on her lead rope. Whew—she was stopped cold, a captive of her own hoof pinning her lead rope to the trail. I walked up, grabbed the rope, and the crisis was over. She followed me docilely back to my horse as if nothing had happened. She was probably disappointed (I guess), but you can imagine how I felt.

I continued to patrol with horse and mule for about 15 years. Speckles and I were partners for at least five of those years, and she taught me one lesson after another. One thing for sure is I never allowed the lead rope to pull off the saddle horn again when I walked uphill.

Sunset on the Sierra Crest after a magnificent thunderstorm.

M. OSBORNE

• ESSAY SEVEN •

SPOTTED LAKE

There are a lot of things that can get you killed in Yosemite, including other people. Rangers spend many hundreds of hours training to deal with frightening possibilities, but it never quite covers everything. Sometimes you must rely on instinct. I’m remembering that patrol up to Spotted Lake . . .

A little background to my law enforcement perspective would clarify this story a bit. I’ve never been very good at policing—it just wasn’t my thing. However, I was a member of the protection division of Yosemite National Park and required to be a commissioned law enforcement officer for my job and respond to violations of the law. Most visitors tried to respect the park while enjoying it, but there was also intentional bad behavior of one sort or another that had to be dealt with. Most of that sort of law breaking occurred in the front country part of the park.

The protection rangers who work the portions of the park along the roads must deal with drugs, kidnapping, murder, weapons, drunks, poachers, speeders, wildlife feeders, and other unsavory types. I sincerely appreciate them for performing very dangerous and difficult work. They are also medics, search-and-rescue staff, fire responders, investigators, teachers, and public helpers.

I was fortunate to have worked in one of the more law-abiding parts of Yosemite—the wilderness. Most folks caught doing something wrong in the backcountry were nice people, ignorant of the impact of their actions on wild areas: minor rule breakers on a hiking trip.

I always considered myself an educator rather than an enforcer, and I generally strived to help people understand the results of their behavior. This approach seemed more effective in the long run when dealing with minor infractions. It also served to deflate the escalation of a potentially very hazardous situation while working alone in remote locations. I had to couple this approach with situational awareness, however. Was there a threat involved, or could we make this an educational moment?

I was supposed to be trained and capable of dealing with whatever situation I came across. Luckily, in the wilderness, I didn’t encounter many of the high-intensity situations the front-country rangers had to resolve, as I was essentially isolated in many parts of the backcountry. My very basic Motorola “walkie-talkie” radio was often undependable, preventing me from connecting with my supervisors, park headquarters, anybody—and I was usually at least a full day’s travel away from another park person or trailhead. I had attended many hundreds of hours of law enforcement training, but most of it was not applicable in a solo wilderness setting. I had to use my best judgment and my instincts about the person or situation when I came across something illegal or sketchy, knowing I would have no backup. As an eternal optimist, I looked for a positive contact, hoping the person would display none of the furtive gestures we were often warned about in cop school.

Although I got through 30 years of patrolling Yosemite, my innate trust of people and hostess/educator role could put me in dicey positions. Consider, for instance, the potentially fatal decision I made at Spotted Lake in my second year of patrol at Buck Camp in the mid-1980s.

Spotted Lake is an alpine gem tucked between a sparse lodgepole forest and the ridge of a cirque left from 10,000-year-old glaciation. It lies under Red Top Peak, right on the park’s southern boundary, just south of Chain Lakes. It is out in the sticks, miles off the main trail in one of the most remote and unvisited parts of the park. I had never been there before, and I felt it was important to patrol even more of the out-ofthe-way areas so I would be familiar with them, just in case. I figured it would take a day’s round-trip travel with stock from Buck Camp just to get to the general area. My planned route would follow the regular trail to the unnamed creek crossing. I would leave the horse and mule there and hike cross-country up to the lake. I radioed my plans for the day into park dispatch and started off.

When I got to the creek, I found a good spot back in the woods away from the trail to leave the stock. I unpacked the mule and set up a high line with the cinch rope. I loosened the animals’ saddles a little, took the bridle off the horse, and tied both lead ropes to the high line. They would rest quietly in the shade.

I brought my hiking boots so I didn’t have to hike in my packer boots. If you’ve ever slid down a pine-needle-covered slope or slipped on glaciated granite in slick leather-soled boots, you know why I brought my hikers. On the flip side, if you’ve ever experienced that terrifying moment when your Vibram-soled hiking boot doesn’t come out of the stirrup, you know the wisdom of wearing proper boots at the proper time, especially while leading a mule. I changed my boots and grabbed a day pack with food, water, and ranger stuff. I brought my gun, but since my route was physically challenging and would take me through the forest, I didn’t want it to be in the way, so I put it in my day pack as well. My prep had gone well so far. I was excited about my adventure, thinking of the new wonders I would see in these glorious Sierra Nevada mountains.

I followed the small outlet creek up from the trail. It was a long way, over two miles. Two miles on the trail isn’t a big deal, but two miles and 1,000 feet of elevation gain though the pathless forest often feels like a lot more. Downed trees, rocky glens, a winding creek bed to follow. I felt a little uneasy—it had taken longer than I hoped. I was relieved to finally come to the lake.

Rimmed by cliff walls and at an elevation of 9,000 feet, the little lake was surrounded by rocky talus, the granite glowing in the summer sun. Small outcrops of windblown white bark pine grew krummholz, bent over like very old men. Despite many spots that would be perfect camping parlors, I saw no campsite scars or even the faint indentation of a fishermen’s trail around the shore. A soft July breeze was barely blowing off the lake. I came around a large boulder, and . . .

There was a man. A man with a gun. We scared each other with my sudden appearance. It was more than a little awkward for both of us.

My mind was spinning with survival options—think about situational awareness, personal power, common sense, all that training I had. My firearm was in my day pack on my back, unavailable. That’s why you are supposed to wear them, right? I was a long way from help. Did the radio even work here? Stay calm, act confidently, feel it out, be ready. Where is your escape route? Think about cover.

OK, what now? I could ask for his gun, potentially escalating the situation. I could give him a verbal warning, allowing him to keep it but never do it again, cross his heart. I could pretend to ignore it and just pass by quickly, which would be safest option, maybe, but unacceptable. I decided to just chat a bit, feel it out. De-escalate our awkward face-off. He was a young guy, tall and fit. Dressed in jeans, ball cap, and a long-sleeve shirt, he didn’t look like a backpacker, and he didn’t seem to have any gear with him. He told me he lived in the nearby foothills and used to run cattle just on the other side of Red Top Peak. This was a favorite lake of his, and he had never seen anyone else here. He was out “plinking,” casually shooting at squirrels and other targets, and realized when he saw my ranger outfit that he was in the park. Would I like the gun, he asked, as he knew he wasn’t supposed to be shooting here?

Whew . . . “Sure,” I said confidently.

He handed it to me. It was a gun I had never handled before—a small .22 handgun. The first thing I did was unload it, or at least tried to unload it. I was tired, I was out of my comfort zone, and I just fumbled around with it. Here’s the lucky part—he was a nice guy. Seeing my difficulty, he asked whether I wanted him to unload it. Typical of me, I trusted my instincts, my optimism, and actually gave it back to him. This is when you get shot in law enforcement training scenarios. Yikes.

I got lucky that time—he just handed it back to me empty. With somewhat shaky hands, I wrote him a citation and told him how to get the gun back from the magistrate. Still reeling a bit, I made a beeline for home, almost running back down to the trail, my heart beating hard all the way.

Yes, I wasn’t very good at that kind of law enforcement—but I did end up with a confiscated weapon and lived to tell the story. He had to appear before the court to get his gun and pay his fine.

The educational component of that encounter probably went both ways: Although I think I flunked law enforcement training with that event, I lost much of my naiveite about armed encounters. Luckily, I never had another quite so up close and personal. And he probably won’t plink squirrels at Spotted Lake again, or at least I hope he won’t.

Good thing there are mostly nice people in the wilderness.

Badger Pass Ranger Station with snowmobiles at the ready.

C. CARTER

• ESSAY EIGHT •

WINTER RESCUE

The winter woods. They are silent, so quiet you can hear the snowflakes landing as they fall on your shoulder. They are cold, so icy that hands not in gloves stiffen in minutes. Evergreen forests are turned from multicolor mosaics to shades of white and gray and shadow black. Trees shrouded in snow, their shapes obscure like snow goblins, make well-known trails different, unfamiliar. The only movement might be the clumps of snow falling from branches as the day warms or the mountain chickadees, feeding and calling, chick-a-dee-dee, to keep in touch with one another. Henry David Thoreau said snow was like walking on the sky upside down, like walking on clouds. Water, so much a part of the mountains, sparkling in a creek, falling from a cliff wall, beckoning from a chilly lake in August, takes on another characteristic entirely in the high country in winter.

Those that live in the forest adapt to winter. Lichens and mosses grow when things are wet and seem flush with the energy of the water. They host astounding mini communities also going about the business of life. Fur-bearing residents increase the fine wool-like hairs under their overcoats or, like some weasels, even change their fur color to turn mostly white. Grouse grow feathers between their toes to act like little snowshoes. Some animals, like ground squirrels and some bats, go into hibernation while bears go into a deep torpor, a state of dormancy, where their metabolism slows dramatically, a false hibernation called estivation.

Winter in Yosemite is distinct and extraordinary. It is also often challenging to human visitors. Recreational opportunities are more limited as high-elevation roads close and trails become covered with snow. Crane Flat, elevation 6,100 feet, gets some winter day use by snowshoers, cross-country skiers, and snowman builders, and Tuolumne Meadows, at 8,600 feet, is a primary destination for the relatively small number of long-distance, multiday Nordic travelers. Most winter wilderness use in the park originates out of Badger Pass, located off the Glacier Point Road at an elevation of 7,200 feet.

When Yosemite lost its bid to host the 1932 Winter Olympics to Lake Placid, the park concessioner acted instead on the growing popularity of winter sports. Badger Pass Ski Resort, the first downhill resort in California, was built in 1935. It still serves as Yosemite’s center of winter fun. It features family-oriented, relatively easy downhill skiing, with a modest vertical drop of only 700 feet for those who enjoy ski lifts.

It is also a popular and well-established starting point for day and overnight Nordic adventures into the wilderness. It is surrounded by over 90 miles of marked ski and snowshoe trails. Things can get busy in the areas within a mile or two of the ski resort, with potentially hundreds of users out over a weekend. More remote areas might see only a few visitors a week. Some folks are very experienced with backcountry travel, some not so much, and some have never done this sort of thing before, especially in icy conditions.

This form of recreation can be brutal and exhausting, particularly to novices. The difficulty often starts right away from the Badger trailhead on the slick, icy on-ramp to the set track, the machine-groomed trail maintained on the snow-covered Glacier Point Road. I’ve crashed there myself—in uniform, no less. Wild icy rides down relatively low-angle slopes or seemingly endless “slip-sliding” going up a trail could add character-building challenges to any winter outing, particularly at the end of the day. For some, surviving a day on Nordic skis makes for bragging rights and great stories when back at the bar or with friends and family. It was wonderful and gratifying to see park visitors experiencing (and mostly enjoying) this winter environment.

All non-concession services in this relatively busy area are handled by the National Park Service. The ranger station, aptly named the A-Frame for its 12-by-24-foot pitched roof, sits next to the downhill ski slopes. It is a small building, with stairs to the upper level that had to be raised to get an injured skier in a litter through the front door and into the first aid station. It is generally staffed with three or four rangers to handle the public contact, first aid, law enforcement, and traffic issues. This includes the interpretive rangers, who give daily snowshoe walks, and the Nordic wilderness ranger staff, who are based there primarily to patrol the surrounding trails.

The Ostrander Ski Hut was always a popular destination for overnight Nordic visitors. It was a long day’s trek out into the backcountry for most skiers or snowshoers. The Hut was primarily hosted by the remarkable Howard Weamer. He was a winter wilderness man, a legend to many of us, with skills and an appearance that resembled mountain men of the past—tough, quiet, lean, capable, bearded, with knowing eyes under bushy eyebrows that had no doubt caught many snowflakes. Howard and the Hut were one and the same for me—it was ideal to have someone with his knowledge and talent there for so long. He is still Hut keeping, with 2025 marking his fiftieth winter on the job, and continues his remarkable photographic career, capturing views in his wonderful landscape photographs that could be obtained only by a person of his outdoor skill and daring.

In order to respond to public use, particularly in a potentially deadly environment like the winter woods, the staff (not just Howard) required special training. The job of the wilderness rangers was generally the same as it was in summer—protect the resource from the people and the people from the resource. However, the associated risks of traveling over ice and snow, compounded by shorter days, weather hazards, and the reality of cold in its many manifestations, created a whole new set of issues for those traveling in winter. In addition to baseline skills, the Nordic staff had to be capable skiers, able to drive a snow machine on difficult terrain, well versed in winter survival and treating cold-weather injuries, and able to read the weather and winter environment. At least that is what we all hoped.

In the mid-1980s, I supervised the rangers who patrolled the trail system around Badger Pass. We talked to most groups we encountered in the field, serving as good hosts of public land, chatting about how their day had been or providing information. At the same time, we were sizing up visitors’ outward ability and condition, on the lookout for potential red flags. Most of the time these preventative search-and-rescue conversations did prevent actual problems. However, we didn’t catch them all. Here is a story of some visitors who might have benefited from a better understanding of the risk they were taking.

The year was probably 1988. The call came into the A-Frame late in the day: “Our friends went out to Dewey Point this morning and they aren’t back.” Dewey Point is the most popular ski/snowshoe trail in the area other than the set track on the Glacier Point Road. It is a loop trail, almost 8 miles round trip, most of which is off road, cross-country in moderate to difficult trail terrain depending on snow conditions. Many choose to try only the easier end of the loop, which starts in a lovely meadow. The reporting party, a young man in his 20s, didn’t know which trail his friends had planned to take. He said the pair was completely inexperienced, had almost no gear, probably no food, and no map. It was always confounding to me that visitors would be so unprepared, although it wasn’t that unusual. I think some people didn’t realize how dangerous it could be. Perhaps they thought, How hard is it? I can do this. Or that the rangers would come get them if they got in trouble?

Apparently, the ranger option was coming into play on this one. The report came when Mike Durr, Badger district ranger at that time, and I, the Nordic patrol supervisor, were the only ones left at the A-Frame for the afternoon. Mike was one of those all-around capable rangers, comfortable instructing self-defense classes, overseeing the shooting range, or traveling the backcountry. He had also served as the park’s search-and-rescue (SAR) officer, so he took the lead in this incident. A call was put out for more personnel to come to the A-Frame, ready to expand the SAR operation if necessary.

Mike and I packed emergency gear into blitz packs and took off on separate snowmobiles for a hasty search of the two trails leading to Dewey Point. He would take the steeper and more difficult branch (Dewey 14). I would do a snowmobile sweep of the easier route (Dewey 18). We would need to be prepared to travel as far as 7.5 miles through mixed conditions. It was mostly passable on a snowmachine, but there were icy sections along the route, flanked by deep snow. We would need to travel the twisting, rolling ski trails through the trees and then deal with whatever we found. Our adrenaline was pumping.

By the time we got started on the trail, it was almost dark. Both of us knew these routes very well and moved with determination on our separate assignments. The trails aren’t the same at night, though. The snowmobile headlight mixes up the topography, and the shadows hide unexpected challenges. While I thought I knew every turn of the trail, that didn’t make up for the fact that off-road snowmobiling in the dark is hard. So, yes, a few miles out I ended up stuck in a soft snowbank. There was no getting the machine out—it was just plain stuck.

I had my skis strapped on to the back of the snowmobile, so I wasn’t stuck myself, just the dang machine. I was able to radio Mike that I would be coming on foot and would rendezvous somewhere along the trail. This development took some of the “hasty” out of my part of the hasty search, that’s for sure.

In the meantime, Mike had found what were likely the tracks of our missing persons. He could see the twin lines in the snow set by obvious novices who had followed some telemark practice turns down a tempting open slope. It looked like the two sets of tracks continued down and into the Grouse Creek drainage. It was a beginner’s error to not realize they were off the ski trail. That error was seriously compounded as they continued farther down into the increasingly steep-walled course of the creek.

When I got to Mike’s location, it was probably almost 8:00 p.m. I had swept much of the remainder of the trail, so we were confident he had found the sign of our missing party. We were also sure we needed to get to them soon. These folks were apparently completely unprepared to spend even a few hours wet and cold, much less a night out, and were likely exhausted, lost, and desperate in the darkness and 20-degree temperature.

After radioing other members of the incident team about our location and plan, we left Mike’s snowmobile on the trail and skied off the edge of that nice slope. We went farther and farther into the drainage, following the signs of the two travelers. Almost immediately, the tracks showed the couple had abandoned their skis in the steep terrain and were floundering through the deep snow, instinctively heading downhill.

When we finally reached the pair, it was probably 10:00 or later. The couple were showing signs of hypothermia—their speech slurred, their movements sluggish, their wet cotton clothing frozen stiff. We quickly got them up out of the snow, into the extra clothing we had brought, and gave them water and food. We warmed them with our bodies as best we could and started a fire on top of big slabs of bark from a dead tree nearby. Pine pitch and dry limbs from above the snow level were coaxed into flames—it felt wonderful and raised spirits as well as body temperatures. We radioed the SAR teams again about our situation, and it was decided to wait until the next morning to take any more action. It was a long, cold night, but we all got through it, huddled together next to our little fire, its flames high enough to warm at least one side of our bodies.

Dawn finally broke, the blush of light in the sky bringing hope. We still had to get the skiers out, though. We were in deep forest, a spot inaccessible from the air for a helicopter rescue. Because we had traveled for hours only by headlamp the night before, Mike and I weren’t even sure exactly where we were in the drainage. Scouting our location, we discovered we were near a tributary creek that we knew would lead to a meadow and eventually to the Badger Pass Road to the south. Rescue personnel started in our direction. We eventually met up, and the other rescue teams took over, getting the pair to the medical clinic in Yosemite Valley. The skiers lived to tell the story, and the Park Service chalked up another save.

