No Date Yet For the Opening Of Tioga Pass

The Merced River in Yosemite Valley, El Capitan and Cathedral Rocks in the background. The picture was taken in Winter, but right now Yosemite Valley, on the warm, wet western side of the Sierra, is vibrant and green.

We've entered that time of year when I start making daily checks on the plowing status of Tioga Pass, hoping for news on when the "back door" to Yosemite National Park will open. This route to one of this country's most famous national parks is basically a straight shot from Reno down highway 395 to Lee Vining, then over the pass to Tuoloumne Meadows. The problem is that the pass itself is closed by snow for most of the year. It usually opens sometime in May or early June, but in heavy snow years, like this year, it might take much longer. One could, of course, drive over the mountains and enter Yosemite from its lush, low-elevation western side, but that route adds several hours to the trip.

I get so impatient sometimes, waiting to get back into the heart of my mountains. Though the hours of daylight are now very long, most of the Tahoe area ski resorts have been closed for weeks and winter is just a memory here in the Truckee Meadows, we are still only just approaching that glorious time of year when life returns in earnest to the mountains of the West, and this includes the High Sierra. Soon Yosemite's mountain meadows will be a riot of wildflowers, its streams and waterfalls will swell with snowmelt, and the high country will become a seductive, intoxicating place of blue skies and warm days thick with the smell of pine.

Summer in the High Sierra is heartbreakingly short, but what it lacks in duration it more than makes up for with a fierce explosion of life. It's hard to wait, but waiting reminds you that there is a value to learing to live with the Earth on it's own terms and by it's own cycles. Summer will come when it is time and not a moment sooner. I think that it is because of this wait that, when it does come at last, we appreciate it all the more for its vibrant, fragile beauty.