Finding The Roads

In later posts, I'll talk in more details about the individual roads and, still farther down the road, I'll get in to the other old roads in the Park (primarily the Old Tioga Road, Old Glacier Point Road and old Foresta Road but I'll also touch on some of the more obscure ones that I've come across).  For now, let's start with where the "big three" ended.  (I have to apologize, by the way, I'm very surprised to find that there are a few spots I wanted to illustrate here but I find I don't have pictures.  I'll rectify this at some point but if you happen to have photos of the things I mention in [red italics] in this article and you're willing to let me post them here, please feel free to send me copies.)

The Coulterville and Big Oak Flat Roads entered the Valley from the North Rim and the Wawona Road came in from the south.

From the National Park Services publication (you'll want to select this one and zoom in for detail) Yosemite: the Park and its Resources (1987) by Linda W. Greene

The Coulterville and Big Oak Flat roads are not at all conspicuous but they're easy to find if you know where to look.  First the Coulterville Road:

If you start to head out of the Valley through the Arch Rock entrance, check your mileage when you get to the point where the current Big Oak Flat Road hits the Valley floor.  In another 1.7 miles, you'll be at the base of Cascade Falls (usually referred to as "The Cascades").  Look closely and you'll see a small sign with white lettering at about waist-level which says "M1."  Go another 0.6 miles, and you'll see a similar sign marked "M2."  Believe it or not, this is the bottom of the old Coulterville Road.

It looks like nothing but a bunch of overgrown grass

[need picture of M2 road marker but here it is on Google Maps (that short sign on the right is the M2 marker) ]

Push through the grass a bit and you'll be on the bottom of the old road.

Bottom of old Coulterville Road.  Just beyond that small opening in the vegetation is CA-140 coming in from the Arch Rock entrance station.

However, turn around from that point and go a dozen yards or so and you're facing this:

Might not look like too bad (I know I tried to get over it the first time I saw it) but if you go back out to the main road, you'll realize there's a LOT of it.

[picture of 1982 rockslide from El Portal Road]

The trick is to go a bit further down the El Portal Road and look for a small path going up the hill immediately west of the rockfall.

[picture of the footpath bypassing the rock slide]

Head up this path and you'll soon get to a level section that looks like it could be the continuation of the road

but follow it and you'll find yourself at a dead end very quickly.  Cross over this section through a slightly more forested section of hill.  The path's a little (but only a little) less clear here but keep looking up until you see this:

That's a retaining wall for the old road.  Go past that tree on the left and you'll see that enough of the wall is down (not sure if this is natural decay of if somebody (or somebodies) did this to make access easier) but it's an easy scramble back up to the road from here:

We'll pick up the trail in a later post when we track this road out of the Park.


OK, how about finding the bottom of the old Big Oak Flat Road?  You're not far from there but because the Northside and Southside drives around the Valley Floor are mostly one-way, it's easier if we start at Yosemite Lodge, heading westward out of the Valley.

From the Lodge, go about 3.5 miles, watching for those little markers.  When you come out of Yosemite Lodge, you may catch marker V4.  Shortly after you pass El Capitan bridge (the side road merging in from the left, you'll see marker V9.  Here's where we start.

(By the way, for a few bucks ($3.50 as of this writing), you can pick up a copy of a little booklet called Yosemite Road Guide which will describe the many dozens of these markers posted along all the major roads in the Park)

Some trail guides that talk about this road will tell you to take that dirt road just beyond where my car is parked in the picture.  Some even tell you to drive up this road a ways and park closer to the wall.  This is not the bottom of the old road.  You can drive up and you'll get to a spot where the park service disposes of a lot of downed trees and people can often be seen here dumping the debris off or carting it away.  For historical purism and because you probably don't want to leave your car in that area, park here turn 90-degrees to the right of the V9 sign and you'll see where the actual road comes down to the current road (those two dark-gray rocks in the right of the picture lie along the left-hand side of the old road as you're facing the north wall of the Valley).

It's pretty straight-forward from here (except for a lot of rock-scrambling which I'll talk about when I review this route in detail).  However, that  area with a lot of the downed trees piled up may extend across the road and you'll probably have to traipse through something like this.

The old road is pretty obvious at this point (the blacktop is still fairly intact in this stretch) and very quickly the road bends to the left and starts heading up the Valley wall.

You're on your way.  Again, I'll talk about the rest of the hike in more detail in a later post.

Our third trailhead, the old Wawona Road, is much easier to find.  Head over towards the Bridalveil Fall parking lot.  This is probably where you want to park (unless it's very off-season, this lot can be a zoo so get there very early).  Go back out to the main road and start walking west (up the hill towards Tunnel View.  (Note to purists: you're walking on CA-41 South at this point but the road doesn't actually head south until it rounds Turtle Back Dome, a mile on the other side of the Tunnel).  In 0.3 miles, you'll see a dirt road head off to the left.

[need picture of start of Wawona Road but here it is on Google Maps (may need to pan the view to the left a little)]

That's the old road.  Note that some of the trail books that mention this route ignore this lower portion of the road.  They tell you to go up to the Tunnel View overflow lot and start up the Pohono Trail.  That trail does intersect the old Wawona Road 1.6 miles up from it's beginning but it's a very steep 0.7 miles that misses a particularly peaceful and easy section of the old Road.  It also bypasses the famous "Artist Point" view.

That's all for this entry.  I'll work on getting those missing pictures (I might have to update this after my next trip out to Yosemite) but I'll be back in a couple of weeks to start talking about these hikes in more detail.