This, unfortunately, is a relatively common scenario, as too many park visitors overestimate their abilities or underestimate the inherent risks of the natural world. Luckily, Yosemite has world-class search-and-rescue teams. This incident in Grouse Creek was relatively minor, although the lost skiers probably didn’t see it that way, and there are many more dramatic, heroic, risky, complicated rescues in the annals of Yosemite history. People like John Dill, Werner and Merry Braun, Butch Farabee, the SAR site experts in Camp 4 and Tuolumne, winter rangers like Chas and Anne Macquarie (who reached Donnie Priest in the tail of his frozen wrecked plane), and many more—people famous in rescue circles and indelible in the minds of those they have saved because of their skill and daring.

Yosemite is an action-filled place. There are innumerable searches, swift water rescues, and mountain tumbles. There are lost kids and medical emergencies. There are heroic actions on big wall rescues, including those using Lemoore Naval Air Station helicopters and crews. These examples of skill and daring are renowned to those who understand what this work entails. Various park employees play both major and minor roles in any of these scenarios when called upon. Most of us loved it—it was exciting and rewarding. Park rangers and SAR teams respond to about 250 emergency incidents annually. As many as 15 to 20 people die from accidents in the park each year. These outcomes would have been much more tragic if not for the skill of the ranger and search-and-rescue teams.

On the slope of Mount Hoffman.

NPS PHOTO

But my job was not completed on this incident on the Dewey Point Trail. The next day, after a bit of rest, Mike and I had to go rescue the snowmobile I had left stuck in the snowbank. Luckily, snowmobiles are relatively resilient, and it was little worse for the wear after spending a night abandoned in the icy woods. We picked up both snowmobiles and returned to the A-Frame, ready for the next call.

It seemed a ranger’s—and a snowmobile’s—work was never done in a place like Yosemite.*

Footnote

*Staff no longer take snowmobiles off the Glacier Point Road unless it is an immediate threat to life. A hasty skier goes out first with rescue gear, and then snowmobiles bring a litter team or search team out along the road. They ski to the subject and haul them out by hand if needed to the waiting snowmobile on the road. It’s partly to protect wilderness values but also to prevent stuck snowmobiles. Imagine that!

“Harvesting” marijuana from below the ice in Lower Merced Pass Lake.

R. LYKINS

• ESSAY NINE •

WILDERNESS CASE STUDY THE DOPE LAKE OF YOSEMITE

Case studies can be used as a teaching aid to help staff apply policy to real-life situations. Examples taken from scenarios can give context to the nuances of management, enhancing management skills and providing thought-provoking prompts. The Dope Plane of Lower Merced Pass Lake story has the added benefit of being an attention getter. It provides a unique perspective about the philosophical and legal challenges of managing the almost 95 percent of Yosemite that is designated Wilderness.

Perhaps you remember the story we discussed that second night of the Big Trip while we camped at Upper Merced Pass Lake. In the winter of 1976/1977, a smuggler’s plane filled with at least three tons of marijuana crashed, leaving its cargo and two dead bodies frozen in this high-country lake. Recovery teams finally retrieved the pilots’ bodies in June 1977. Much of the cargo was never salvaged and disappeared into the drug-fueled environment of the late 1970s in and around Yosemite.

In 2004, I was assigned to take Nevada Barr into Lower Merced Pass Lake. Ms. Barr is a well-known author famous for writing about the seemingly endless ways to kill people in national parks and thought this would be the perfect setting for a new book. This trip was not a normal wilderness patrol, but it was certainly an interesting outing—superintendent-sanctioned research for a Nevada Barr murder mystery with “Dope Lake” at its heart.

Lower Merced Pass Lake is deep within the Yosemite Wilderness, hidden slightly off a main trail. It is a place hikers would find because they were looking for it, not because the trail wound around its shores. A few backpackers stayed there, but not many, and opportunities for solitude—a key feature of designated Wilderness—were easy to find. A few campsites were nestled among the rocks, surrounded by assemblies of lodgepole pines and the clean dirt of decomposed granite. The area was free of trash, the pine needle mat not trampled or pulverized, and only a few unofficial trails had been made by hikers and people who fished around the shore.

The absence of human influence we enjoyed at the lakeshore is a primary value of wild places—Wilderness is to be managed so the land and its community of life are unrestrained and unaltered by our use. We are visitors to these areas who do not remain. This focus on wildness is not only required by this law but also a key element of what we as users seek in our enjoyment of these special public lands: to experience nature without the effect of other humans.

But is that possible at Lower Merced Pass Lake?

The afternoon Ms. Barr and I arrived at the lake, we basked in that naturalness. It was beautiful, calm—a classic Sierra Nevada setting. The granitic ridge that forms the backdrop to the lake was crystalline white, and the lodgepole forest and boulder fields surrounding it provided contrast in both color and texture. Golden marshy meadowlands reached out into the shallows, and the diamond sparkle of the lake beckoned a swim after the long dusty trail. There was a special smell to the air unlike any lower elevational setting, the breeze blew fresh through the pines, and the quiet was almost loud in our ears.

When we walked around the lake, we couldn’t help but be caught up in the beauty of the place. We had put aside the human drama of the airplane crash almost 30 years before and were enjoying being with each other and in this splendid setting.

But then . . . there it was—a white aluminum strip, partially buried in the marshy lake grasses. A piece of the plane!

It was eerie—a direct connection to the crash, to the past. Like an instant time warp, the events in our imaginations had become real. We had found what was probably the last bit of that legendary crash that hadn’t been submerged in the lake. A jackpot, considering our mission. We were excited.

But what about that mandated “wildness”? One of the highest values of what we term “pristine” wilderness is that it exemplifies nature unchanged by humans. Intact ecosystems are an obvious value, but many who use these lands seek the psychological or spiritual reward of being in uncrowded nature—the soul-soothing quiet, the communing with forests and skies and high mountain vistas without constant reminders of our fellow humans. It is about recreation and perhaps spiritual recreation, like our walk around the shores of the lake.

Lower Merced Pass Lake, however, had taken a major blow (wreck-reation) when a plane with a 72-foot wingspan, gallons of aviation fuel, two souls, and many pounds of illicit drugs plunged into its shallow depths. Not only had the ecosystem of the lake been considerably altered, but the character, the essence, the soul of the lake may also have changed forever. Would any of us who were familiar with the story ever look at this lake again as wild and unaltered? Would we think of the ghosts of the pilots? Would the human legend of “Dope Lake” forever take mental priority over that of the wild High Sierra?

It is interesting to think about the psychological implications of knowing the story of the crash. Most of us like having a connection to a place or to other people because we really aren’t that comfortable being alone, especially in wilderness. We don’t like seeing trash and toilet paper, but, as herd animals, we find some comfort in the knowledge that others had also been in this spot, at least to a point. Most of us follow trails willingly, prefer to camp in places that have been used, thrill to find arrowheads, and readily anthropomorphize nature, naming peaks after politicians and explaining wildlife behavior based on our own. So, yes, I think Lower Merced Pass Lake will always hold a unique place in the Yosemite wilderness for its human story for those of us who are aware of it.

While the lake’s notorious story is inherently contrary to the notion of wildness “unaltered by humans,” wilderness also preserves historic and cultural values. Protected areas like Yosemite provide a unique repository of items in context. History lies where it lived, not in a museum on a shelf or in a picture. Protecting cultural resources preserves the link with our heritage, and Yosemite’s wilderness protects artifacts from human events from as long ago as 10,000 years. From a policy perspective, a piece of a 30-year-old plane would not qualify as a cultural relic. However, even without that patina of age, there was huge value in having the context of the site, the feel, the physical components of a place to provide a more complete picture of human history. National parks and wilderness areas provide this, even in respect to more recent events.

In the case of Lower Merced Pass Lake, we were also fascinated by the human drama of this story—it is an entertaining piece of history among many stories of people who have lived and died and worked and played in Yosemite’s wild reaches. Or those who have crashed planes here—these guys weren’t the first. Remnants of crashed planes have been found in many corners of the park, from Quarry Peak near Matterhorn Canyon to Koip Pass near Tuolumne Meadows to Givens Creek near Buck Camp, just to name a few. The 1982 rescue of Donnie Priest, the 11-year-old boy who survived five days trapped in the fuselage of a small plane augured into a snow slope at almost 10,000 feet, is perhaps the most heartwarming of those stories.

In a global sense, humans are not apart from nature but a part of it, and our presence—past, current, and future—is a component of the natural world. The Wilderness Act, however, states that in these special, designated areas, humans are visitors who do not remain, so the modern pressures of expanding populations and increasing mechanization do not overpower wild ecosystems. We need to honor both sides of this concept and ensure that these areas are not closed, off limits, or unwelcoming; they should be available for human benefit. We must treat them with humility and care, however.

So how should we think about a dope plane wreck in wilderness? Nevada Barr was writing a story about what some park people might think or do. Was she realizing that wild places provide unparalleled opportunities for research? Was she thinking about how humans react to stress and challenge, how we relate to one another, and how we respond to the natural environment? Wilderness has provided a living laboratory for research about humans as well as about the natural world around them. The psychological and social benefits of nature are vast. These values are becoming even more important as the demand for access increases, and pathogens, psychoses, and overcrowding spread among us.

This incident could also tout another benefit of wilderness—the economic value to surrounding communities. The hotels, sporting equipment stores, and gas stations en route to these remote spots have surely benefited financially from a having a wild destination in one’s neighborhood. I haven’t seen the sale of the marijuana and resultant boom to some backcountry entrepreneurs mentioned as an economic benefit in other wilderness areas, however. The sale of that fuel-soaked pot from the Lower Merced Lake crash did noticeably affect the local economy, though—that was clear in 1977.

The fruit of my trip with Nevada Barr was High Country, “a story of death and greed,” which was published and joined the ranks of other books that were at least loosely based on the Lower Merced Pass Lake incident. The book features a lake with a crashed drug plane and Nevada Barr’s heroine-ranger Anna Pigeon on an undercover quest to quell evil among Yosemite employees. It is a wild and sometimes violent book, mostly staged in Yosemite Valley, so I was glad when the book’s chief ranger, who in my mind happened to look a lot like me, got sent off to wilderness management training early in the story and missed most of it.

Although I enjoyed the outing, I always felt a little uncomfortable that government resources were being used to research a mystery novel. Other than serving as a centerpiece for this case history, Yosemite’s wilderness received little value from that trip. I even let the moment overshadow my best instincts about that piece of the airplane we found. As a good backcountry ranger, I should have packed it out for all sorts of reasons. I broke my own rules and left it hidden behind a rock away from the lakeshore. It just seemed part of the history of the place, a cultural relic of sorts, left in situ.

I wish I had not left it. There might be many ghosts or spirits or souls who have passed in these mountains, but a scrap of metal is just that, a scrap of metal: trash. It didn’t even qualify as being “historic” yet. We all need to take care of wild places by honoring their wildness first and foremost. Maybe I’ll get back there sometime and pack it out. Maybe someone already has—that would be good. They probably didn’t even know what it was.

Sue Bonovich and the vertical wilderness of Yosemite Valley walls.

C. FALKENSTEIN

• ESSAY TEN •

HOME OFFICE

It seems remarkable that in the late 1970s, the Search and Rescue Office, responsible for a myriad of emergency responses throughout a park as busy and potentially dangerous as Yosemite, and the Backcountry Office, which managed public use of remote and roadless portions of the park, could function together in a 10-by-16-foot room above the museum in Yosemite Valley. And that the four occupants didn’t drive one another nuts. We were so different.

Tim Setnicka was the multitalented, dynamic, high-energy search-and-rescue officer, an ex-“bro” of 1970s Yosemite Valley law enforcement patrol fame. He had an agile wit and quick smile. He was assisted by John Dill, a brilliant, quiet, and capable man with an advanced degree in physics and chemistry who still dedicates his life instead to saving people by solving the intricacies of their predicaments in natural settings. They had the window side of the room.

The Backcountry Unit had the other 10 feet of office space, at least when we weren’t out on the trails, which we considered our other office. My boss, Ron Mackie, was the backcountry unit manager. He is one of the most positive and friendly people I have ever met. He loved the park, the people who worked in it, and those who visited it. His career in Yosemite started on the trail crew in 1960, and his knowledge and concern for the backcountry and those who visited it were famous. He was thoughtful and supportive, and he loved to talk with others and hear their stories. He also prized getting out of the Yosemite Valley office and onto the trails. I was his assistant, the office manager and queen of the permit and mail reservation system at the time. I held down the fort while Ron was elsewhere—he much preferred the backcountry, and “Where’s Mackie?” turned into a friendly cliché. He kept close tabs on what was happening out there.

As members of the National Park Service (NPS), our job was to care for the roadless areas of the park and those who used those lands and resources. Additional Park Service staff care for other aspects of the park and its needs, with some functioning similarly to officials in a small town. NPS employees include sign makers and road plowers, story sharers and rule enforcers, admin wizards and forest caretakers, teachers, and curators of the land and its valuable components. Some staff are scientists, studying wildlife behavior and rockfall patterns. Some build trails with those rocks or keep garbage cans from overflowing for long-term benefit of the wildlife.

Park service functions are organized into divisions—administration, interpretation, resources management, maintenance, and protection. The wilderness staff is part of the protection division—the direct interface with the visiting public. The protection staff is responsible for law enforcement, emergency response, search and rescue, fire, wilderness/backcountry, even traffic control. While each division is organizationally independent from the others in a large complex park like Yosemite, we were all interwoven in the overall administration and management of the park. Some of it was slightly militaristic—the chain of command worked through the divisional hierarchy, the rangers had tours of duty and lieu days, and they were expected to keep their front-country shoes shined and wear their uniforms properly. This included keeping the brim of the calvary-inspired flat hat parallel to the ground. I preferred to wear mine at a jaunty angle when I could get away with it.

Interdependent or not, our tiny office with both search-and-rescue and backcountry operations was small. As the requirements of these functions grew with increased park use and more sophisticated (or at least more complex) management techniques, so did our need for workspace. Tim and John and the search-and-rescue operation moved out and expanded into another building with more space, enough for a large equipment cache, briefing rooms, vehicle bays, and communication stations.

Ron and I stayed in the little office for years, When he retired, I ended up with the office all to myself for the last ten years of my career. While a luxurious setup, it was not as interesting. The wilderness operation also branched out to other buildings as our program became more multifaceted and our staff increased. Our job was to focus primarily on the public’s recreational use of this large, busy tract of mostly undeveloped land, to protect the integrity of the resource and the experience of the visitors. We had field rangers, visitor center staff, educators, climbing specialists, and administrative personnel. Work also included planning, policy development and implementation, research, budget, administration, and supervision of 30 to 35 smart, dedicated, and talented employees. As the wilderness manager, I had my hands full. I needed that little office because I had that huge “office” of the roadless expanse of Yosemite to keep track of. It was all part of it.

PUBLIC USE MANAGEMENT

It took some effort to manage this wonderful bequest to the world. Our routine evolved significantly from the days when we just had half of a tiny office. By the mid- to late 1970s, we were using more science, more sophisticated methods to arrive at management strategies. Most of our work focused on hikers, stock users, and eventually climbers.

A staff of 12 to 14 park technicians (also known as backcountry information specialists, a much more impressive title) issued 17,000 to 20,000 wilderness permits to 50,000 to 60,000 overnight visitors per year from the four park issuing stations. Staff educated the public, checked compliance, and provided education and information at visitor centers. They still used upside-down maps on the counters after all those years.

Field patrol staff, usually 7 to 14 foot or horse-mounted rangers, performed the many duties of backcountry patrol, including public contact, maintenance, search and rescue, law enforcement, and monitoring. Monitoring programs ranged from assessing grazing impacts by measuring biomass residual (the vegetation left in backcountry meadows) to recording wildlife sightings and interactions and counting our fellow wilderness users. We recorded the number of people we saw, mapped trails that developed from continued use, and monitored the ebb and flow of campsite impacts. Prior to formal restoration programs sponsored by the Yosemite Fund/Conservancy, wilderness staff were the sole workers charged with maintaining and naturalizing campsites and cleaning up sleeping and cooking areas. We straightened signs, did minor trail work, and generally took care of things back there.

Our educational efforts spanned from front-country contacts during permit issuance and special programs outside the wilderness to visits around the camp in the backcountry. One such wonderful program, Wildlink, took kids from San Joaquin Valley farming communities or from troubled urban environments in Southern California into the backcountry. Most had never been to the mountains, never sat next to a flowing stream, never felt the power of a forest. Some had never even seen stars through the artificial light of cities. It was undoubtedly life-changing for many. This comment came from a young participant in a 2007 backpacking adventure: “I have learned that nature may not only give you unforgettable experiences, but it can bring a group of people together. Nature opens your eyes and makes you realize that it is all around you. It makes you appreciate all the things you have every day.”

We oversaw other types of activities as well. Commercial use, in which clients paid a permitted outfitter from outside the park to guide them on foot, on horseback, or with pack animal support, became more regulated. We increased our focus on outreach to the companies and closely monitoring how park trails, campsites, and grazing locations were utilized. Management of rock climbing went from solely responding to rescue efforts to having deliberate conversations with climbers about preventing impacts. Additionally, the park’s administrative activities in the field occasionally needed a watchful eye. We wanted to ensure that how we were doing work in backcountry, including food storage, stock use, and motorized or mechanized tool practices, wasn’t damaging the nonhuman components of the park we were overseeing or bending the rules we held others to. By carefully considering the habits of all users, the way we looked at and managed the wild parts of the park changed over time.

WILDERNESS DESIGNATION

Public contact and service were always our priorities, but by the late 1980s, we had a new challenge: to champion and implement the benefits of wilderness designation. In 1984, the California Wilderness Act added almost three million acres of federal public land in California to the National Wilderness Preservation System, including the backcountry of Yosemite National Park. This meant that 94.2 percent, or 704,624 acres of the park, would become part of the National Wilderness Preservation System, established by Congress with the Wilderness Act of 1964 (Public Law 88-577). Some in the National Park Service felt protections provided by national park designation were sufficient and resisted another layer of constraint or bureaucracy that formal wilderness would bring. At times it seemed to be a never-ending effort to educate our coworkers about this somewhat esoteric concept of just what wilderness entails and what the heck “wilderness character” is, why it is different from business as usual, and why it is a good idea in the long run.

