On June 23-25, 2006 I was in the Hetch-Hetchy region of Yosemite NP. John Muir called this valley originally a partner to Yosemite Valley, often called one of the most beautiful places around. Hetch-Hetchy, however, was flooded behind O’Shaughnessy Dam as of 1923, in order to generate electricity and give drinking water to San Francisco. “Muir was pretty pissed”. Anyway, the reservoir makes a pretty nice lake, although I would easily believe it was better before.
Anyway, I was up there with Joe, Gretchen, Dan, Kate, Elisa and Jen. On the latter two days of that trip, we did an overnight out and back trip to Rancheria Creek, 13 mi’ RT, and maybe 600 feet of gain, but mostly flat. We’d been intending to go on to Tiltill Valley, but the heat defeated us.
I picked up Gretchen and then Joe, and we were on the highway heading north just before 1 PM. The drive north was fairly uneventful, a bit long, all that jazz. We pulled off highway 120 around 7.30 or 8, and proceeded to just keep going down the road until we hit the bastard entrance to the park that is the hetch-hetchy ranger station (passing by the oddest “camp” belonging to the city of san francisco. Felt far too non-wildernessy). We got instantaneously eaten by mosquitoes upon stepping out of the car, but we also saw a deer. Like, right there.
right there!
Yeah, I know there are many parts of the country where deer are as common as anything, but it was a nice quick reminder that we’d actually managed to get out of the city.
We got our permit settled away, and drove even further down the road to the end of it and the backpacker’s campground. About 10 minutes later, the other car rolled in. We made camp and talked for a while and then went to bed. In the morning, we basically got up and packed, and set about trying to find the trailhead. Being stupid, and knowing it started at the dam, we tried to walk there in best straight line fashion, which of course didn’t get us there, so we had to backtrack and walk along the road.
that sucker was pretty big
and it’s spitting out a whole lot of water
We crossed the dam, went through the tunnel, read the sign about the waters being “dangerously high” at the wapama falls footbridge, and started on our merry way.
From the dam, we could see the two main falls of the trip, Tueelala and Wapama falls, and we were excited about getting to them. The first part was pretty uneventful, just going along the trail.
Tueelala Falls, from the trail
Tueelala starts as one main fall, but breaks into many little subsidiary parts, so just about 20 feet of it cross the trail, although they did submerge the trail in about 3-4 inches of water. But the real fun came when we got to Wapama Falls. As we got closer to this fall, we could start seeing all the spray that came up from it. To get to it, we had to go down this great stone staircase, and all the spray just kept becoming more and more impressive looking.
Dan might give some scale to the spray (Dan’s tall though)
And then as we actually got down to the beginning of the set of several footbridges which went over the falls, Dan warned us that we might be getting a little wet. Now, we had all suspected that we would likely be getting a bit wet when crossing through a waterfall (more or less), but what was a little surprising was the exact method by which we were getting wet. I seriously don’t think we had expected it to be waves.
water water everywhere…I guess we could have drunk some
Pow, crash! So much water, it was like going through a hurricane in the middle of the footbridges. It was really surprising to be that cold during that hot of a day. Having gone through, we then went through again, because it was so delightful. But since an even number of times over a bridge fails to land you on the other side, we had to cross one more time, and it was really that third time that soaked us through. So we took a moment to wring our socks out, then continued on our way. I was a bit unhappy after that third time, but the second time was totally worth it. Massively awesome. It’s like going through a giant storm then coming out into the light of day.
Kate demonstrates wetness
The trip after that point was mostly uneventful, and we kept going until we reached, I think it was, Hetch-Hetchy creek, where we had lunch, refilled up on water (Dan and Joe took a quick dip) and dried out our shoes a bit. Some people coming the other way told us that Rancheria Creek wasn’t that far off. The next bit was almost the worst – through a flattish area that had been mostly burned two years prior. Basically – no shade! Sucked. We started seeing closer glimpses of Rancheria, and saw a sign saying it was only a quarter mile away.
mmm, boots a’dryin’
But I was totally zonked, and at some first real shade, I stopped and broke for about 25 minutes. Then, we got on the way, and just as we were getting to the campsites, we ran into another set of rangers. One of them turned out to be the ranger we ran into last year at Tuolomne, up at the lakes, which we all found entertaining. They told us it wasn’t much cooler up at Tiltill, and that you had to go pretty far down into that valley up there to find useful water. So, we thought we would sit for a while at Rancheria and maybe try it later (since the hike up to Tiltill Valley had 1000′ of gain in something like 1.5 miles. Steep!) But then we just hung out at Rancheria, and stayed the night there. We explored the stream, and found firewood, and went around a bit to this footbridge above the falls. Joe and Kate and I spent quite some time watching a log that was stuck in eddies and just couldn’t make it downstream. I think we watched for almost like an hour, and it couldn’t escape. So we finally went back, and had dinner, and did that sleeping thing. (video of the log is here; I didn’t even want to try embedding it. Helpful comments being yelled at the log can be heard in the background)
rancheria was truly the chosen land
So close…and you can also see the fire damage, and try and feel my pain on the heat
In the morning, we went back to the footbridge, and the log was gone! We wished we could have seen it escape, but at least it made its way to freedom. Then we packed back on up and went on home, coming back the way we came. It was fairly uneventful. W00t.
All awake: 7.50
Bridge: 8.10
junction: 8.30
break by tueelala: 9.15-9.30
crossed tueelala: 9.40
3x wapama: 10.05
left wapama: 10.20
past kolana ridge: 11.25
lunch @ 2nd footbridge: 12.18 – 13.20
arrived: 2.30 (at rancheria)
left rancheria: 9.03
arrived wapama: 11.30-11.40
arrived tueelala: 11.55
done: 1?
