Old Wawona Stagecoach Road

There are special areas in Yosemite that continue to resonate in me because of what I experienced there. I return to them whenever I can. If you want solitude, there are many old, forgotten trails that are away from the summer crowds. This is the account of one hike I took on the Old Wawona Road.

Mid morning I’m at the Wawona Tunnel parking lot. A dozen cars are here and people are lined up along the stone wall taking pictures of the stunning view over the forests and up the seven-mile-long granite canyon of Yosemite Valley. In front of us are El Capitan, Bridalveil Fall, and Half Dome in the distance.

I go across the parking lot and start up the Pohono Trail. Twenty minutes later I reach the junction with the Old Wawona Stagecoach Road. Normally I would turn left and follow that trail along the southern rim of the valley to Stanford Point, Bridalveil Fall, Taft Point, Sentinel Dome, and on to Glacier Point.

Today I turn right and continue uphill, wanting to explore what used to be the road that came in from Wawona. The road was built in 1875 over an old horse trail but this section of road was closed in 1933 when the Wawona Tunnel opened. It took over two years to dig and blast that tunnel through the mountain to replace the steep, and somewhat dangerous, section of the old road that had tight switchbacks.

Many of the roads in the valley were built over the foot paths of the Ahwahnechees, which became horse trails, then dirt stagecoach roads, and eventually paved roads.

Half an hour later, a bend in the road brings me back for a moment to the Pohono Trail at true Inspiration Point. I do not stop to look back at the valley. I will do that when I return. This trail road is less congested with fallen trees and wash outs than its counterpart on the other side of the valley — the Old Big Oak Flat Stagecoach Road that was abandoned in 1943 because of continuous rockslides.

It’s a warm day and a cool breeze is coming up from behind me. In a corner of my eyes, I catch the movement of a large bird. It lands somewhere on the other side of a huge boulder. Quietly I inch forward, peering through the gap between the boulder and a tree trunk to find where it landed. On a branch I spot a red-tailed hawk, and it’s watching me. After deciding that I’m not of interest or danger, it looks away. But when I move around the boulder for a better look, it takes off.

In many places, I walk across a soft, crunching carpet of five inches of pine needles and cones that have accumulated over the decades. The even, undisturbed look of the needle cover says that few people ever hike here. In the middle of the road a coleus-type plant grows by itself; the only one of its kind that I can see. A pileated woodpecker, lean and about a foot long, flies by and lands a short distance away. It looks at me as if I have disturbed its solitude. I probably have.

After an hour and a half I reach the overlook near the end of the abandoned road with a magnificent view of the Big Meadow, Foresta with its two barns, and I feel a connection with history. I sit, eat my lunch, and imagine what it was to ride a horse for days up through the hot, dry foothills and canyons and find this meadow, this cool, green meadow, resting for a spell and loading up on fresh supplies at the barns, before heading on the last part of a journey and entering the valley on the riverside trail with the hope of seeing Mr. Muir.

I imagine the sounds of a stagecoach passing behind me — the rumble of its wooden wheels, the clanking of the carriage, the jostle of the harnesses on the horses, and the sounds of their hoofs on the ground.

This landscape probably hasn’t changed much in 140 years. Beyond the nostalgia of history, I feel a presence here, not of any large animal or famous people, but the presence of the mountain I’m sitting on, the presence of the forest, and the presence of a community of small birds that flit through the trees and  the squirrels that hop over the ground looking for something to eat. Nothing is awe-inspiring, but if I lived in a cabin here surrounded by all this, I would be so grateful because of the wholeness I feel.

Turtleback Dome is directly below me, on the bend of the current road as it comes out of the Wawona Tunnel. Elephant Rock is out of sight. A short ways beyond here the Old Wawona Road dissipates in the forest.

Eventually I walk back down. The forest is quiet, except for the loud call of some bird off in the distance. There haven't been any other hikers or many scenic moments. As I near Inspiration Point, where the early travelers got their first look at the valley, I keep my head down and try to clear my mind of all the images of what I know are ahead. I want to experience the view as the early tourists experienced it. I want to see what took away the breath of Lafayette Bunnell as he traveled with the Mariposa Battalion.

I concentrate on the images of the landscape where I’ve just been — dry dusty canyons, dark forests that go on and on. Then I look up, and the 3000-foot-tall monolith of El Capitan rises up in full glory. I am speechless that such a wondrous thing could exist in the wilderness.