While the terms “backcountry” and “wilderness” are often used interchangeably for the roadless parts of Yosemite, formal wilderness designation provides more protection for public land. This congressional law augments the mandate of the National Park Service’s Organic Act to conserve the nonhuman elements of the park while allowing for the public’s enjoyment. The new law would instead prioritize the unchanged functioning of natural processes. The Wilderness Act allows for appropriate primitive and unconfined use by the public but prohibits certain activities. It requires that these unimpaired areas be administered to be, and stay, wild and unchanged.*

The guidance provided in the Wilderness Act of 1964 is ambiguous in places. Certain activities are generally prohibited unless deemed to be the minimum administrative requirement (defined as the least intrusive tool, piece of equipment, device, regulation, action, or practice) to achieve the purpose of the act, including developments, motorized access, motorized equipment, landing of aircraft, building of structures or installations, paving of roads, or performing most commercial activities. Commercial use was permissible only to the extent necessary to realize the recreational or other purposes of the act. The preservation of wilderness character and opportunities for solitude were mandated. The imprint of humanity’s work was to be substantially unnoticeable.

Wilderness: a place with outstanding opportunities for solitude or a primitive and unconfined type of recreation.

L. BOYERS

These qualifiers (italics added for emphasis), mandates, and the listed exceptions of the act often proved to be problematic. What is “wilderness character”? The National Park Service defines it as a holistic concept based on the interaction of intact biophysical environments with personal experiences relatively free from human sign, coupled with the symbolic meaning of humility, restraint, and interdependence that inspire the human connection with nature. How do you judge whether something is substantially unnoticeable? To whom? What types of installations (including those for science and research) are necessary, and could they be constructed elsewhere to reduce the impact of humans in the wild landscape? Are bear boxes or signs appropriate other than at designated campsites around the High Sierra Camps and Little Yosemite? Should mules or helicopters be used to transport non-emergency loads? Chain saws can be heard for miles—are they the minimum tool required to clear the trails, or should crews use less efficient crosscut saws to protect natural quiet and honor wildness? Should climbing protection such as bolting be allowed on rock walls in wilderness? A formal procedure, called a minimum requirement analysis, was developed to assess such questions. Each federal agency that manages designated wilderness uses this process differently. Debates still simmer about what should or shouldn’t—or can or can’t—be done in these most protected areas.

Formal designation was slow to gain acceptance in some instances. The act required that development either could not be done or needed a different approach than just building wherever. Motorized or mechanized equipment had to be justified as the minimum requirement, or other alternatives to their use needed to be found. In Yosemite, development already in place had to be evaluated. The High Sierra Camps, classified as Potential Wilderness Additions, were now to be managed as wilderness as closely as possible, their development and activities needed to maintain them kept to a minimum standard until their use should cease (i.e., the High Camps close) or their impact unacceptably damages the wildness of the area. In other parts of the wilderness, old facilities such as obsolete phone lines or random outhouses were removed, and proposals for new installations such as cell towers came under much scrutiny.

The wilderness boundary lines were established as close as politically acceptable to existing development in the early 1980s. Dr. Jan van Wagtendonk, senior park scientist and ecologist (and member of the Big Trip), led a multiyear campaign to maximize this formal designation for Yosemite. Generally, the wilderness boundary runs 200 feet from the centerline of park roads, or 100 feet from the edge of the developed area. In Yosemite Valley (elevation 4,000 feet), the boundary line follows the 4,200-foot contour along the cliff walls and excludes the Vernal/Nevada Falls corridor. The vast majority of Yosemite National Park is designated wilderness. I consider this a gift to the future.

QUOTAS AND WILDERNESS PERMITS

Park managers had to think differently in wilderness to properly implement congressional law. Our challenge was to come up with a system that focused on unchanged, naturally functioning ecosystems while providing opportunities for solitude and primitive and unconfined recreation per the Wilderness Act. Trailhead quotas had been established in the mid-1970s to stabilize use, balancing the public’s desire for access with preservation. We just had to keep applying them appropriately. We wanted to balance public desire for enjoying the roadless parts of this splendid park with preserving both it and one another’s experiences.

Over time, the amount, type, and location of users evolved and changed. It was necessary to monitor use and adjust management as needed. How many visitors should be allowed, especially with increasing demand? What sorts of uses are proper and do not damage the natural components of the land or infringe on the experience of others? How should risk be managed? What types of visitor education should be prioritized? How should regulations be enforced? Is commercial use appropriate? How should conflicting user groups with different needs and desires be balanced? How much administrative presence is necessary or affordable? This was public land, to be managed for future generations. We hoped we were making the right decisions.

Wilderness permits were and are key to public-use management and one of the techniques that has worked very well. This effective system limits or disperses use while rangers contact and educate the public. Permits are mandatory for overnight use of the backcountry; the registration system allows us to implement one of the three overnight capacities for the park. While front-country campground sites set camper capacity numbers and and the number of beds in park lodging sets a quota for overnight guests in those facilities, the wilderness quota system controls overnight use for the roadless area of the park.

Yosemite’s wilderness quota system was based on extensive research. By the mid-1970s, park research scientists identified the ecological capacity for more than 50 individual zones in the backcountry. They determined the appropriate level of visitation to a zone based on ecological fragility, quantifying the characteristics of rarity, vulnerability, recuperability, and repairability. They coupled these scores with the total miles of trail and the acreage in the zone. Utilizing extensive research, including computer simulation (cutting-edge technology for the time) and field verification of actual visitor numbers, scientists and managers were able to allow the correct number of people to enter on each of the park’s 76 trailheads without overfilling the capacity of each zone. This system, developed by Dr. van Wagtendonk, further exemplifies his leadership in supporting innovative management methods and scientifically sound research.

RESTRICTIONS

Almost all of our management actions stemmed from the growing number of visitors. Many of the ills of the world can be linked to increasing or concentrating population, and Yosemite’s Wilderness was no different. To address these pressures, indirect measures (such as trailhead signing, education, and well-designed trails) were preferable to more direct methods such as closures and use restrictions. Even the more restrictive methods were relatively well tolerated by a public eager to use park land. It took a generation or two, however, to smooth over transitions to the more direct measures, such as required permits.

Freedom from constraint is a key value to humans using wild places. It is also a tenet of the Wilderness Act, “where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled” (italics added), a word that means “without restriction” or “impediment to action.” Unfortunately, the pressure and consequences of increased demand for these areas meant there would be regulation and potentially less freedom for the public. We hoped, and strived, to use subtle, defendable, and effective means to make that tradeoff as appropriate as possible for all involved, human and nonhuman alike. Most of our administrative efforts to properly care for public land were supported by the public. Either that or they chose to recreate elsewhere.

CLIMBING MANAGEMENT

Rock climbing in designated wilderness areas was an interesting challenge. Yosemite is famous as a global destination for excellent and varied climbing opportunities. The park contains some of the world’s best climbing throughout the front- and backcountry. There are big walls for multiday epics, crystal-studded vertical pathways on domes in the high country, and talus slopes jumbled with house-sized boulders to test almost any bouldering skill level. Interest in recreational rock climbing started expanding around the 1950s and was essentially an unmanaged activity for many decades until impacts and safety issues became more apparent. Additionally, congressional designation in 1984 obliged the park to preserve the wildness of areas now classified at this level of protection.

Many Yosemite climbing routes are in wilderness. The great walls of the valley are designated wilderness above the 4,200-foot contour (the floor of Yosemite Valley runs from 3,900 to 4,100 feet). Many of the climbing and approach routes in the Tuolumne area are in designated wilderness. Long-term impacts to rock faces and cracks, negative affects to wildlife, litter, out-of-bounds camping, access trail issues, abandoned property, damage to vegetation from “gardening” (clearing a hand- or foothold of lichens or plants), improper food storage, and preventable accidents are among the problems of this mostly unrestricted activity, both on the rock itself and at the base of climbs.

Despite the fact that Yosemite was and had been a global destination for climbing for decades, it was a relatively new arena for policy development, especially when considering wilderness values. One memorable management dilemma involved a big, loose flake of rock on a very popular climb up El Capitan. It had been stabilized with nylon slings placed by climbers, but this setup was still precarious at best. Our risk management policy was to not mitigate hazards in wilderness, and “cleaning” the route of this danger would set a highly unwanted precedent that the park would take care of all loose rocks on climbs. However, the slab would fall on a busy pedestrian area below where tourists would have no idea of the risk it posed. This was a predicament. Luckily, during a brief period when the park was closed and the area below was free of pedestrians, the problem was solved when the slings were “unofficially” cut. The flake of rock fell and shattered below, and the route up El Cap lost some of its danger. Sometimes we had to be creative to abide by both wilderness values and the reality of the complexities of Yosemite.

Human waste disposal is tricky—how do you poop while camped on the side of El Capitan? One climbing friend said he was so struck by the idea that visitors could be watching that he became constipated for five days. Another incident involved an unusual canister left near a park building at a time when pipe bomb incidents appeared frequently in the news. This odd container was reported as a potential bomb threat and treated as such. Explosives-trained staff were called to investigate but found the container, which was in fact next to a bathroom, was filled primarily with undigested beans. Some climbers use “poop tubes,” which are often ten-by-four-inch PVC pipes with a sealed end and a screw lid. Deposits are made into a paper or otherwise specialized bag, which is placed into the tube, sprinkled with kitty litter for odor control, and carried off at the end of the climb. Everything a climber leaves the car with must be brought back out and, in this case, properly disposed of in a vault toilet.

We began to incorporate visitor use management on the rock walls into our procedures. We promoted codes of behavior to lessen or eliminate damaging practices, and education and enforcement increased as the staff dedicated themselves to the complexities of the climbing world. Emergency response often required specialized attention, and with as many as 100 rescue missions a year, such incidents were generally handled by the search-and-rescue office. Many a victim has been saved thanks to John Dill, who is still active as of 2025, more than 50 years after we shared those cramped days in our tiny original office. What a hero.

Climbing management is not an easy matter. Although a climber-registration system was implemented for a short time in the early 1980s, compliance was low. There was little buy-in from either the agency or the climbers. Our subsequent efforts focused instead on identifying the scope of use and how to deal with impacts to others and the nonhuman environment. Climbers can be a hard group to count, much less manage. We decided to estimate user days by counting cars in known climbing pullouts and extrapolate use from that. We inventoried approach trails and parking areas, helping set priorities for any sort of treatment. Management planning began to develop. We worked to educate a user group that had a historic aversion to regulation. The climbing community generally takes great pride in their unique status and independence from the government, and many climbers have delighted in outmaneuvering the park service. It took a special touch by staff who climbed and understood the culture to effectively communicate.

National policy regarding bolting—drilling into the rock and placing a permanent fixture to secure a climbing rope for safety—is a contentious issue in wilderness and has incurred much attention and debate both locally and nationally. Bolts are installations that would take another glacial age to repair or restore and yet were deemed necessary for those who dared climb the featureless expanse of open granite stretching deadly heights above the ground. Motorized drills once used to place those bolts are now prohibited, and innovative cams and other devices provide alternatives for protection to reduce the use of unnecessary bolts. Clean climbing, without bolting, is the desired behavior, endorsed by the best in the sport. Hand drilling bolts is still allowed when opening new routes, although climbers are encouraged to fully consider whether their desire to create a new route is worth permanently scarring the granite wall. The question about bolting in wilderness continues to be debated even in 2025.

Our administrative program expanded with climbing patrol rangers, creative and nonthreatening outreach and education, and input to national policy that was applied locally. We restored eroded and braided access trails with the help of volunteers from the climbing community, improving relationships and a sense of ownership. While many of these issues have not been fully resolved, efforts to appropriately guide this park activity continue. We now require a big-wall climbing permit to spend a night on a climb. Like wilderness permits for hikers and stock users, the big-wall permit is used to contact and educate users and collect utilization data. The possibility exists that it will eventually be utilized to limit or disperse use if necessary to protect wilderness character, unique plant and animal habitat, world-class recreational opportunities, and other components of life on the rock that climbers seek in these wild places.

STOCK USE MANAGEMENT

While most of our efforts have been devoted to those visiting the wilderness on foot, stock use has proven to be a contentious visitor activity. We have devoted significant office time to manage the use of horses and mules. Stock use is a generally accepted and historic use of the Sierra Nevada. In 1833, Joseph Walker crossed the mountains just north of the park using stock not only for transportation but also to stave off starvation. By the 1850s, military expeditions had entered Yosemite Valley, and the age of exploration and settlement by Anglo incomers began. Stock played a key role in the development of the trailed landscape.

By the late 1960s, hikers had become the majority users in the backcountry, and in current times, stock use is more limited. There is a small amount of private stock use as visitors bring their own animals for day rides and some multinight trips. The park concessioner and a limited set of commercial packing operations from outside the park provide commercial services for specialized trips when conditions are suitable. Administrative stock transports gear, personnel, and materials into the backcountry, epitomizing the wilderness policy that prohibits mechanized travel unless necessary, a sometimes tricky requirement to determine. Stock numbers are low compared to the 1960s but still have an outsized effect on other users.

In the mid-1980s, 7 percent of total Yosemite trail use was by stock. Of that, 73 percent was commercial, 20 percent administrative, and 7 percent private.

In 2011, stock use was recorded for the Tuolumne River watershed during the Wild and Scenic River planning. Of stock using those trails primarily around Tuolumne Meadows, 49 percent was commercial, 29 percent was administrative, and 22 percent private. The parkwide stock study in 2001 showed that 10 percent of trails in Yosemite receive 75 percent of stock use. Fifty percent of park trails received no stock use at all. This knowledge allowed us to prioritize work and provide information regarding parts of the park that were stock free if visitors desired that sort of experience.

Conflicts were relatively common regarding stock. Manure/urine, trampling, trail impacts, grazing, and other consequences of stock use prompted complaints. People raised in more urban environments were less comfortable around animals and had little experience with them. Many visitors resented that a small group of users damaged the natural world they cherished. Increased attention and scientific monitoring demonstrated real or potential effects to park features, documenting alterations to meadow health, water quality, invasive plant presence, and effects on residents such as amphibians living in grazing areas. Commercial pack stock operations from outside the park had become particularly controversial as users questioned whether park attributes should be used for financial gain. Lawsuits were filed between pack station operations and the US Forest Service adjacent to the park as both sides strived to resolve the tension between protecting established and traditional practices and the ecological integrity of areas most utilized by stock. We devoted considerable time to finding the appropriate solutions.

Location and timing of use were key to determining the management approach regarding the role of stock in the park. Variables such as vegetation type, annual precipitation, requirements for different activities (such as grazing, holding, trail use, campsites), commercial considerations, and levels of visitor conflict required significant science and monitoring to implement defendable strategies. Rangers monitored grazing by analyzing biomass residual (the vegetation left after a period of grazing), identifying grasses, and clipping and weighing a broad series of plots. They documented hoof cuts incised into wet meadows, severed roots, and exposed soil with various levels of success. They also mapped compacted and bare ground, generally in holding areas. Park wilderness and science staff in Yosemite and surrounding federal agencies monitored the effects on other species, from insects to rare plants to toads, to determine appropriate management. Water quality was repeatedly tested, as many feared the transmission of disease from manure and urine, to say nothing of the perceived and real degradation of crystal-clear mountain streams.

Increased reporting was required from commercial outfitters, and numbers were capped as resource management specialists strived to determine appropriate levels of access to the park. Controls included determining suitable areas for stock, appropriate timing for their use, and establishing how many trips with animals were sustainable. Stock use by NPS staff, which was not governed by the same restrictions, was mostly dependent on best management practices. These practices, often guided more by tradition, sometimes varied significantly depending on the person doing the work, further complicating the issue. Some staff were concerned about restoring the damage to a location used to hold stock overnight, for instance, while others felt it was just part of the consequences of that method of doing business.

The conflict between hikers and stock use is unlikely to be resolved easily, and I would guess managers will continue to strive for a suitable compromise as long as both are considered traditional and appropriate uses of the wilderness.

WILDLIFE, BEARS, AND FOOD STORAGE

Wildlife observation programs were increasingly important as managers realized some wildlife species were threatened by or even endangered with extinction. Habitat loss with impacts from pollution, damage from human incursions, and climate change were likely the primary culprits. Sierra Nevada yellow-legged frogs, California red-legged frogs, and Yosemite toads are federally listed as species of special concern in danger of extinction, along with the Sierra Nevada red fox, Sierra Nevada bighorn sheep, fishers, and the California wolverine. Twenty-nine other animals in California are state listed as species of special concern, including the Mount Lyell salamander, the western pond turtle, the willow fly catcher, the great gray owl, several bat species, the Sierra Nevada snowshoe hare, the mountain beaver, and others. Wildlife observation records are an important part of tracking wildlife viability, and staff are asked to document sightings of any wildlife, recording the date, species, location, vegetation type, and number of adult and young. This information is passed along to wildlife management specialists for a park database.

In the wilderness operation, most of our wildlife management efforts revolved around a more common resident: the American black bear. Three to five hundred black bears live within the boundaries of the park, and their persistent and clever endeavors to obtain human food require wilderness and wildlife staff to keep both species eating their proper diet. The bears of Yosemite are not in danger of extinction, at least not so far. The following chapter about bears and their ability to obtain hikers’ food highlights our decades of evolving efforts to deal with human-bear interactions.

The combination of these management challenges and the day-to-day reality of the office (the constant barrage of phone calls and emails, bureaucratic paperwork, supervising up to 35 employees, and maintaining relationships between the myriad of other park operations) took its toll. No wonder we couldn’t wait to get back into the backcountry. We were very spoiled that way.

Footnote

*For the full text of the Wilderness Act, see https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R41610/56.

Black bears are good climbers on rock and in trees, especially when collecting acorns or going after food stashes.

