Yosemite National Park: Your Complete Hiking Guide

Product Description

The Essential Guide for Hikers, Backpackers, and Equestrians
Yosemite National Park is a hiker’s paradise. Many people return time and again to experience its multifaceted landscapes. With 800-plus miles of maintained trails and several hundred more just beyond the park’s boundaries, the options for exploration are endless. It would take years to visit every corner of the park―yet each trail yields new wonders to admire. Fortunately, expert hiker Elizabeth Wenk helps you choose where to go and what to see in this meticulously updated guidebook.
Yosemite National Park describes almost every trail in Yosemite and most of the trails just outside the park. The routes are divided into 96 trips of varying length and difficulty, each with a standalone map that complements the author’s trip description. Take in the stunning views of the Pothole Dome hike in less than an hour. Plan a family backpacking trip along the remarkably flat Twenty Lakes Basin. Enjoy endless views of El Capitan on the Valley Loops Trail. Discover granite slabs, subalpine lakes, rugged peaks, and endless flowers on the Clark Range Circuit. This classic book leads you to sequoias, waterfalls, and canyons in Yosemite and the surrounding Emigrant, Hoover, and Ansel Adams wilderness areas.
In this book you’ll find

96 routes along popular and less-frequented trails
Detailed trip narratives that let you know what to expect
At-a-glance icons highlighting the best spots for views, camping, swimming, and more
Comprehensive information on lodging, permits, and other park activities
Descriptions of the region’s history, geology, flora, and fauna

If you’re planning a visit to Yosemite, you must have this book!

About the Author

Since childhood, Elizabeth “Lizzy” Wenk has hiked and climbed in the Sierra Nevada. She continues the tradition with her husband, Douglas Bock, and daughters, Eleanor and Sophia. As she obtained a PhD in Sierran alpine plant ecology from the University of California, Berkeley, her love of the mountain range morphed into a profession. In 2007, with the publication of her first Wilderness Press title, writing guidebooks became a way to share her love and knowledge of the Sierra Nevada with others. Lizzy continues to obsessively explore every bit of the Sierra, spending summers hiking on- and off-trail throughout the range, although she lives in Sydney, Australia, during the “off-season.” She is a board member of the John Muir Trail Wilderness Conservancy, helping guide the organization to preserve and restore lands that have been loved a little too roughly. Lizzy’s other Wilderness Press titles include John Muir Trail, Top Trails: Yosemite, Sierra North, Sierra South, One Best Hike: Mount Whitney, One Best Hike: Grand Canyon, 50 Best Short Hikes: Yosemite, and Wildflowers of the High Sierra and John Muir Trail, which is a perfect companion book for all naturalists.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

From TRIP 30: Traverse from Yosemite Creek to Tenaya Lake via Ten Lakes Basin
Switchbacks lead east out of the South Fork drainage, alternately climbing across open slabby slopes and through forest pockets until you cross onto continuous granite slabs for the final zigzags. Rolling over the lip out of the South Fork drainage, the north side of Tuolumne Peak fans out broadly, and the trail follows a series of broken benches across it. It is a beautiful landscape, with repeated granite spurs proffering exquisite views across Yosemite’s northern lands and beyond to Emigrant Wilderness. You drop repeatedly to drainages holding small tarns, rivulets lasting most of the summer, and dense clusters of hemlocks, only to again ascend a rocky rib. There are lots of hidden camping options along here if you collect water from the little creeks and then trend up and north to camp in sandy flats on a knob. Indeed, starting where the trail first levels out near a seasonal tarn, there are places to stop on every majo