Let’s do some history huh?

Between a million and 250,000 years ago, Yosemite Valley was filled to the brim with glacier. Think 3000 feet of ice. It’s retreat ground and polished the rock faces. 30,000 years ago a second glacier filled the valley about half way up. When it left, a lake filled the bottom. Rock and sediment washed into the valley over thousands of years until the lake became forests and meadows and a river. The effect was a flat valley floor that still exists. The meadows have been preserved because the first Native Peoples, the Awaneechee, annually burned them for growing grasses and crops.

 

Yosemite Valley in early evening light.  In this light the drought and disease pine damage is evident.

So as you look up the valley, there are four distinct geological pieces. The rock faces, the boulder fields at their bases, the forest, and the meadows. The boulder fields are intimidating. The distance from the road to the base of El Capitan is very short but tricky and strenuous. And lest anyone think that the park doesn’t relish it’s Mecca status amongst climbers, I could see food lockers some distance from where I stopped.

 

Here’s something I’ve been trying to get my head around; the boulders on top fell anywhere from yesterday, 🙂  to say the time of the Magna Carta. The boulders in the middle probably came down long before Jesus. And the one’s on the bottom, well, let’s say about 30,000 years ago.

 

Mirror Lake and a reflection of Half Dome in Mirror Lake when it wasn’t being cooperatively mirror like.