NPS PHOTO

• ESSAY ELEVEN •

BEARS, FROM A FOOD PERSPECTIVE

I had never seen anything like it before, and I have never seen it since.

I was on duty in Tiltill Valley, near Hetch Hetchy, following Tiltill Creek. I was looking for trouble—trash, too many campsites, trees down across the trail causing a new path to develop, anything that took away from the wildness of this wonderful oak woodland meadow. I caught a glimpse of something unusual up in the trees. There was movement high up in the black oak forest around me. It looked like something big and dark. There was a rustling noise, and small bits of oak branches and leaves came floating down, individually spiraling in the hot air. It was too early in the season for the leaves to fall, so what was happening up there? And whatever was up in the treetops was busy—and really big, not just a little big—and black.

I moved around to get a better view and saw it: a black bear, stretched out as far as it could stretch, with barely a three-point hold on a very small limb. It was hanging semi-upside down at least 75 feet above me. While bears are known to be very good climbers, I don’t remember ever seeing one up so high. One arm was hard at work shoveling acorn-filled branchlets into its mouth. Its legs and other arm gripped a branch that could barely hold its weight. The limb bounced easily and provided acrobatic access to a broader sweep of acorn possibility. I had seen bear antics before, so I shouldn’t have been surprised, but this bear was up in the highest branches, unfazed by the height. It scared me to look at it way up there.

Bears foraging acorns under trees is somewhat common. You can see them grazing under the oaks, heads coming up with a mouthful of those high-calorie nuggets, munching away as the empty shells pour out of both sides of their mouths. But there was plenty of competition for this popular food source by others on the ground.

Climbing 75 feet into the trees was one way to beat most of the other acorn-harvesting animals, particularly deer, to the annual feast, but it did seem like a tough way to get a meal. I wondered if the calories spent in the ascent were worthwhile, but bears apparently find success doing this. I watched this bear and another nearby in fascination and admiration—the bears of Tiltill Valley were acrobats extraordinaire. But bears are extraordinary in so many ways.

I have the utmost respect for bears and have spent an unusual amount of time thinking about them, talking about them, studying them, or just admiring them when I see them in the wild. Humans and bears have had a spiritual connection in many different cultures all over the world from ancient to modern times. Perhaps this is due to their intelligence and some similarities we share in the size and shape of our bodies. Although it is impossible to say how Indigenous people felt, local tribal people of today have indicated the bears are considered spiritual partners in life.

Most of us who live in the Sierra Nevada have an ongoing relationship with bears and frequently come across them or their signs. For visitors, a black bear is the gold standard of wildlife sightings. Black bears are the only bears you’ll find in Yosemite, as grizzly bears (sometimes called brown bears) were killed off in the park by 1895. Most of Yosemite’s bears are brown in color, a few with shades of black to blond, but all are black bears. It is always a thrill to see them, and many of us can tell stories about our encounters with these wonderful animals. I remember my mother telling us about the time she looked out the window of our house in Yosemite Valley and watched a bear casually follow us kids as we nonchalantly walked from the yard into the kitchen. We were unfazed by the experience, as I doubt we knew the bear was behind us, but I think Mom was both frightened by the bear and fascinated by the apparent lack of concern her children showed the bear and vice versa.

My scariest evening occurred while I was on night watch guarding hundreds of pounds of food for a special event in a wilderness camp. The bear had already snagged a box with Snickers candy bars in it, and there was little I could do that would discourage it from trying all night to get more. The face-off with a 350-pound bear huffing and bluff charging at night was terrifying and called for somewhat frantic pleas for help from my sleeping trip-mates. They eventually woke, and we ganged up on night watch, strung a tripwire of rock-filled cans across access to the food pile, and made lots of noise and commotion when the bear came back, much to the dismay of other members of the group who were trying to sleep. Too bad for them, but we were successful in keeping everything safe.

We often encounter bears in their relentless search for food, although sometimes we only see a sign of their passing. Among the fascinating things about bear physiology (of which there are many) is our physical similarities. This is particularly obvious in their rear feet, which leave a track that looks amazingly like a human footprint. Many a backpacker has been startled to see “barefoot” tracks on the trail, wondering who might be crazy enough to walk all that way in the mountains without shoes on.

Bear tracks were a significant part of one couple’s wilderness challenge in Echo Valley one summer. While trying secure a bearproof food hang in a tree, the wife tripped and received a substantial head injury. The husband, fearing that the head wound was serious, decided to run to the Merced Lake Ranger Station, about five or six miles away, to get help. Soon after he left her, however, he came across something that scared him even more—the footprints of what seemed to be some weirdo hiking without shoes, headed toward his wife. He ran back, left a small pistol with her, and sprinted off again.

I was out on patrol nearby when he came running up, somewhat crazed with fear. As he explained his situation, he was mostly relieved to hear the tracks probably belonged to a bear, although that had some scary connotations as well. We still had a dangerous situation with a head injury deep in the wilderness, however. We got back to the wife and found her stable. She had not seen the bear. I was able to organize a helicopter evacuation, and skilled Helitac and medical staff arrived on the scene. We carried the woman up a steep hill to a marginal landing zone, and she was flown out to the medical clinic in Yosemite Valley. Their backpacking misadventure certainly ended up an extreme bear story.

Bears spend most of their lives looking for food, and most stories involving bears feature them looking for easy calories associated with humans. A 1974 study of black bears in Yosemite by the late and great wildlife scientist Dr. David Graber was instrumental in helping the world understand bear behavior and advancing the management of their interactions with humans. He admired their intelligence and adaptability and did his graduate work in Yosemite during a time when the front-country campgrounds and parking lots were chaotic with hungry bruins. Although percentages varied by season and location, he found on average that 15 percent of their food was of human origin and that bears would remember very well where food sources could be found. This was unfortunate for both the bears and the campers. Eventually, a metal-sided bear locker big enough for an ice chest was designed, and this innovation was instrumental in reducing the problem. Today these lockers are installed throughout the park.

The early 1970s saw significant increases in the use and management of the roadless areas of Yosemite. The number of backcountry users was booming and about to peak, hiking had replaced stock use as the predominant travel mode, and lightweight and high-tech gear was allowing more and more people to enjoy their hiking trip. Overall use in the park was also on a steady uphill climb, and campgrounds and trailheads were filled to overflowing.

This fact was not lost on the bears. They had already cultivated a taste for human food in part because park managers didn’t realize the consequences of certain decisions. For instance, at one point in the history of the Curry Village area, bleachers were set up around an open garbage dump for visitors to watch bears feed. Staff eventually realized how damaging this practice was, and the dumps were finally closed in 1972. While no doubt very popular with both the animals and the audience, the resulting preference for human food would change bear behavior, probably forever. Generations of bears learned from their bruin mentors about calorie-rich jackpots associated with humans. After the dump site was closed, populations of bears moved onto new eating opportunities, some of which were at elevations higher than those they would normally frequent. For many bears, the idea of eating delicate bites of tender grasses or tearing logs apart for a few succulent grubs paled in comparison to backpacks loaded with salami and granola bars. Who could blame them? In the fall, when they are preparing for a long winter, they seek to eat up to 20,000 calories a day, or the equivalent of 30 or more Big Macs. Can you imagine eating 30 Big Macs a day? No wonder they gain 30 pounds a week before hibernation. And who could stop them when tempted with high-calorie human food? Bears are smart, curious, strong, highly dexterous, and on an almost constant search for something to eat. In the front country, the metal lockers work well if the public uses them properly. Our efforts to deal with food storage in the backcountry, however, always resulted in a litany of “Good try, but . . .” The bears figured out what we were doing without much difficulty, at least in the early days.

In the backpacking boom of the 1970s, we first tried telling folks to hang their food from a tree, thinking that although bears are good climbers, they wouldn’t be able to reach food hanging from a rope. In a remarkably short time, some of the bears had figured that one out. You could watch their eyes go from the food sack hung high in the tree to the line holding it up, and then to the point where the line was tied off. They soon learned to go directly to those tie-off points—the results were productive and rewarding for them. It was distressing to see bear scat filled with foil packaging from multiple freeze-dried meals.

Wildlife experts suggested negative conditioning might keep bears from human food—maybe we humans could be so unpleasant to be around that the bears would go back to the woods? Researchers tried putting an awful-tasting chemical, ammonium hydroxide, in balloons in food sacks. While this initially resulted in a significant decrease in bear activity, the bears learned to ignore those sacks, and even those specific people, and instead robbed neighboring campsites. The researchers tried hazing (which means using humane harassment to stop unwanted bear behavior), even with explosive deterrents, but the bears quickly learned to recognize the specially painted bright orange guns responsible for those explosions.

Work sites in the backcountry were also occasional targets for hungry bears, who became socialized, or relatively comfortable around humans. We tried to discourage them by erecting electric fences in trail crew camps and harassing and chasing them away (the farther you chase them, the more likely they are to find another camper to raid). There is even a story of a bear that hung around the Merced Lake Ranger Station with such determination that after it was chased into a tree, a sawyer staying there cut the tree down to “really get rid of it.” The bear, though dazed, ambled off otherwise unharmed. The sawyer was fired.

We enlisted special bear dogs for a short while to chase bears from campgrounds. Dogs had chased bears out of developed areas in the past, but a more formal program began in 1997 when Carrie Hunt brought Karelian bear dogs to work the Tuolumne Campground. The objective was to achieve adverse conditioning by employing constant hazing to stop the behavior in general. Unfortunately, the results were localized and represented only a short-term fix to bears in campgrounds, and the method was never used in the backcountry. It was very popular with the campers, however. Although Carrie returned to Montana to chase grizzly bears, Kate McCurdy, a Yosemite bear biologist, recognized the public relations value of the dogs. Logan, a very handsome and gregarious Karelian bear dog, came to live with Kate and charm park visitors. He lived a good life, cruising the campground with Kate, looking for improperly stored food, chasing a few bears here and there, but mostly serving as a wonderful ambassador for the bear management program.

The campgrounds and backcountry campsites were left to the mercy of nighttime raids. The endless banging of pots and pans, a common human reaction along with yelling “Shoo bear—get outta here!” did get bears’ attention but did not drive them away. Socialized bears generally waited until nightfall and then came into camp once everyone was in their sleeping bags, even if they had already been chased away a few times. Campgrounds and trailheads were eventually equipped with metal footlockers, which continue to solve most of the food storage problem if used properly.

The backcountry was more difficult because we didn’t want dogs or metal bear boxes all over the place. In 1987, hikers were briefly encouraged to throw rocks near bears to scare them, and for a few years we would find piles of throwable rocks near sleeping sites. This tactic was abandoned after one season. It was dangerous to both the bears and neighboring campers as rocks got tossed at real and imaginary foes in the darkness. The most tragic result of this management tactic was when an overzealous Boy Scout troop stoned a bear to death. The incident was reported in news outlets nationally and internationally, much to the dismay of the park, the Boy Scouts of America, and of course everyone who loves bears.

Relocating bears, although initially very popular, was eventually understood to be a death sentence to habituated bears. Either they returned, even over remarkable distances, and were eventually euthanized by managers, or they were killed by legal hunters or poachers, hit by cars, killed as nuisance animals in non-park settings, or even killed by other bears.

A better backcountry system to deal with bears and human food had to be developed. It was obvious that effective food storage was the key to success to keep hiker goodies going into the correct stomachs. We just had to figure out how to implement that.

The next idea for food storage in the roadless areas of the park was counterbalancing food from trees without using tie-off lines. While simple in design, it was difficult in application. If it was done perfectly (yes, perfectly), there would be no ropes attached to the tree securing the bags, and they would be hanging from a tiny limb where the bears couldn’t get to them. It didn’t require special equipment or installations in wilderness, and it allowed maximum freedom in campsite selection, at least in theory. It turned out to be more dangerous to hikers than we imagined, as we found there were at least six critical but difficult steps to a hang.

These steps, which had to be explained to every hiker, were as follows: (1) The hiker had to find the perfect limb: live, sloping downward, large enough and high enough to support the food hang, but not so big a bear could climb out on it and not so small that the bears could break it off. (2) The hiker had to position a light cord over the lower part of the limb by tying the line to a rock and throwing the rock over the branch so the line would land in the correct spot. This sounds easy, but it was fraught with difficulties such as the rock coming off, the line getting tangled, the whole thing wrapping around the branch, or even the rock swinging back at the thrower. (3) Once the line was positioned across the limb and both ends were on the ground, the hiker had to tie on the sacks. Everything with a scent had to be hung. The heavier sack was tied on first and pulled up toward the branch. The second sack was tied on as high as possible on the other end of the line. (4) The remaining cord was coiled and placed on the lower sack with a retrieval loop. (5) The lower sack was given a gentle toss, in the hope that the bags would settle in a counterbalanced hang, high off the ground, with no tie-off lines. (6) To retrieve the food, hikers had to find a long stick, snag the coiled line on the lower sack, and hope the line fell within reach without tangling so it could be pulled down. It took a great deal of patience and skill to do this right, and it was common to see abandoned lines tangled and hanging from limbs from unsuccessful counterbalancing. It also took a great deal of patience and skill to teach this method to almost every hiker obtaining a permit, often to the dismay of permit staff.

It did take the bears a little longer to figure out how to get to counter-balanced food hangs, but they were clever and persistent. We joked about bears attending Food Hang University, where they would share tips and techniques on foiling the hang. A well-done counterbalance would place the food out of reach on a tiny live limb. Most hangs weren’t perfect, however. The bears would try to climb out as far as they could on the limb or reach out from partway up the tree if the food sacks ended up too close to the trunk. If these options didn’t work, common bear tactics included bouncing on the limb until the heavier sack lowered or the limb broke. Bears were known to chew off part of the tree limb to break it off more easily when it didn’t just snap. There were even reports of kamikaze cubs who would either fall or jump on the bags from limbs the adults couldn’t get out on, shredding the food sack with their claws on the way down, turning it into a hiker-food pinata. That seemed very clever.

Unfortunately, we all lost in this contest. If the bears got your food, you lost your dinner. It was far worse for the bears. They were rewarded with an unnatural food source, usually loaded with sugar and chemicals enclosed in wrappers. Increased caloric intake can upset their normal reproductive rates, which in turn destabilizes bear demographics and causes future stress regarding food. If they didn’t get the food but tried and tried, they would burn precious calories and often damage the trees.

Other wilderness areas dealt with this issue as well, and bear boxes were added to certain heavily used campsites. These large metal lockers came with their own set of negatives, not the least that they were installations in wilderness that concentrated use and turned into trash bins. Bears and other wildlife managed to get into them anyway, at least in the early days. In Yosemite, we installed boxes at designated campsites such as those adjacent to the High Sierra Camps and in Little Yosemite but decided against putting the boxes throughout the wilderness. There had to be better methods that didn’t involve large metal containers.

We tried some low-profile installations at popular camp areas, including bear cables instead of a limb to counterbalance food, eliminating some (but not all) of the difficulties of a food hang. We also tried bear poles at the High Camps. These were metal posts, probably 12 feet high, with four hooks at the top. The idea was to use a stick or a small pole to maneuver a loop on the food sack up to the hooks at the top of the post. Still, some determined bears were able to get a toenail hold on the joint partway up the pole to get a leg up, in some cases reaching low-hanging goodies.

There were also unexpected hazards to the food sacks on the poles. I remember helping the wildlife staff install one at the Merced Lake campground—it was a lot of work, and we may have even used concrete to set the pole. We finally got it up, hung some food on it, and watched to see whether anything happened. At dusk, a flying squirrel soared over, landed on top of the hang, and started nibbling holes into the food bags—we just couldn’t win with the wildlife on that one.

We strived to minimize our administrative presence and installations in wilderness when possible, so we hoped to solve the food storage problem by supplying backpackers with something they could carry with them. A bearproof food sack was commercially developed, made of Kevlar, the same material bulletproof vests are made of. Hikers would store food and anything with an odor such as soap, toothpaste, or suntan lotion in the sack. They would then tie the sack to a tree so the bears didn’t take off with it. The bears, of course, just mauled it with their paws and mouth, pulverizing the sack and all its contents and leaving everything covered in bear slobber. The sacks, although light and convenient, became less popular after a few such experiences.

Luckily, after much experimentation, clever minds came up with the solution still in place today—bear canisters. These hard plastic cylinders were designed so that bears couldn’t get a sufficient hold on them with either their paws or their mouths. The lid mechanism locks by using a flat tool or coin to turn a latch. The bears generally mess with them a bit and hopefully don’t roll them off a cliff or into the creek. When they find they can’t get into the canister, they go off to another campsite looking for easier pickings.

Canisters have worked so well for almost two decades that I hope they’ve caused many of the bears to return to their wild foraging ways. Phil Frank, a wonderful cartoonist who specialized in Yosemite humor, did warn readers not to lend bears a coin, however. You never can tell when those clever bears will figure out how to get into canisters.

Mark Fincher and Mark Marschall about to finesse a deep core while snow surveying in Grace Meadow.

L. ELSE

• ESSAY TWELVE •

FALLS CREEK

There probably isn’t a worse place to slide into the churning rapids of Falls Creek than the steep narrow canyon below us. It was 1995, the second day of a snow survey, and we were at a spot downstream from Wilma Lake in Jack Main Canyon. Cliff walls towering over a precipitous drop into a series of waterfalls made the spot spectacular and breathtaking. In summer, it is easy to traverse the trail here. It is built into the slickrock, providing a two- to three-foot-wide platform across the slope above the swirling water. In winter, however, that platform is often covered with snow, leaving a smooth, steep, slanting surface to navigate. It was a potential luge run into sure death in the icy roar below if you messed up and slipped.

If Falls Creek wasn’t sufficiently frozen upstream to use a snow bridge to cross the creek to a more protected route, surveyors had to get across at this spot. They needed to deal with the frozen slope above the waterfall early in the day to make it to the Vernon Lake cabin, the next stop, before dark. When the snow was fresh, they had less of a chance of slipping off, but there was more of a chance of avalanche-type sluffing that could knock you off your feet. If the snow had settled there for a while, which was more common, it could turn to an icy sheet.

