Trailhead: Sunrise in Tuolumne meadows
Difficulty: Class 3, Rappels
Distance: ~ 10 miles
I did this canyon in 2016 with my good friend FDK. She wrote most of this wonderful trip report, and to her I give credit.
Main text by FDK, (parentheticals by CR)
There has been a lot of ink spilled, and even some metal defaced, to describe the perils of Tenaya Canyon.
But here’s the truth: To travel from Tioga Road to the Valley floor via the shortcut provided by Tenaya Canyon you need to be able to do three things confidently:
Read
Walk
Rappel
You probably already think you can do all of these, but seriously, each will be tested on this journey. Depending on conditions you may need to do one more thing: swim.
First, the reading. There have been a lot of great trip reports written on the best route down the canyon, and the route finding is basically a reading comprehension test. One of the best descriptions is on one of the worst websites I have ever seen.
There are many other descriptions on the internet and in the famous Secor guide to the high Sierra, and it was very helpful that CR had prepared thoroughly and read quite a few different accounts, and I had done some homework and stared hard at a topo map as a back up.
By the way, here’s the topo map that goes with the above linked description.
If you’re thinking of doing the route here are a few other trip reports to check out:
Here’s the relevant text out of Secor:
Now onto the walking. Once we left the trail near Sunrise trailhead, coincidentally right around sunrise, we didn’t see another human until we reached the valley floor trails. The solitude was awesome, but occasionally a little disconcerting. Had civilization collapsed? Was it actually possible to find this much lightly trodden territory in the middle of Yosemite? I loved it.
The route felt a bit like a video game with different challenges at different levels of the canyon. Early in the route there is a lot of walking on polished granite slabs-- I wore my climbing shoes for added stick, and CR was in approach shoes. In running shoes I think these slabs would feel pretty sketchy.
Whenever we started to get sketched out we would re-evaluate our route finding and re-read the description, and correct our path. If it feels dangerous (class 4 or 5) then you are probably doing it wrong!
After navigating the slabs down towards and then up and around the Pywiak Cascade we encountered the next level’s challenge-- extreme bushwacking (Imagine trying to walk straight through a garden hedge. It was marginally easier than that). I would prefer not to discuss this section-- it was quite difficult and unpleasant, but I am pretty sure it is the right route.
You are basically using a band of dense vegetation to avoid slabs that are too steep to easily traverse. After descending back down to the stream the boulder hopping resumed in earnest. It wouldn’t be a proper trip with me without a good fall, and I took a doozy while moving from one big rock to another when my leading foot slipped and I fell hard on my right knee. After a moment where I tried to imagine how I would get out with only one patella I determined that I was fine, and kept walking (Thank god FDK is unbreakable!). The canyon here was truly gorgeous, and we were just starting to get into a kind of rhythm when we were suddenly at the next important task.
That’s right, kids, it’s time to rappel. There are rumored to be six rappel stations on the route, four of which are useful for almost everyone, and two of which are more optional, but certainly came in handy. A big component of the rappelling challenge is finding the rappel rings, but the locations fall into two categories: they are either well described in the route (see: reading) or they are right where it seems like they ought to be (She is downplaying this. Felice is like a drug-sniffing dog, but instead of drugs she finds rap rings. I thought they were hard to find). The first rappel was a bit jittery, since it was the point of real commitment, but once we found the rings it was relatively straightforward. The second rap was through a waterfall and into a pool, and was actually really fun for me, but might have been less fun for CR, who thought she might have to really swim at the bottom (I hate swimming, which might limit my canyoning career).
Wading, rock-hopping, and rappelling moved us slowly down canyon as the sun started to reach us. I lost count of the rappels, but one of the later ones was the rap into Emerald Pool, and I thought we would have to swim here for sure. When you start to rappel you can’t always really see where you are going, and this rap down a steep, polished slab held quite a surprise. I was waiting up top and it got very quiet, and I didn’t hear C-dawg at the bottom, and I started to get concerned that she might have drowned in the pool. Could I sprint down the slabs and dive headlong into the pool to save her? Hell no. Luckily, it turned out that she had just fallen into a huge hole in the rock! (Oh, the unsung joys of rappelling. This is not as bad as the time I rapped into a tree full of fire ants.) Once she extracted our ropes and somehow climbed back out again she sorted the whole thing out and carefully explained to me how not to fall in the hole as I came down. There’s a lot of good reasons that she goes first, whether ascending or descending. Re-reading the trip reports several of them do mention the giant hole, which came as a complete shock to us. See: reading.
It was worth it because Emerald Pool was gorgeous. We didn’t really need to swim across it, just sort of wade in waist deep water, but if it wasn’t super dry in early September then swimming probably would have been required. And even though we didn’t have to swim, certain bodies of water cannot be passed up.
After Emerald Pool the canyon widens, and now the challenge was following faint climber's trails down into the valley while sweating your ass off and fending off clouds of bugs. Then, suddenly, we were on the trail near Mirror Lake, and we thoroughly confused some British tourists when we tried to ask directions and they wanted to know where we had been. It turns out that scrambling, boulder hopping, rappelling, and bushwacking are slow and difficult modes of travel, and to get to this point took ~9.5 hours.
There was one other interesting logistical challenge-- getting back to where we left CR’s car. Since I don’t live in CA anymore I don’t have a car, so we couldn’t set up the recommended car shuttle. But CR researched the bus schedule, and it turned out that there was a YARTS bus that we could catch that would take us back up to Tioga Road. This imposed a pretty tight schedule on our trip down the canyon, but we made it to the Yosemite Visitor’s Center with about 45 minutes to spare before our 5:45PM bus, so we were able to get chips, beer, and a coke before getting on the bus. If you didn’t get the bus you ought to be able to hitchhike back up, but I’m glad we didn’t have to. (Also, for some reason, we didn’t have to pay for the bus?? Because we had no cash? Even though we brought our really smelly wet rope into the bus with us.) And, through pure, unadulterated luck, we woke up just when the bus finally got back up to Sunrise Trailhead, and we scrambled off and headed for fish tacos.
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