... but barely into the park.
I took two trips to Yosemite this year - one in June, to prep for turning 50, and another in mid-July. Both trips were centered on Yosemite Association classes, which offer a great way to see out-of-the-way parts of the park. I wrote about the June trip here; the July class was focussed on Crane Flat - an area that I'd mostly known as the last gas station when you come in from the north, and as the jumping off point for Tioga Pass and Tuolumne Meadows.
One of the great things about taking YA classes is that they include free camping, from the night before the class starts through the night after it ends. You share a site with others in the class, but that's fine because they tend to be nice people with shared interests who aren't too noisy. The upside that you can enjoy a day in the park before and after, so a one-day class can become a three-day visit.
On the trail from Crane Flat campground - after the fires, come the lupines.
I drove up on Friday, arriving early afternoon. (Coulda got an earlier start and spent more time in the park, but it felt good to start the day at my leisure...) Got my tent set up, relaxed with a late lunch, then headed out on a walk to see more of the area since I'd never been to this campground. There was a trailhead right near the campsite, it seemed like a option.
What a difference ten feet makes - the fire stopped at the left side of the trail.
In June, we'd gone to Foresta, the starting point for last year's huge wildfire. I knew that Crane Flat was where they'd stopped it on the northwest side, but I didn't know until my walk just how close to the campground it had come. Walking down the trail (which was actually a fire road - though I don't know if that was true before last year), I had lush greenery on the right side of the trail, and blackened spars on the left. It was a bit surreal.
My own personal vantage point....
After several miles, the road ended - opening up to a panoramic view to the south and west. As with Foresta Falls, it was the kind of view that would probably be a major stop anywhere else, but for Yosemite... well, it's okay. The great thing about that is that it guaranteed that I had the trail to myself the whole time. I was out there for 3+ hours and never saw another human - on an easy trail that originated right in the middle of a campground. A nice mix of birds kept me company - junco and chickadees and butterbutts and orange-crowns, with several different woodpeckers, and one very startled mountain quail. I guess past experience had taught him that he could have the trail to himself.
Saturday's class was nice. We met near the YA offices just east of the intersection on the Tioga Pass road, and started with a walk to one of the three big meadows at Crane Flat. (For those of you who know the area, it's the one north of the gas station with the "dog house" in the middle.) We sat quietly at the edge of the meadow for a while, watching and listening. Several kinds of warblers were working the meadow and edges - butterbutt (yellow-rumped), orange-crowned, Wilson's, MacGillivray's and hermit. I think there might have been a black-throated grey, too. Song and fox sparrows popped up, and one Lincoln's gave us something to puzzle over for a bit. The highlight was the woodpeckers, especially the pileateds. We never got a good visual on one (they were way high in the trees), but at one point we heard five separate individuals calling and drumming around the meadow. Pretty cool. Got some good looks at other woodpeckers, though, including my Yosemite favorite - the whiteheaded woodpecker.
From the meadow, we walked up to the Crane Flat fire lookout, a place that I've driven past many times but never thought to visit. I guess it never occurred to me that you could visit. Anyway, it was an interesting spot, and had some great birds. During the walk up, we were graced with a flyover goshawk, and heard Townsend's Solitaires singing in the treetops around us. Coolest of all were the many green-tailed towhees. They're pretty easy to see on the eastern side of the Sierra, but I'd only seen them west of the crest once previously. For some reason, the habitat is exactly to their liking at the fire lookout and there were many of them.
Green-tailed Towhee belts it out...
On the walk back down, we heard more solitaires and one woman in our group noticed a bird perched low in a tree. We zoomed in on it and found a fledgling solitaire! Really a cute little thing. We moved back some distance then sat down for our lunch, hoping the adults might come around. They hadn't shown up after ten minutes, so we moved on - just in case we were the reason they weren't showing up.
Townsend's Solitaire fledgling (I'm not much of one for squeee, but this might qualify...)
That evening, two of my classmates (who were in the shared campsite) and I took a drive up Tioga Road to Siesta Lake. It's a lovely little spot, very serene. While scrambling around the rock formations across the road from the lake, we had another goshawk flyover. Nice addition to the sunset.
Sunday morning, I packed for the drive home, then headed up to the fire lookout again to savor the spot solo. The towhees were even more cooperative. I moved on from there to Carlon Falls, intending to have my lunch by the river, relax and maybe take some more photos there before heading back to the Bay Area. However, I'd just set down with my sandwich when a group of thirty (!) descended on the spot, which I took as a sign that it was time to move on...
You can see why I wanted to stop back to the fire lookout. And you can see why the towhees would find it worth a trip over the top...