The metal-edged skis we wore, meant to grip and hold, barely scratched the surface on the chilly morning our snow survey team arrived at this breathtaking spot. This was the second day of a three-day assignment to measure the depth and water content of this part of California’s snowpack. Our skill level was mixed—although we were all capable skiers, we had different levels of confidence when it came to risks of this sort. All of us were at least a little spooked by this spot, however, especially because of the particularly dangerous conditions this cold morning.

If it was so dangerous, what were we doing there, anyway? Our regularly scheduled snow survey to take core samples of the winter’s snowpack gave us invaluable data that was used by the California State Department of Water Resources managers to determine how much to hold in the reservoirs that provided water and hydropower to much of the central part of the state. In this case, the snow we were measuring would eventually water gardens, wash cars, and fill drinking glasses in and around San Francisco. Water was perhaps California’s most precious resource, so vital to the population of the state that the economy is built on its availability. This supply of water from the snowpack was also so irresistible that a magnificent valley on the Tuolumne River, Hetch Hetchy, was dammed and filled with the winter’s snowmelt for the benefit of the Bay Area. The canyon floor, once home to a glorious oak woodland and the native people who lived there, is now a water vessel, its forest and human history drowned, the lichen on its cliff walls destroyed, revealing an unsightly bathtub ring when the high water recedes. Some say the building of O’Shaughnessy Dam killed John Muir, who once wrote in Century Magazine, “Dam Hetch Hetchy! As well dam for water-tanks the people’s cathedrals and churches, for no holier temple has ever been consecrated by the heart of man.”

The growing population of California, punctuated by the ravaging 1906 fire in San Francisco, overshadowed Muir’s and other preservationists’ concerns. The Raker Act, an act of Congress allowing a dam to be built inside a national park, was passed in 1913. The City of San Francisco had won its long battle for a public water supply, and the reservoir remains today. Hetch Hetchy, Yosemite Valley’s sister canyon, is flooded to supply water and power to populations 150 miles away. It seems to be our human prerogative, at least for now, to take what we humans need. Damming the river provided essential support to the growing number of inhabitants of California, allowing the state to provide for its increasing populace despite flooding a valley that is often considered as glorious as Yosemite. More people justified it than opposed it. I wonder how that vote would go today.

The four of us standing nervously above the roaring chasm that day had been dropped off near the top of the watershed to measure just how much usable water was stockpiled in the winter snowpack. The helicopter had offloaded us at Grace Meadow, elevation 8,800 feet, the skids of the ship sinking into the snow, the tail rotors blowing a gale around us. As it flew away, we were overwhelmed by the quiet. The thrill of the machine noise and power was replaced by the reality that we had been left by ourselves in the winter wilderness and would need to ski down almost 5,000 feet in elevation over the next three days, measuring five courses along the way. We had better be ready for it. We gathered up our packs, had a little snack, and got right to business, surveying the snow.

Yosemite employees measure 13 snow courses across the high country four times a winter starting in January. The wilderness staff generally measures the five sites in the northern part of the park in Falls Creek, while the Tuolumne winter rangers and Mather District personal measure the courses around Tuolumne Meadows, Tenaya Lake, and Gin Flat. The Badger Pass and Ostrander staff measure the two courses in the southern part of the park. This work is done in cooperation with the California Department of Water Resources and has been part of a statewide program since 1927.

Water is priceless, and these measurements are extremely important. I remember being told that making a mistake of even an inch or two in the measurement could affect the water appropriations to the end users by many thousands of gallons, so we took our measuring very seriously. The Sierra Nevada mountain snowpack provides 50 percent of California’s water supply, and these measurements are used to determine how the water in reservoirs would be divided among farmers, fish, and faucets. The measurements are also markers of climate change, currently indicating we are not getting as much snow at lower elevations and that it is melting off sooner.

The snow courses are in marked locations, each with a line of 10 sample points set 50 feet apart. Correctly done, surveyors can measure essentially the same spot year after year, allowing water managers to accurately predict runoff. We collected data using a Mount Rose snow tube, developed in 1909 to track the water level in Lake Tahoe. This hollow aluminum tube is thrust through the snowpack until it strikes dirt. Sharp, half-inch cutting teeth are attached at the leading edge of the tube, as it is often necessary to twist the tubes to cut through ice layers. Snow depth is noted, and the sample core is weighed to determine density and water content. The deepest April 1 snow depth on record in Yosemite was in 1969 at 232.9 inches, with the highest water content measured at 96 inches in 1983. It is stunning to think of the snowpack as an eight-foot-deep lake spread over the hundreds of square miles of the High Sierra. It is quite wonderful to see why these protected areas are such important guardians and storage vessels for one of the earth’s most valuable resources.

Getting a good core with the snow-sampling tubes was a skill that held a variety of challenges. Fresh snow would stick in the tubes, preventing a good sample. An ice layer deep in the snowpack might defeat the cutting teeth on the bottom of the tube. A difficult core might slide out before it could be weighed or compress to the point that it was useless, not meeting the standard 10 percent loss of core length. My coworker Mark Fincher was a master of getting good cores, among other talents. He had the touch, cutting through various snow layers with skill, knowing when he had hit ice and not dirt, getting good cores even in 10 to 12 feet of snow. He was also the most capable person in the park to lead the snow surveys at the time, particularly in Falls Creek, and I always felt more comfortable with him on a trip. He had many wilderness skills.

Obtaining these cores involved significant effort and expertise, and not everyone was as skilled as Mark was. Attempts were made over the years to automate the courses and take human error out of the procedure. Towers were built to clearly indicate snow depth with flyover measurements, but the density of the snowpack had to be factored to determine the quantity of water in that snow. One attempt to determine density involved installing snow pillows in some locations. These large—probably eight feet by ten—glycerin-filled envelopes recorded the weight of the snow on top of them, providing the water content. Ice layers could alter readings from the pillows, but another complication became more problematic. The local bear population, apparently curious about new installations in their neighborhood, soon discovered that glycerin was sweet and easily available in these objects that humans had left behind. Even heavy wire mesh cages couldn’t keep them out. Maybe the solution lies in a simpler, less developed reality—sampling should still be done by humans, not by mechanical, automated means. Installations and technology just don’t work as well as people back there.

So, there we were, the four of us in Grace Meadow that winter day. We had more to do than take samples. We were trusted to safely ski from Grace Meadows to Beehive Meadow, measuring the courses along the way, and then hike to our trailhead at Hetch Hetchy. We would stay at two cabins along the way.

The three-day ski trip was about 24 total miles. As with any Nordic adventure in the Sierra Nevada, snow conditions varied widely, ranging from breakable crust to Sierra cement to Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride down icy, obstacle-ridden sections. Snow conditions could even occasionally approach “perfect”—a solid consistent snowpack with a few inches of fresh powder on top. What a treat that was. However, there were a couple of particularly dicey spots along this route no matter what the snow conditions were, and that scary spot above the waterfall was one of them.

The Falls Creek snow survey courses were always an adventure to measure regardless, and we preferred to travel as a group of four for safety. Backcountry and trail crew staff commonly led the surveys, and we usually tried to have a variety of other park personnel join us. The trips were popular with those who were winter enthusiasts. It was sometimes hard to believe we were hired to ski through this magnificent backcountry. Survey crews have since eliminated the need to be dropped off by helicopter when conditions allow, as the courses can be skied entirely from bottom to top and back down. Skiing the entire route increases the amount of time surveyors get to stay out in the winter woods, which is a treat for those who love this sort of work.

It was a luxury to get to a cabin after so many hours in the snow-covered terrain. Cabins at Wilma Lake and Vernon Lake were spaced a day’s ski apart for those surveying the Falls Creek courses. After being out in the snow all day, skiing from one sample point to the next, it felt like “glamping” to use them, as the light from a gas lantern, the warmth of a fire, the treat of cached goodies felt very comfy after a hard day on the snow survey trail. We tried to leave paper and kindling in the wood-burning stove when we left, ready for the next exhausted and chilled skiers who pulled in for the night. Sampling was often a very strenuous task, and it was rare to get to a cabin before dark or with energy to spare. It was nice to just be able to strike a match to warm up the room. The cabins were a safety precaution for surveyors.

Like other installations in wilderness, however, it was labor intensive to maintain these accommodations, and their presence caused additional impacts to the wildness of an area. These log buildings needed to be kept up and stocked with fuel, firewood, food, emergency gear, and other supplies. Doing this, along with other patrol duties, was a big part of the responsibilities of summer rangers stationed in the north end of the park. While the cabins were used occasionally for things other than snow surveys, they sometimes didn’t feel quite as deluxe as they did in winter. All the cabins could have used more care than we could give them, but we were still very grateful for them, especially in winter.

Speaking of staff safety, what about that dicey crossing above the rapids in Jack Main Canyon? Did that merit a helicopter flight? Nope, that spot was just part of the route that needed to be navigated. Although unintentionally formed as such, the group standing with a knot in their stomachs above the churning rapids of Falls Creek that day happened to be all female. Not that it should make a difference, right? Still, it was only the second all-woman team to undertake this trip. Although one or two women might be on any given snow survey, serving as leaders in some cases, most of the teams were made up of men at that time.

The women involved in this event—Kristin Ramsey, Laurie Jenkins, Louise Johnson, and I—were generally capable in the woods. We discussed our options—some of us had rock-climbing experience and considered a belay, which might be better than nothing if tied off properly. This technique could allow one person to stop another’s sliding fall if necessary. However, we only had parachute cord with us, which is strong but very small in diameter. There were no good anchors close by to hold the belayer. If the person fell partway across, the runout of the line was so long it might put them over the edge before the belayer could stop them. While such a line certainly wouldn’t be our first choice as a preventative tool, maybe it would help psychologically? Or in a desperate situation? We even thought about whether we could use our ski pole tips as ice axes to arrest a fall, but that also was pretty much wishful thinking while crossing this icy slope with a pack on. One member of the group wasn’t as experienced or strong, which had to be taken into consideration. We decided to hold off and wait for warmth.

So, we waited for the sun to do its magic and soften a path for us. We knew we couldn’t delay too long, or we would be traveling down the long and difficult rock slabs above Vernon Lake in the dark, which was just as dangerous. When it finally seemed like the sun had warmed the snow enough that our skis would hold an edge, we held our breath as the boldest of us crossed the slope, testing the snow, setting a track. The other three of us were able to follow and cross without falling into the roaring whitewater abyss below. We only accomplished this, however, after forcing ourselves to concentrate on the task at hand, not the potential nightmare of slipping.

We pulled it off—whew. I knew we could. And we were able to deliver another month’s worth of data.

Yosemite’s first all-woman snow survey team (Tory Finley, Ginger Burley, me, Louise Johnson) arrives at Hetch Hetchy. Notice the “bathtub ring” caused by low water in the reservoir.

B. FINLEY

Baobab tree—Namibia, Africa.

L. BOYERS

• ESSAY THIRTEEN •

GLOBAL YOSEMITE

The baboons were watching me carefully. It was a troop, probably 20 to 30 of them. One would move forward, toward the yard, giving the others courage to come closer. Although they stayed a safe distance away, I could see their eyes, glinting in the sun, focused on me. They were fascinating—they looked like a mix of humans and canines and apes, wild and threatening. My heart pounded even though I was behind the fence. Eventually, the largest, the leader, seemed to communicate a message. With one more withering glance in my direction, the troop turned and galloped off. This was a different kind of wildness—one that some who live in Africa deal with outside their homes regularly. The wildlife here is not just for viewing or serving as the subject of a cute picture to take home. These were big, dangerous animals that lived just outside the fence.

NAMIBIA (1996)

I was in Namibia, the country abutting South Africa to the northwest. I had been invited to this African nation to participate in the Wilderness Management Symposium in Waterberg Plateau Park, hosted by Trygve Cooper, senior warden of the park and the Namibian Ministry of Environment and Tourism. This was a major workshop to develop updated environmental and wilderness legislation for the newly established government in this country. Its recently written constitution specifically mentioned the importance of the natural environment, and this workshop brought leaders such as Namibia’s president Dr. Sam Nujoma, African conservation heroes like Dr. Ian Player, scientists, land managers, and local leaders together to formulate their management strategy for wilderness areas. A few land-management experts from the United States had been brought in to provide their perspective and management philosophies. After the workshop, I was invited to an expedition into the Namib-Naukluft National Park, the largest national park in Africa, with the park’s chief ranger. The Namib Desert was the oldest desert in the world and was famous for its towering garnet sand dunes. My hosts were to take me into its interior, providing I didn’t get attacked by the baboons first.

We all had things to learn from one another. My participation in this visitor use workshop was sponsored by USAID (United States Agency for International Development). Yosemite National Park has a well-established global reputation, and while I had considerable experience there and in other US parks, much of my credibility stemmed from my workplace. Of primary interest to the organizers was how Yosemite dealt with its world-famous status and resultant visitation demand. This was seen as a mixed blessing. Many African parks were dealing with sustainability and populations who had lived on public lands, and survived on the resources from these lands, for countless years. Tourism was a huge economic driver, but managers also realized the perils of unmanaged access and the impacts to Indigenous people. Yosemite’s experience with direct and indirect controls, including quota systems, education, signage, zoning, and other management options, would perhaps be applicable in areas that might be designated for visitor use. Yosemite had much to learn from them about the impacts on Indigenous populations. While this problem has yet to be resolved in Namibia, the symposium found that any initiative regarding wilderness must consider Namibia’s colonial past and history of land dispossession as well as the needs, desires, and aspirations of Namibian people regarding land use. This could be achieved with more respect for and input from the affected communities.

The core of my message regarding recreational use was to act early, or even preemptively, in known or potential trouble spots. Impacts occur quickly and take exponentially longer to repair with increased use. Implementing some restrictions before the damage is done might be received better in newly opened areas than in areas where established behaviors have already altered the resource, necessitating these areas’ closure.

While this approach might work well in some areas of Namibia, wild land managers were also dealing with heartbreaking decisions in other areas of the country. In the United States, Indigenous people had been forced off many US parks as non-natives settled wild areas. In Africa, however, many populations still lived in ancestral districts on some park lands. Life could be difficult, with people often barely eking out enough food from their fields to survive. Marauding elephants, also seeking food, could destroy a family’s crop overnight. There were government programs to cull the elephants and quotas on how many would be killed. Those same elephants, however, provided the primary draw for tourists and tourist spending. Also of great concern, and of great danger to wildlife and local rangers, was the dramatic problem of poaching elephants and other high-value rare animals, such as rhinos. Wildland management in Africa had a whole different level of urgency. The land was being used in a life-and-death dance. Our current wildland management problems in Yosemite were never as immediate, or as dire. My concerns at home about crowding seemed almost silly when confronted with issues like I found in Namibia.

JAPAN (2005)

Another international assignment, however, very much had to do with crowding. In this instance, I was invited to assist in the design of an integrated strategy for the revitalization of Mount Fuji in Japan. The focus was the restoration of ecosystems and natural processes on the peak, as well as the nomination of Mount Fuji as a World Heritage property. The cumulative impacts on this sacred mountain by overuse had so damaged its essence that UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization and arbitrator of World Heritage status, had deemed Fujisan unsuitable for natural or cultural designation. The Japanese dearly wanted World Heritage status for their sacred mountain.

Yosemite had been selected as a World Heritage Site in 1984. I was able to share methods and experiences in natural and cultural resource management in a heavily used iconic destination that might be helpful to managers, and I provided feedback on existing and future management efforts. I was hosted by the National Council on Fujisan World Heritage, a private organization; Waseda University, the most prestigious university in Japan; and Dentsu, Inc., one of Japan’s largest advertising and development companies. Each organization had a slightly different interest in the project, and it was fascinating to work with the different entities. I was able to teach a class at the university, I gave major presentations hosted by Dentsu, and I was directed in my visit by members of the National Council on Fujisan. I was joined by Mark Davies, Department of Conservation, New Zealand.

Once again, visitor use management was the core of the problem. Mount Fuji is a global icon, a symbol of Japan, a sacred mountain. It is an act of national pride to climb to its summit at 12,393 feet, as well as an incredibly spiritual experience for many. Most Japanese feel compelled to do it at least once in their lifetime. The primary route becomes a continuous stream of hikers during the climbing season. An estimated 100,000 to 400,000 people (of whom approximately 70 percent are Japanese) scale the peak over the course of only a few months. The mountain and the experience are overwhelmed by the needs of those trekkers. Human waste could not be treated effectively, and at times excrement streamed down the mountainside. Commercial offerings of everything from tea stands to oxygen bars were built along the volcanic slopes. Electric lines streamed overhead, supplying power along the way and to the weather station on the summit. A continuous column of climbers walked the whole way seeing only the backs and heels of the people directly in front of them. The trail was more like a teeming road than a path up a sacred mountain. Harm was being done.

Governance of the mountain was very complicated. The Shinto Sengen Grand Shrine held ownership of most of the land. Private, public, and military ownership of different parts of the slopes crossed two prefectures, similar to states, further fragmenting management. An integrated “whole of the mountain” plan was needed, addressing both natural and cultural values. Ecosystem condition, managerial presence, visitor capacity, and the desire to act on these issues as quickly as possible needed to be considered. Human waste disposal and associated water quality issues were particularly critical and had to be resolved.

There were positive results that came from our work. Some of our recommendations were to integrate the plan, or charter, into local management and visitor messaging. We encouraged long- and short-term planning to address the current and desired condition and the amount of managerial presence or intervention. There needed to be a broader understanding of ecosystem capacity and the pressure of visitor impacts. A wide variety of interests needed to be brought together to work for the revitalization of the mountain, and partnerships with nonprofit and nongovernmental organizations were recommended to enhance community support. Corporate and educational involvement would be beneficial in the long run. Science had to be a core value.

Mount Fuji was selected as a World Heritage cultural site in 2013. Long-term actions will perhaps ensure further protection of the mountain and achieve natural heritage status in the future. Yosemite was offered a recirculating solar-powered toilet like those being developed for Mount Fuji, but the park refused the offer, perhaps due to the logistics of receiving, installing, and maintaining the unit. It would have been interesting to try it at some place like the top of Nevada Fall, but, like anything else, it all gets complicated.

