South Yosemite
From Horizon Ridge, look east to see Mount Starr King and the Clark Range (see Trail 42).
South Yosemite, as covered in this book, includes the region bounded to the north by Glacier Point Road, to the west by Wawona Road (CA 41), to the south by Beasore Road in Sierra National Forest, and to the east by steep mountainous terrain, a broad swath of land. South Yosemite mirrors chapter 4’s Northwest Yosemite in its relative solitude, except for a few very popular destinations (covered in this book of course). Like Northwest Yosemite, this area has a smattering of lakes, some waterfalls, and a grove of giant sequoias. The trails between Glacier Point Road and the Wawona area are mostly quite forested—being less ostentatiously showy, they appeal more to hikers keen on a quiet forest walk. Several loops take in this scenery but are not included here. If this landscape appeals to you, consider a walk from Wawona up Chilnualna Fall to Royal Arch and Buena Vista Lake; it is described in the companion book, Yosemite National Park: A Complete Hiker’s Guide.
Instead, included in the book are a collection of lake destinations and the unmissable Mariposa Grove of Big Trees. Ostrander Lake is a favorite destination because a quite moderate walk leads to a stunning subalpine lake setting that is much less crowded than those in the Tuolumne Meadows area. The two walks starting just outside the park in a western part of Ansel Adams Wilderness traverse stunning scenery, but the long drive up lengthy forest service roads to the trailhead diminishes their popularity. They are the Lillian Lakes loop and a long loop over Isberg Pass into the southeastern reaches of Yosemite National Park. It is the Mariposa Grove of Big Trees, however, that is the prime attraction in this region, located just south of the South Fork Merced River canyon. This grove is unique in that it has a network of trails among the giant sequoias; no such trail system exists at the park’s two other groves, the Tuolumne and Merced. Until 2015 most visitors here rode trams on a road that wound through the grove. Now discontinued, the grove’s trails have just been restored and rebuilt, providing better-built trails for visiting the lower grove and enhancing everyone’s experience in the upper grove—and most important, reducing the impact on sequoias.
Ostrander Lake ski hut (see Trail 42)