NEW ZEALAND (1980/1998)

I was also fortunate to have worked with park managers and scientists in New Zealand on two occasions. The first was in 1980, when I visited conservation areas and wrote a paper regarding recreational use of the trail and hut system. New Zealand was using an opportunity class system, where wilderness areas were completely undeveloped, but the remote and backcountry zones had trails and some structures, including 1,000 or so backcountry huts. These public lands are primarily located in challenging mountainous terrain with quickly changing weather patterns, and the huts were important to visitor safety and resource protection. Increasing recreational use, particularly by international visitors unfamiliar to these regions, had changed how these facilities were used. Issues such as hut mentality hiking (in which users race from hut to hut to get a bunk in popular spots), hikers being ill prepared for the hardships of the trip because they planned to stay in a hut, or the misuse of facilities, such as trash being left by those who are new to the system, were of concern. Yosemite’s permit system, quotas, and educational efforts were of interest to managers in addressing some of these issues. I was pleased to learn the document I wrote was later used in the country’s land conservation program at Lincoln College.

In 1998, I returned to New Zealand to accompany Dr. Alan Watson, social scientist at Aldo Leopold Wilderness Research Institute in Montana, to a national workshop with the Land and Conservation Association professional staff, hosted by Paul Dingwall and Gordon Cessford. This organization is the equivalent of our National Park Service and is responsible for management of 13 national parks in this relatively small country. The workshop was primarily focused on the sociological components of management efforts—how do humans respond to one another and to the needs of the agency to protect the resource? Discussions included questions such as: Does trailhead signage work? What is the best way to educate increasing numbers of nonlocal visitors? What indirect methods, such as smaller parking areas, outreach to volunteer groups to assist in public contact, or decreased levels of development, might be more acceptable? There were many issues to deliberate.

These discussions involved topics that were more like recreational management in the United States, so I was able to provide case histories and lessons learned from Yosemite. We also exchanged research literature. New Zealand parks and public lands benefit from some excellent signage and education, and facilities such as trailheads and food-storage devices are clever and appropriate. Trailhead facilities and structures that were installed at destinations blend with the environment and yet are attractive and catchy to the eye, inviting their use. Educational messages are integrated with important safety and resource protection information. I took home photos and a new enthusiasm about some of these techniques while feeling my hosts in turn learned some management options from Yosemite’s experience.

The beauty and diversity of the natural world in New Zealand took my breath away: fjords reaching far inland, peaks with glaciers flowing down to only a mile from the sea, volcanic wonderlands, and untouched coastlines, all in a country the size of California. It was dazzling. Sometimes it made it hard to keep my mind on business, but it was all part of it.

These assignments show how concentrations of human activities affect natural and cultural resources throughout the world. As the Wilderness Act of 1964 warned, increasing population, expanding settlement, and growing mechanization are modifying and occupying many of the wild corners of the globe. These assignments were efforts to exchange professional knowledge among managers of public land, no matter where they might be in our world. We face many of the same dilemmas, although I am very happy that we don’t have baboons in Yosemite.

Paul Dingwall and Alan Watson discuss the merits of a New Zealand hiker shelter.

L. BOYERS

It makes me proud that my home is a World Heritage Site, a global treasure, and that we can share our knowledge and experience. Researchers and land managers come to Yosemite to study science in unmodified watersheds or consult on shared techniques. Results from studies and techniques performed here are used widely and have provided information to public land managers both nationally and globally.

The public comes from all over the world as well. They come to bask in the park’s wonder, to crane their necks to look at the cliff walls and stand in the mist of shimmering waterfalls. They get to travel through the park and happily look at the primeval forest and sweeping vistas through their car windows, or hike for days, lost in the spiritual renewal of relatively unchanged nature. They bring their children to see and feel and play in the open space.

Yes, Yosemite is famous, as it should be, and important in the larger global scale of our human existence. We need these wild places for our future, for the children of Namibia and New Zealand and Japan. For the next generations everywhere.

Former First Lady Laura Bush hiking in Yosemite’s high country.

L. BOYERS

• ESSAY FOURTEEN •

THE MIDLAND FIVE

It was 2001, a few months prior to 9/11. I was going camping with 35 people, and almost 30 of them were Secret Service. There were three helicopters on standby that could operate in any weather condition day or night and communicate with anyone, anywhere in the world. Yosemite’s High Sierra Camps, a unique backcountry lodging loop, had been swept with police dogs. The National Park Service Incident Command bus had been moved up from the search-and-rescue site in Yosemite Valley to Tuolumne Meadows. The ranger staff were on high alert. Laura Bush, America’s First Lady, was coming to visit Yosemite’s wilderness.

Laura Bush was an active supporter of parks and open space, and this was a trip that would allow her to see and understand more about a park like Yosemite. Her best friends from childhood would be joining her, and I would be their guide for five days. It was the start of a remarkable friendship with the First Lady that has lasted for more than 30 years. I became an honorary member of the Midland Five on that trip. Laura Bush became an even stronger advocate for public lands.

The Midland Five, Mrs. Bush’s group of best friends, grew up together in Midland, Texas. Most had been schoolmates since the second grade, and some had roomed together in college. As adults, they kept in touch and reunited almost every summer, often to explore our country’s natural treasures, including our national parks.

The Midland Five had always wanted to go to Yosemite, and the High Sierra Camps seemed perfect for their needs, but security was an issue, particularly after President George W. Bush’s inauguration. We found a solution—three of the camps could open for the season a few days early to accommodate the necessary arrangements.

Details of the trip were kept secret until the last minute. Weeks before the hike, Secret Service agents began familiarizing themselves with the route and resources, putting together their elaborate plan. Every step, every stop, every stay had to be inspected and protected prior to the First Lady’s visit. Repeated security checks were run, and venues were double-checked. As the trip neared, the four camps involved also quietly prepared their facilities in preparation for this special event. The entire High Sierra Camp loop would be opening a few days after the visit, so the preparations would be helpful for the upcoming season. The Midland Five would visit Vogelsang, Merced Lake, and Sunrise, as well as Tuolumne Lodge. All personnel involved in the trip were cleared via background check, and the park’s special events team (SET) ran various series of contingency responses.

Once the National Park Service heard it would be involved in Mrs. Bush’s trip, some staff engaged in intense planning for it. A trip of this sort called for a high level of preparedness, but it also had to be kept quiet—details were dispersed on a need-to-know basis. Park responsibilities ranged from communications to traffic control to protection and rescue readiness to tour guide—me. I was a good fit for the job of escorting the women because of my many years of experience in the park, my knowledge of the backcountry, and the fact that I was a commissioned law enforcement ranger. I was also a nice person and a woman of about the same age. That helped a lot.

Doug Roe, a very experienced and skilled member of the Law Enforcement Office in the park, provided local knowledge to the Secret Service and served as a liaison between park departments. Doug was a great choice—he was calm, smart, skilled, and well connected to the local ranger and county law enforcement staff. He would be coordinating with unseen others who provided seamless support for the trip.

I was somewhat stunned to hear of my role, and I immediately began to stress about having only a few days to brush up on rusty interpretive facts (flower names, fascinating items about animals, interesting geology tidbits, etc.). I like human and animal stories best, but I rarely recalled hard data very well. I had to cram like a schoolgirl before finals to refresh my mental archives with quality information. I couldn’t even tell anyone what I was doing.

The best part was that I got to share this trip with five very interesting women, one of whom happened to be American royalty—our First Lady. In this gathering, however, she was often just Laura, a Midland, Texas, girl, out with her girlfriends. They told stories and laughed the laugh of women who have known and loved one another their entire lives.

It was a great pleasure to get to know the women. They were lively, smart, and accomplished. Their lives forked in interesting ways after those school and college roommate days. Marge Petty had been a Democratic state senator in Kansas. Jane Ann Fontenot was an international midwife instructor who lived on a houseboat in Berkeley. Peggy Weiss was an award-winning artist who also owned some of the best restaurants in Austin, as well as one in Washington, DC, at the time. Regan Gammon cofounded the Texas Book Festival, championed conservation causes, and was later appointed to the National Park Foundation board.

The Midland Five + 2: Me, Regan Gammon, Laura Bush, Doug Roe (NPS), Peggy Weiss, Jane Ann Fontenot, Marge Petty.

AUTHOR’S COLLECTION

It was easy to be with them. They were fun. They were curious and engaged as we hiked through the backcountry. Mrs. Bush wanted to hear “all sorts of things about everything,” true to her heart as a former librarian, curious about every book. We wandered along, often stopping to talk about whatever interesting topic I could provide.

Although this seemed casual and idyllic to us, these spontaneous stops had a chain reaction effect on the agents assigned to protect us. I soon learned that we were traveling in an ordered arrangement. There was a front guard, some Secret Service agents discreetly out just in front of us. The First Lady’s detail leader was always within arm’s reach of her, so he and two other agents were right there with us. Another group of men and women stayed behind, keeping us just in sight. Yet another group was waiting at our evening destination, making sure it was clear of any problems. I try to picture the chain of communication when the Secret Service had to react to our field-study-induced stop-and-go pace. Our protectors were supposed to look essentially like other hikers, so their radio microphones were discretely attached to a pack strap or shirt collar. Each time we stopped for any length of time, we would see the detail leader talk into his shoulder as the radios alerted the whole line of yet another stop.

Life went on in the rest of the backcountry, and there were no closures or restrictions involving the public. As we walked the trails, the people we came across, for the most part, did not recognize the group. Secrets are hard to keep, however, and there was a scary moment near Sunrise Meadow when defenses went up. A male hiker followed us and tried to get too close to Mrs. Bush. He insisted he had something he had to talk to her about. He wouldn’t leave or drop his insistence despite intervention by the Secret Service. The man was forcefully escorted out of the backcountry with an agent. It made me realize how vulnerable Mrs. Bush was. I asked her once how she felt about always having a bodyguard within arm’s reach when she was out and about, and she said initially it bothered her, but now she appreciated it. I did, too.

It seemed that most of the agents enjoyed this assignment, and it was interesting to see how they adjusted their demeanor while backpacking from the high alert presence they maintained around her in the front country. They were very professional in their work, but backpacking in the wilderness wasn’t a common or necessarily a comfortable environment for some of them. When a “bear” came scratching and growling outside their Vogelsang tent cabin, it took a few uneasy moments for a couple of agents to realize it was a couple of their buddies messing with them in the dark.

We were also accompanied by Yosemite Concessions Services packer JR Gehres and a string of mules. JR ran the concession stables at the time. Friendly, tall, lanky, and square-jawed, he fit the image and knew his stuff. There were at least three unusual features with this string of pack animals. One feature was what I called the “hospital mule.” This mule was carrying what seemingly equated to a full emergency room of medical equipment and was accompanied by a US Navy medic. The second uncommon pack load was a communication device that could reach anywhere in the world and could bring in one of the three waiting helicopters in an instant. The third unusual feature of this string was the Secret Service agent assigned to keep a constant watch on the First Lady’s luggage, whether it was on a mule or not.

It is not surprising that I felt that if I was ever going to hurt myself in the backcountry, this would be the time to do it. I would certainly receive immediate care.

Mrs. Bush was always gracious and warm with employees, and she laughed when the Merced Lake High Camp crew wrote “Save the World—Tell George” on her lunch bag. High Camp kitchen staff generally drew some sort of design or wrote a personal message on each of the bags that contained the trail lunches for guests. They must have enjoyed thinking up the best message for Mrs. Bush. She was generous with photo opportunities with staff and the occasional visitor who recognized her despite her hat and sunglasses. She made a special effort to meet with a Youth Conservation Corp group doing trail work out of the Merced Lake area. They were thrilled when she later joined their circle for their morning warm-up stretches.

We spent a night at Vogelsang, one at Merced Lake, and had a surprise birthday party for Peggy during our evening at Sunrise. That evening was made more exceptional with a special appearance of Nic Fiore yodeling the dinner call, his famous voice echoing across the meadow and through the peaks as it had so many times before. Nic was legendary. Perhaps more well known as a ski instructor at Badger Pass for almost 50 years, he had supervised the High Camps for decades in the summers. His French-Canadian accent, cheerful demeanor, and hiking and skiing abilities made him memorable to almost all who met him. He was a part of the High Camps and made the experience even more notable.

From Sunrise, the Secret Service was called to action again. Unlike the man the day before who insisted on a private audience with the First Lady, the guy (illegally) carrying his cat up the crowded Cathedral Lakes trail merely elicited heightened awareness about abnormal behavior. This nontraditional visitor certainly wasn’t a threat, but I suppose the Secret Service must be ready for anything. For the most part, the public was unaware of anything different about our group. We had a great time, and, like almost all visitors to this park, the Midland Five were thrilled with the wonder of Yosemite.

We left the wilderness on day four, and the group spent a night at the Ahwahnee Hotel. That evening, Mrs. Bush invited Superintendent Dave Mahalic of the National Park Service; Cindy Bower, the president of Yosemite Concessions Services; and my husband, Darell, and I to a private cocktail party, which was lovely. It was wonderful to introduce them to Darell, whom they were anxious to meet, as we had all told stories involving the men of our lives. Doug Roe, who had served as the liaison to the Secret Service, hosted that crew with pizza and beer nearby. The next day, the Midland Five and I were whisked off in a motorcade to the Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias for a tour of the big trees before the group was taken to the Fresno Airport to board a plane home. The First Lady’s visit became a part of the park’s history.

In the past 20-plus years, I have been honored to have joined the Midland Five for two other multiday mountain trips, one in the John Muir Wilderness and one in the Mineral King area of Sequoia National Park. Although President Bush was out of office at that point, the Secret Service was still along on each trip. They were likely relieved that these subsequent hikes weren’t so extensive. The Midland Five have invited me to Texas twice, and Darell and I enjoyed a presidential Christmas party at the White House. I value their ongoing friendship, especially Laura’s. It has been amazing, and sometimes almost embarrassing, to share in a small way the benefits of the highest level of privilege and protection granted to a First Lady. Yet we exchange Christmas cards every year and handwritten notes, just as you might expect from a nice girl from a small Texas town. She is amazing.

These trips across the nation cemented Laura Bush’s support for wild places. She is a frequent visitor, advocate, and champion of national parks. In 2016, she co-chaired the Centennial Celebration of the National Park Service with Michelle Obama, serving as an ambassador of open space to the American people. Her public service announcements extolled the wonder and value of these protected areas. Her messages were heartfelt, born of time spent with friends and family in these important public lands. She and daughter Jenna Bush Hager wrote a book for four-to-eight-year-olds—Our Great Big Backyard—about the marvels of our national parks, in which they encourage everyone to get outdoors, even into your own backyard.

Hmmm, teaching the next generation about the value of nature? I love that.

Bedrock mortar cups, or grinding holes, were used by the Indigenous tribes for countless generations to prepare acorns and manzanita berries

L. BOYERS

• ESSAY FIFTEEN •

FIRST PEOPLE

I had to go to the other side of the world to understand my own home.

I had been invited to a Wilderness Management Symposium hosted by the Ministry of Environment and Tourism in the African country of Namibia to discuss the complexities of managing public land. I came home wiser. While Yosemite National Park was very good at some things, I saw that we had failed in so many ways in our own relationship with the first people who lived here. It took seeing Indigenous people being forced to give up their lifestyle in Namibia to really understand my lack of consideration of the past, present, and future of the Native Americans of the Yosemite area.

The realization of my lack of empathy surprised me in a way. I have been around Chukchansi, Mono, Piute, and Southern Miwuk (also spelled Miwok) people most of my life. The Native Americans living in the foothills around the park were the minority population during my elementary and high school years, and we all went to school together. Lars and Lex, my brothers, had close buddies, lifetime friends, who were members of the local tribes.

There were several Indian kids in my class, but it wasn’t until my adult life that I became aware of the history of Native Americans in our land, of the atrocities, the spread of disease and disruption, the genocide committed as European Americans claimed California despite the tribes having lived for millennia in most parts of the state. We were all just kids, maybe a little different from one another, but kids nevertheless.

There is much more to their story, however. Yosemite, bastion of natural and cultural treasures, should showcase not only that Indian people had been here for countless generations but also that they are still here. This lack of understanding shouldn’t continue. Luckily, things are improving. There has been increased recognition of the seven associated tribes who had walked these lands, their tribal and familial home. These tribes are recognized today as the Southern Sierra Miwuk Tribe, Bishop Paiute Tribe, Bridgeport Indian Colony, Mono Lake Kutzadika’a, North Fork Rancheria of Mono Indians of California, Picayune Rancheria of the Chukchansi Indians of California, and Tuolumne Band of Me-Wuk Indians.

Their ancestors were living in Yosemite Valley 4,000–6,000 years ago and hunting or traveling in the upper reaches of the park as many as 10,000 years ago. Non-native immigrants arrived in the area only in the mid-1800s. Early Anglo settlers behaved as if they owned the land, a concept foreign to Indigenous communities who lived here. To the native people, the land, and nature, provided subsistence, but the non-human world was honored as a relative, not a commodity. This cultural difference and perceived lack of ownership resulted in the removal, figuratively and literally in some cases, of Native Americans from these lands as Anglos settled in.

As generations of Europeans moved into what later became the park and its surroundings, the myriad of developments displaced native communities and overshadowed the stories of the tribes. It must have been easy to disregard the local Indigenous people. There were always many other demands to deal with, and the norms of the immigrants likely dominated earlier tribal traditions. Overt as well as unintentional racism overshadowed the acceptance of native people into the invading culture. Some in California were taken as slaves, their children taken to boarding schools away from their homes and culture.

When I came home from Africa, I thought about how slowly Euro-Americans had recognized the depth of the connection Indian people had to Yosemite. I thought of the stories of people who were part of these lands, who honored and partnered with these wild places, yet were forcibly removed or replaced. Stories that had been mostly buried, forgotten, or dismissed for many years. Early relationships with the tribes in Yosemite were colored by Anglo stereotypes of Indians in general, with “cultural demonstrations” featuring dances from Plains Indians and horse races of a type that were not done by the Indigenous people of this area. Native people were given menial jobs, if any, and their village was kept separate from the rest of the Yosemite Valley community in my mother’s era.

The interpretation of the history of the Yosemite area was instead focused on the Anglo-European white men who settled it 150 years ago. John Muir’s flowery prose and Galen Clark’s “discovery” and stewardship of the Mariposa Grove were perhaps more palatable to the European view of this comparatively new national park idea as the conservation movement grew here and in other parts of the United States. Little or no recognition was given to those who had lived here and been the park’s stewards for thousands of years—or of their brutal displacement. In those early days, pictures of pristine, uninhabited, natural vistas, with glorious characteristics like glowing pastoral scenes, peaks and waterfalls, and huge trees shaped national perspective on wild nature. Some of those vistas had in fact been cultivated for perhaps thousands of years by the native people who had tended the landscape and their food sources. Meadows the native people had kept open with managed fire were later extolled by Anglo artists as true and glorious nature.

It was interesting to think about the concept of legislated wilderness as I considered this cultural discrepancy. The overly simplistic idea of wilderness—that we needed to protect wild areas from human change, or that wilderness is an area without humans—is a modern political spin on lands that had been occupied and modified for eons by the Indigenous people. The native people apparently understood that ecological variability and change were a part of the natural world, and their presence seemed more harmonious with those fluctuations.

Early Anglo settlers established their own relationship with the new frontier, developing settlements and rapidly accelerating change. In just over 100 years of occupation of these lands, there was cause for concern. The ever-increasing dominance over nature and the changes based on human values, without respect or humility toward the natural world, eventually instigated the passage of two laws, the Organic Act and the Wilderness Act, to protect some of the last remaining wild areas. These laws represented an effort to prioritize the preservation of natural processes while still allowing public use. Our modern spin on these laws needs to consider this balance in the natural world: that humans are a part of nature; we just need to live with humility and respect for the myriad of other species who share our earth. The Indigenous people seemed to understand this balance because they lived it.

The eventual implementation of the Organic Act and Wilderness Act, as well as other laws and regulations, was in part due to the sheer number of those using these ecosystems. As the nation developed, rapidly increasing numbers of people and advances in access to unmodified natural areas led to the erosion of the very things those new visitors wanted: open space to build on, abundant resources to use for gain, to live on and grow. Non-native settlers wanted to tame the wilderness with improvements that more resembled their comforts and their homes, sometimes leaving the earth scarred and altered.

To the native people, these mountains and forests were their home, their comfort. They had used the land for their benefit as well, but because their numbers were small and their techniques focused on a partnership with nature rather than submission of the wilderness, their impact was different. Even their most intensive actions, such as the use of fire to increase food supply, harmonized more closely with the earth. Though almost nondetectable now, manipulation of nature performed by the Indians could be seen on a landscape scale. Much of the open space and thriving plant and animal life that early Anglo settlers enjoyed was due to skilled agricultural and horticultural efforts of the native communities to increase food production.

Signs of their long presence can still be found in and around the park. Small groups moved through the backcountry with the seasons, visitors who did not remain in winter. These early people used the material around them for everything—food, clothing, shelter, weapons, religious ceremonies. Unlike much of today’s trash, those implements could be recycled back to their origins easily, leaving little trace of their presence. Some signs can be found with careful observation, however. Midden soil, composed mostly of campfire ash, acorn husks, and obsidian chips, is scattered throughout the park, signs of return use and long periods of time spent in productive locations. Mortar cups, developed and used over the years for pounding acorn and other seeds, can be seen in granite slabs next to creeks and oak woodlands. Lookout positions were located near wildlife choke points and are sometimes indicated by a row of stacked rocks that were likely hunting blinds. Obsidian arrowheads and spear tips have been found high up the sides of many peaks, lost from a missed shot during hunting forays hundreds, if not thousands, of years ago.

Some actions by the earlier people were not as unobtrusive, particularly concerning their use of fire. There were significant efforts by Native Americans to manage their surroundings at a landscape level, and they used fire for centuries to enhance the forest ecosystem. Land managers of today are seeing that 100-plus years of fire suppression, an Anglo practice from as early as the 1870s, must be reversed for the health of the forest. Intentional burning is being reintroduced now after decades of fire prevention. Members of the Seven Associated Tribes of the Yosemite region recently participated in the return of intentional burns to the Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias, just as they had for perhaps thousands of years—to them, prescribed fire and planned ignitions weren’t new ideas.

According to Jim Snyder, historian and trails expert, the Native people walked these mountain paths for thousands of years, learning the best passages through the rolling terrain from the wildlife. They traveled with purpose, following deer and the flowering or fruiting plants that would supply food. They followed creeks and ridgetops, stopping to camp in places that had the best concentration of usable plants. Their paths connected villages, hunting and gathering sites, and trade partners.

Trade routes, like that followed by the Traditional Walk discussed below, became both physical trails and spiritual paths for the tribes. We still follow many of the same trails. Although these routes change slightly by need or by user, they are traditional passageways.

Recognition of the connection of the native people and their ancestors to the park and its importance to them has improved over the last 30 to 40 years, overcoming some of the prejudice of the previous decades. My own epiphany about how I, as a government representative, was manifesting this bias occurred as I was considering the Traditional Walk. This gathering and trek is a ceremonial tribal crossing of the Sierra with elders and families. It is a four-night walk across the long-established east/west trading route that their ancestors had used for thousands of years. It is a strenuous trip, as those following the route travel from 4,000 feet in Yosemite Valley to over 10,600 feet at Mono Pass. The walkers then drop down a steep rocky trail to 8,000 feet at Walker Lake, just south of Lee Vining. Despite the rigors, many come to participate. And that was the problem.

As the wilderness manager, I was tasked with planning for 80 to 100 travelers passing through designated wilderness areas where the official maximum group size was 15. I had to organize special permission and unique arrangements and jump through various governmental hoops. I had to notify the proper authorities and write up special documents for officials to sign. It would likely require compromise to reduce natural resource impacts of concern. What about all the other things we required of other users? Food storage was awkward. We legally required animal-proof containers for all users to protect the bears and other wildlife, but the tribes felt the bears were their partners, part of their society. Bearproof food storage was not a common practice for them. Where would they all camp, especially in the subalpine zone by Mono Pass, an area designated as a no camping/no fire zone? How about human waste? I dreaded dealing with these problems as a manager.

I needed to find the best way to resolve these issues. Eventually, the answer presented itself: go for a walk with the elders and talk about it. I spent a day walking up to Mono Pass with Jay Johnson and Les James. Jay was a neighbor, friend, and coworker but also the highly respected spokesperson, leader, and tribal elder for Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation/American Indian Council of Mariposa County. Les was also an elder, very active in Yosemite’s native community, and a key player in tribal affairs. They were both gentle, soft-spoken men who carried the honor of their culture despite the pressures to conform to prevailing norms of a government job. Les oversaw the park’s sign shop, and Jay supervised the Yosemite Valley forestry crew.

That day, however, they had important tribal business. They were going up to the high country to bless the route before the Traditional Walk. It was an honor to join them. We talked of life, of the power of the natural world, of stories of their ancestors. We didn’t need to discuss park service business much—we were able to settle those issues thanks in part to the good work of others before me. Food storage could be achieved by packing in some bear boxes, and firewood could be brought up from lower elevations to eliminate harvesting the wood in the sub-alpine zone. Participants who hadn’t backpacked as much would be given instruction on proper human waste disposal and campsite care, and wilderness staff would be sent in after the trip to rehabilitate and naturalize campfire sites, which could be kept to a minimum.

A formal group size exception was granted based on the religious nature of the walk. Much of our conversation the day I joined Les and Jay revolved around the spiritual importance of being there on the land and the significance of the upcoming journey. When we got to the pass, Jay lit a wormwood smoke and blessed the four directions, and they sang a song, a song to the walk. I didn’t understand the words but understood the depth and the meaning.

Standing on the pass with them, listening to their voices, I was deeply moved. I was struck by the understanding that this was right, that this was genuine, that this reached further back than I could even imagine. I was embarrassed by the seemingly petty bureaucracy I and others adhered to—though subtle, it still seemed like the white man’s curse. That was my epiphany. From that point on, I knew I must strive to honor the whole story. That these exceptions were appropriate. That we must respect and recognize those who have walked here before us and learn from their narrative. It seems many in the United States and other Western civilizations are coming to that same realization. We all need to work together to live correctly on this earth.

I also came to the realization that the traditional relationship Indigenous people had with the land was similar to what we were trying to reach with our policies. The concept of wilderness, once almost a derogatory term—a dark and dreary place full of all manner of scary beasts; a place to be tamed, plowed, settled, and harnessed—is now legislated to be used with respect and humility, a place where the natural world is to be recognized and treated more like a member of the family with care and restraint, more in harmony, more like the partnership the first people had with these areas so many years ago. It seemed that the learning process for us to come back together after so many years of cultural abuse moved too slowly.

One of the most hopeful points of progress in Yosemite is the dedication and rebuilding of Wahhoga, a mostly Southern Miwuk tribal village in Yosemite Valley. In my parents’ day, the native village consisted of a group of cabins over by Yosemite Lodge. It was essentially segregated, although the kids all went to the same school with my brothers. The homes were never rebuilt after they burned in a fire in 1969. Now Wahhoga is being rebuilt near the site of their ancient village as well as the New Village where some of the elders and their families lived from 1930 to 1969. It will be a place where the Indian people can conduct traditional ceremonies, education, and cultural activities. It will be used to preserve traditional and spiritual lifeways for current and future generations. Sanitary facilities will be the only modern structures, and an all-native crew using traditional skills is building a traditional ceremonial roundhouse at its center.

Management of prehistoric items has also been given greater priority over the last 30 to 40 years. The safeguarding of physical sites is crucial, as these cultural resources are nonrenewable and can be fragile. Even picking up an obsidian tool and moving it can disrupt its story. These items hold information about paleoenvironments, demography, social organization, and settlement patterns of the early people. The high level of protection afforded by wilderness and park designation means that most archeological sites in the roadless areas have not likely changed much, especially compared to sites in the front country that have been damaged or destroyed by development. In the backcountry, surveys and inventories are done prior to the construction of new trail crew camps, building or maintaining of trails, setting prescribed fires, or disturbing the earth with any other activities. Some roving studies not associated with project work have also been performed.

There is much work still to be done. An unknown number of these nonrenewable relics are threatened by nature and human impacts. They can be altered or destroyed by erosion, visitor use, and illegal artifact collection (please resist collecting anything in a park!). Continued attention to the inventory and monitoring of prehistoric and historic items is critical, and stabilization or preservation measures at some specific sites may be needed.

Other important developments have occurred to better reintegrate native people into today’s environment. Yosemite National Park has hired a member of the Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation to serve as a cultural ecologist, seeking to preserve and assist with restoring traditional stewardship of the Seven Affiliated Tribes. This group participates more directly in planning and management efforts, their communal voice gathered from those still living in and around the park. Tribal liaisons now sit on many park teams for projects affecting the land. Native people are supervisors and managers in the park service. Indigenous people reached the highest levels of national park management when both the secretary of the Interior and the director of the National Park Service were appointed from tribal groups. They oversaw much of the land their ancestors had been removed from.

It has become a management priority to provide authentic messaging directly from members of the tribes and other skilled storytellers and teachers. This interpretive effort will benefit the public but also provide a more comprehensive picture of these original residents to other park employees. The stories need to be told, this perspective honored. Interpretive efforts share Indigenous messages from the tribes in park exhibits. Family members of the local people, some descendants of Yosemite families, tell stories and demonstrate cultural skills. They staff museums and give walks, sharing their thoughts as caretakers of the land, teaching and connecting with adults and children alike. This direct link is the best of all.

One of the most influential of these teachers is Julia Parker. She is from the Coast Miwuk-Kashaya Pomo tribe and married to Ralph Parker, a descendent of the Yosemite people. She is the preeminent basket weaver in California, one of the best in the world, and is a skilled artist, storyteller, and teacher.

We had known each other for many years, so I felt confident inviting her to help me teach a “Women’s Beginner Backpacking Class” in the early 1990s. She said yes. She knew the land and the natural world around it. We went to a campsite near Glen Aulin and taught a small group of women how to live in the backcountry. I wonder if they realized how lucky they were to go out with her. She even brought some acorn, a ground mush of leached acorn meal that was a staple food for the local tribes, for all of us to taste. She was wise and wonderful and fun, and her stories always had a message. Her baskets eloquently tell the story of her culture. I hope many more follow in her footsteps to share their tribal stories—some already are.

Ideally, the stories of those who walked here before are heard even more as time goes on. These people were the first generations, and we should recognize and learn from them. They are still here. They are deeply a part of this land.

EPILOGUE

It’s now 2025 as I write these words. I’m still here, still in a cycle of life in Yosemite—as a baby, a child, a young woman, a wife, and now an old(er) woman. I hope I die here, my ashes scattered with others of my family, my cycle complete.

My traveling companions on the Big Trip have mostly moved along. Sadly, Jan van Wagtendonk died in 2022. He is sorely missed by all who knew and loved him. He will always be a part of this place, and I cherish our time together and the things he taught me. Tim Ludington and Johanna Wheeler retired from their park service careers and moved on to new things, Tim with a new home in northern California and Johanna with her family and family of mules in Texas and Tennessee. Chance Heppner moved down to a neighboring town, Raymond (where my great-grandfather A. C. Shaw lived), and is running cattle there. Steve Shackelton stayed in the area but transferred his brilliance to the new University of California in nearby Merced, parlaying his many skills into benefit for students and visiting scholars. Mark Fincher retired and lives locally, and he is still called on for wilderness wisdom. Ken Watson is busy raising his family and forwarding the mission of the park service in Yellowstone National Park.

My job as the wilderness manager was very aptly filled by Mark Marschall when I retired. He brought many years of experience from his career in Yellowstone and the Virgin Islands and furthered our program in Yosemite with knowledge and good humor. After only a few years, he was “57-ed”—forced to leave the job by a National Park Service requirement prohibiting those older than that age from serving in a law enforcement position. Three other people have held the manager’s position since he retired but were unable to learn much about the backcountry during their short tenures. It makes me appreciate the decades that Ron Mackie and I spent in the operation, traveling the trails, talking with visitors and staff, sleeping on the ground with the music of rivers and creeks in our ears. Many park service employees pass through Yosemite in a matter of a few years, doing their Big Park time, stepping through levels of career advancement. That deep knowledge of the area that Ron and I had is a rarity, and the backcountry is mostly unknown to most park staff, to most park users, to most people anywhere. Too bad for them.

Today I think about my years here. The world around me continues to evolve and often seems impossible to grasp. Instead, I focus on the woods around me, seeking familiarity. This morning, I look out my window at a constantly changing forest. Summer smoke, charred trees, regrowth, forest succession. A string of fires and drought years have left the woods more open: smaller trees and slopes of brushy ceanothus dominate the hillsides rather than the stately mixed conifer stands of my first years here. The birds are more visible in the open canopy, but the sun shines with new intensity without the benevolent shade of the forest. I have lived in this spot inside the park for more than 45 years, most of it with my husband Darell. We have watched an undeveloped swath of the earth as it has moved through a small part of its cycle of time, through vegetative change, through evolution, through dry spells, deep snows, scorching conflagrations. As I have changed, the cycle of my life evolving, I have watched the forest transform with the succession of nature—watched as the natural world maintains its balance.

I know that life and nature are not static. The view from my window will change even more, the people around me will come and go. All the organisms that exist in this climate will shift at some point (adapt, migrate, or perish). Sediment cores taken from an undisturbed lake in the backcountry have shown that sagebrush high desert existed here for thousands of years 13,000–15,000 years ago. The modern climatic regime of montane forests began only 3,700 years ago. The earth’s cycles continue. Change is constant in the short-term, local, human world as well. Now I hardly know most of the park service staff working here—the wheels of our presence continue to turn, superficially significant for only a decade or two.

Transitions require letting go—finding peace in losing friends, transferring authority, acknowledging that humans are not in control in the big picture, accepting that we are not the end users of nature. The challenge of my career was finding humility, balancing the acceptance of this organic transformation and resistance to preventable, short-term, human-caused change.

This was a delicate calculation and a key component of preserving wildness. “Wilderness” is a cultural concept, and the idea of what is wild is also changing as society changes. What does “primitive” mean as more users carry smartphones and chargers? How should opportunities for solitude be established as people’s perception of crowding changes or as different cultures define how they feel about open space and the impact of others around them? Should we have the hubris to define what is right, or do we even have the information to make qualified guesses? The Wilderness Act and other land management policies ask that land managers do their best.

As time passed, I became more aware that the influence of our management was relatively short lived. Despite our best efforts, our decisions were often a shot in the dark. Change was unyielding, politically and environmentally inevitable. Science was important, and we strived to apply it but could only make assumptions about the future. Where was our place in the natural order of things? How did we fend off unnecessary human-caused change to protect the very essence of what was supposed to be unmanaged, shaped and served by primeval forces? We struggled to approach these difficult decisions, endeavoring to work with humility within the natural world, hopefully doing no harm, optimistically making a positive difference, attempting to show we are all inexorably linked to nature despite civilization’s advance. We tried to ensure that our work was honest, in tune with reality, focused on the longer future. We hoped our efforts found the right balance of adjustment within the multitude of cycles.

If we are successful, the timelessness and continuity of parks and other wild preserves, their generational value, their goodness, will run through the land. Everyone knows Yosemite is wonderful. It is also well cared for, staffed by talented and dedicated individuals. We don’t need to worry as much about it as we do other places in the world, other systems that are more at risk. Like the message from the bear at the end of the trail in Jack Main Canyon on the Big Trip, our work is ongoing—we aren’t done. We need to be careful with nature, to be aware of the costs of unfettered consumption and access, to be in tune with the longer picture, to do our best. New generations will need to continue the work.

But we also need to enjoy this wonderful world, to play and walk and share the treasure of nature, to breathe deeply and richly, full of joy, connected to the world around us. I hope you will share this goodness with your children and friends so they can share it with their children and friends. My life was clearly richer for it, my world a better place.

APPENDIX Briefing Sheet of Wilderness Operations Statistics in 2003

SIZE

704,624 acres of Designated Wilderness, or 94.2 percent of Yosemite National Park

927 acres of Designated Potential Wilderness Additions (High Camps and utility corridors)

Part of the Sierra Nevada ecosystem, 2.5 million acres of contiguous wilderness

ANNUAL VISITOR USE (AVG. 1998–2003)

17,000–20,000 overnight groups/number of permits issued yearly to 50,000–60,000 overnight visitors

150,000–170,000 visitor nights spent in the wilderness

5 percent commercial use—2 percent stock, 3 percent hiker groups

7,000–9,000 permit reservations made

Estimated more than 500,000 day-use visitors annually to wilderness (does not include Vernal/Nevada corridor with up to 2,700 people per day)

Estimated more than 100,000 climber days

Estimated 40,000–45,000 Nordic days (38,000 in Badger de facto wilderness area alone)

INFRASTRUCTURE

750 miles of backcountry trail

63 trail bridges

55 miles marked ski trails

Approximately 2,400 climbing routes

5 High Sierra Camps, with adjacent designated campgrounds

2 additional campgrounds

5 patrol cabins in use

5 historic cabins (primarily partial remains or unstable)

1 ski hut (3 other structures used in winter are in roaded areas managed as de facto wilderness during ski season)

21 hydroclimate or snow survey placements

1 radio transmitter

STAFF ASSIGNED TO WORK IN WILDERNESS ON A SUMMER DAY

About 85 trail crew

10 corral staff with up to 110–120 head of stock available

4–6 backcountry utility staff for the High Camps

8–12 campsite restoration staff

10–12 law enforcement/patrol staff

12 staff in wilderness centers/permit stations

2 wilderness education staff

3 wilderness bear technicians

Miscellaneous fire personnel/researchers/interpretation staff

2003 LEVELS COULD TOTAL 130 TO 150 STAFF, RESEARCHERS, AND VOLUNTEERS PER DAY

OTHER STATISTICS (2003)

Approximately 90 search-and-rescue incidents in wilderness, 60 of which were major SARs

Almost 10,000 acres of wilderness fire burned

9,528 bear canisters rented (217 maximum per day)

38 research projects conducted in wilderness (non NPS/USGS)

Approximately 300 campsites rehabilitated

Almost 15,000 hours of volunteer time contributed to the Wilderness Branch alone

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

It feels like this book came from every person in my life—the multitude of inputs, the influences, the teachings and warnings, the blatant and subtle emulations, the encouragements and lessons. It feels impossible to adequately appreciate all who made my life what it is. I am eternally grateful for how my life and career have evolved here in Yosemite.

Some clearly stand out, especially family. The gift of self-confidence and optimism, of love of nature, of opportunity and the right values to live a good life clearly came from my parents, Karl and Sue Munson. I wish they were still here to share this with me. I am so grateful to others in my family, including my husband Darell Boyers, who gave me love, backing, and support during all those years of wandering around the backcountry and then built me a studio for a quiet place to write about it. My brother Lex, who has been involved almost from the first chapters, has been instrumental in the quality and development of the book. Drawing from his own childhood in Yosemite, he crafted the design and look of the book, offering his own experience and expertise as an artist and graphic designer, and produced the wonderful artwork of this book. Thanks, too, to my cousin Suzi Beatie, who endlessly and enthusiastically championed my efforts and read page after page. I also want to acknowledge my daughters Sheri Frey and Stacey Birdsong Boyers and my grandsons/grandnieces/grandnephews Brody, Mason, Tyler, Laurel Anne, Evan, the other Tyler, and Sloan, members of future generations, which is why most of this is important.

My family of friends has also been indispensable. A huge and extra special thanks to Leslie Stone for her graphics genius, time, and patience in turning the sometimes sketchy color photos into beautiful black-and-white images, for the many hours she spent crafting the map, and for her endless friendship, support, and good humor. Other friends have endured numerous requests to read and critique the parade of changing versions, giving patient and appropriate input without complaint. Mary Beth Hennessy, Anne Macquarie, and Lorrie Gervin returned again and again to help. Sarah Rabkin (writing coach, back-country pal, and participant in the creek crossing adventure on the Lyell Fork), Eric Engles, and Anne Lamott all helped pull my random ideas into book form. Thanks to those who were participants in the Big Trip who double-checked my memories: the late Jan van Wagtendonk, Mark Fincher, Tim Ludington, and Johanna Wheeler. Thanks to Jim Snyder, who provided a priceless review, along with information about the park’s history, and checked specific parts of the document for accuracy. Thanks so much to Lucy and Julia Parker for reading and reviewing the “First People” chapter, and for supporting my ideas, and to Connie Popelish for input on current archeological policy. I also appreciate Caroline Hickey Floeck, who facilitated clearance from the Secret Service for the Midland Five chapter.

Thanks to Leor Pantilat, Mike Osborne, Raleigh Patterson, Anita Slicton, Michelle Whizen, Ron Lykins, Chris Falkenstein, Russ Tanaka, Lincoln Else, Mark and Joy Marschall, Karl Munson, Brent Finley, and Chuck Carter for help with photographs and sharing their images.

Others encouraged me along the way—my thanks to author Becca Cowen Johnson for insisting I write and to fellow writers Pamela Barton and Annie Barrett Cashner for their support.

Special thanks to Tom Habecker for all his help regarding Falcon Guides and to the Falcon staff, particularly Mason Gadd and Patricia Stevenson, who facilitated the passage of the manuscript into a real book.

The list of park staff who partnered with me in this life journey in Yosemite’s wilderness could fill many pages, but the list below includes some of the members of the backcountry/wilderness staff with whom I had the pleasure of working and who helped make our wilderness program what it was. My heartfelt gratitude goes to those who have been hired since my retirement for keeping the faith and the organization going; to all the staff from other districts and divisions, such as the front-country rangers, resource management, interpretation, and science and maintenance staffs; and to the management and administration teams that supported us.

With apologies for the many names I missed, the following are some of the backcountry/wilderness staff from about 1976 until 2007: Dan Abbe, Carolyn Anaya, Mike Archer, Bob Bandy, Fred Bertetta, Chrisi Boston, Lindsey Black, Kristen Blackwell, Leigh Ann Brewer, Carmin Bubier, Jesse Burkehart, Mark Butler, Nikyra Calcagno, Yolanda Calderon, Olaf Carmel, Chuck Carter, Jesse Chakrin, Naomi Chakrin, Nel Condon, Yvonne Cole, Reeve Colflesh, Gary Colliver, Michael Cobbold, John D’Amoto, Trace DeSandres, Mike Durr, Lincoln Else, Mark Fincher, Mike Fink, Brent Finley, Tory Finley, Helen Fitting, Lori Flemmer, Glenn Fredy, Linda Furtato, Marci Furtato, Claudine Gale, James Gervasoni, Randy Goodwin, Mike Grate, Dave Gray, Tom Habecker, Kathy Hance, Jim Harper, John Hartman, Mike Haubert, Mary Beth Hennessy, Andy Hershey, Donna Hoitsma, Lisa Jablonski, Lynette Jackson, Sigi Johanson, Judy Jossell, Lisa Kahn, Randy Karels, Keung Ko, Naomi Kisen, Gary Koy, Jimmy Lee, Ron Mackie, Anne Woessner Macquarie, Chas Macquarie, Fabiane Matheus, Joy Marschall, Mark Marschall, Kerry Maxwell, Keith McAuliffe, Joan McCandless, Jesse McGahey, Jim McKenzie, Maynard Medifind, Gene Milhousen, Barb Miranda, Tim Mestez, Michelle Meder, Anna Moreno, Holly Nash, Carla Neasel, Greg Nespor, Michael Olwyler, Martjn Orborg, Mike Osborne, Brian Parsons, Dean Paschall, Raleigh Paterson, Don Pimental, Donna Pritchett, David Quinlin, Cintia Ramaciotti, Kristen Ramsey, Jim Reynolds, Wendy Reynolds, Hayes Roberts, Rich Romero, Chris Runner, Keith Sauer, Eric Sergeinko, Dean Shenk, Lisa Sullivan, Jay Sammer, Laurie Stowe, April Stowell, Laurie Strommer, Kristen Myers Stroud, Russ Tanaka, Karen Taylor, Jason Torlano, Jim Tucker, Alison van Dusen, Mandy Vance, Ann Vick, Barbara Visnovskei, Lloyd Walker, Ken Watson, Marian Woessner.

As I said, the list of those who helped make this book what it is could go on and on. Most important, however, I am so grateful to have spent my life in this wondrous place.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Lex Munson, Yosemite native and Laurel’s brother, designed this book and created all the artwork found in it. Yosemite is his muse, and he produces these images from his heart and soul. The illustrations are all original, hand-drawn, black-and-white sketches created expressly for this book.

Of particular interest is the piece of art shown on the opposing page, “Laurel on Patrol.” As with the front cover, which shows Mount Lyell in the background, this image depicts Laurel on her favorite horse in the wilderness, with the summit of iconic Mount Lyell in the distance behind her.

This art piece is special and rare because it is rendered with natural pigments from elements such as native charcoal, iron deposits, mariposite, slate, and granitic sand that Lex personally collects in areas surrounding the park. The result is a unique rendering of the natural world—not only does it feature the highest point in elevation in Yosemite, the epitome of the Yosemite wilderness, but it is also made using materials that are part of the local Sierra Nevada landscape and geology.

The ancient art form of gathering natural elements for use as color pigments can be found throughout humanity’s history, from cave drawings dating back 30,000 years to contemporary baskets, pottery, and other local tribal art and decoration. Employing this 100 percent natural process includes this art piece as part of Yosemite’s natural history.

The material used in this image was collected in/on unrestricted areas near or adjacent to Yosemite National Park. Lex’s collection process meets all regulations and tribal concerns regarding the collecting of natural elements and/or antiquities.

FROM THE ARTIST

“It was an honor, a privilege, and a joy to work with my sister Laurel on this wondrous book. I hope that my art in a small way inspires and helps people to appreciate the wilderness to preserve it and helps to tell Laurel’s story of our family and others who contributed to the welfare of Yosemite and the natural world.

“I want to dedicate all the art in this book to my parents, Karl and Sue Munson, and my brother, Lars Munson, who were my biggest fans and supporters since I filled my first sketchbook at five years old. I miss them dearly and wish they were here to enjoy this wonderful book and its art and illustrations.”

—Lex Munson, March 2025

Lex lives on his ranch near the South Yuba River in the mountains outside of Nevada City, California.

LIMITED BIBLIOGRAPHY

BOOKS AND ARTICLES

Arno, Stephen F. Discovering Sierra Trees. Yosemite, CA: Yosemite Natural History Association and Sequoia Natural History Association, 1973. Print.

Barr, Nevada. High Country. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2004. Print.

Barrett, Bob. Yosemite: Where Mules Wear Diamonds. Los Banos, CA: Loose Change Publications, 1989. Print.

Beedy, Edward C., and Stephen L. Granholm. Discovering Sierra Birds. Yosemite, CA: Yosemite Natural History Association and Sequoia Natural History Association, 1985. Print.

Beedy, Edward C., and Edward R. Pandolfino. Birds of the Sierra Nevada. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2023. Print.

Binnewies, Robert O. Your Yosemite: Protecting a Public Treasure. Ashland, OR: White Cloud Press, 2017. Print.

Boyers, Laurel, Jan van Wagtendonk, and Mark Fincher. Twenty-Eight Years of Wilderness Campsite Monitoring in Yosemite National Park. USDA Forest Service Proceedings RMRS-P-15-VOL-5 (2000): 105–6.

Bush, Laura, and Jenna Bush Hager. Our Great Big Backyard. New York: HarperCollins Children’s Books, 2016. Print.

Farabee, Charles R. “Butch,” Jr. Big Walls, Swift Waters. Yosemite, CA: Yosemite Conservancy, 2017. Print.

Farabee, Charles R. “Butch,” Jr. National Park Ranger: An American Icon. Lanham, MD: Roberts Rinehart Publishers, 2003. Print.

Farquhar, Francis P. History of the Sierra Nevada. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972. Print.

Graber, D. M. Ecology and Management of Black Bear in Yosemite National Park. Final Report to the National Park Service, Rocky Mountain Region, Technical Report No. 5, Cooperative National Park Research Study Unit, 1982. 206 pp.

Graf, Mike. My Yosemite. Yosemite, CA: Yosemite Conservancy, 2012. Print.

Grater, Russell K. Discovering Sierra Mammals. Yosemite, CA: Yosemite Natural History Association and Sequoia Natural History Association, 1978. Print.

Green, Linda Wedel. Historic Resource Study, Yosemite National Park, CA. US Department of the Interior/National Park Service, 1987. Print.

Grinnell, Joseph, Joseph S. Dixon, and Jean M. Linsdale. Fur-Bearing Mammals of California. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1937. Print.

Hastings, B. C., B. K. Gilbert, and D. C. Turner. Black Bear Behavior and Human-Bear Relationships in Yosemite National Park. Final Report to the National Park Service, Rocky Mountain Region, Technical Report No. 2, Cooperative National Park Resource Studies Unit, 1981. 42 pp.

Huber, N. King. Geological Ramblings in Yosemite. Yosemite, CA: Yosemite Association and Heyday Books, 2007. Print.

Lanner, Robert M. Conifers of California. Los Olivos, CA: Cachuma Press, 1999. Print.

Lynch, Dan R., and Bob Lynch. Rocks and Minerals of California. Cambridge, MN: Adventure Publications, 2017.

Mazur, Rachel. Speaking of Bears. Guilford, CT: FalconGuides, 2015. Print.

Murie, Olaus J. Field Guide to Animal Tracks. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1975. Print.

Nevle, Richard J., and Steven Nightingale. The Paradise Notebooks. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2022. Print.

O’Neill, Elizabeth Stone. Meadow in the Sky. Fresno, CA: Panorama Books, 1986. Print.

O’Neill, Elizabeth Stone. Mountain Sage: The Life Story of Carl Sharsmith. Yosemite, CA: Yosemite Association, 1988. Print.

Ortiz, Bev. It Will Live Forever: Traditional Yosemite Indian Acorn Preparation. Berkeley: Heyday Books, 1991. Print.

Peattie, Donald Culross. A Natural History of Western Trees. New York: Bonanza Books, 1953. Print.

Reid, Robert Leonard, ed. A Treasury of the Sierra Nevada. Berkeley: Wilderness Press, 1983. Print.

Robbins, Chandler S., Bertel Bruun, and Herbert S. Zim. Birds of North America: A Guide to Field Identification. New York: Golden Press, Inc., 1966. Print.

Russell, Carl Parchar. 100 Years in Yosemite. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1947. Print.

Shaw, A. C. “The History of Raymond.” The Raymond Tattler, March 1933.

Snyder, James B., James B. Murphy Jr., and Robert W. Barrett. Wilderness Historic Resources Survey, 1988 and 1989. Yosemite, CA: Yosemite Research Library, 1989. Print.

Storer, Tracy I., Robert L. Usinger, and David Lukas. Sierra Nevada Natural History. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004. Print.

van Wagtendonk, Jan, and Paul Coho. “Trailhead Quotas.” Journal of Forestry 84, no. 11 (November 1986): 22–24.

Whitney, Stephen. A Sierra Club Naturalist’s Guide to the Sierra Nevada. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1979. Print.

Yosemite Historic Resources Study. Yosemite National Park, 1987, 235.

Yosemite Stock Use Plan, 1985 revision, Appendix B.

Yosemite Wilderness & Backcountry Stock Use Report. Wilderness Office, Yosemite National Park, 2001.

WEBSITES

“American Indians Tell Their Yosemite Story.” Tulalipnews.com. Retrieved May 22, 2022.

“Aquatic Restoration.” Yosemite National Park, last updated November 19, 2024. https://www.nps.gov/yose/learn/nature/aquaticrestoration.htm. Retrieved January 5, 2025.

Arguelles, Dennis. “Following the Spirit of Tie Sing.” National Parks Conservation Association. Blog post, August 24, 2018, https://www.npca.org/articles/1920-following-the-spirit-of-tie-sing-yosemite-national-park. Retrieved June 26, 2022.

“Climate Change: Glaciers.” National Park Service, https://www.nps.gov/yose/learn/nature/ccglaciers.htm.

Cohen, Michael P. “History: Origins and Early Outings.” Sierra Club, https://www.sierraclub.org/history-origins-and-early-outings. Retrieved March 21, 2022. Text from Michael P. Cohen, The History of the Sierra Club: 1892–1970 (Sierra Club Books, 1988).

“Index of Species Information.” Fire Effects Information System (FEIS), https://www.fs.usda.gov/database/feis/plants/tree/pinconm/all.html. Retrieved February 7, 2023.

Miller, Henry. “Henry Miller: Ah, the Great Outdoors, Doesn’t It Smell . . . Interesting?” Statesman Journal, https://www.statesmanjournal.com/story/life/2020/08/06/henry-miller-oregon-outdoors-smell-interesting-opinion/5578611002/. Retrieved February 22, 2022.

“Minimum Tool Definition.” Law Insider, https://www.lawinsider.com/dictionary/minimum-tool. Retrieved December 28, 2024.

“National Park Recreational Use Statistics, Yosemite National Park.” National Park Service, Irma.nps.gov/STATS—Park Reports. Retrieved April 5, 2021.

Wilderness Act of 1964. Last updated December 6, 2019. https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R41610/56. Retrieved October 1, 2022.

“Wilderness Character.” National Park Service, last updated October 10, 2023. https://www.nps.gov/subjects/wilderness/wilderness-character.htm. Retrieved December 28, 2024.

CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS

Cole, David, et al. Wilderness Science in a Time of Change Conference. Missoula, MT: Rocky Mountain Research Station, USDA. 1999. Four vols.

Cooper, Trygve G., ed. Proceedings of the Wilderness Management Symposium, June 1996: Waterberg Plateau Park, Namibia. Waterberg Plateau Park, Namibia, 1996. Print.