What’s Up in Tuolumne Meadows?

Next to Yosemite Valley, the subalpine Tuolumne Meadows is the most crowded and heavily used part of Yosemite National Park. Everyone entering the park from the east must drive from Lee Vining over Tioga Pass and down through the meadows. It is a popular camping area, is bisected by the John Muir Trail and is the center of rock-climbing activity in the Sierra Nevada during the summertime. The meadows is the site of one of the Yosemite Park and Curry Co. ‘s High Sierra camps and is the departure point for others. And the meadows are attracting increasing crowds of touring skiers during the winter.

During the next six weeks, Yosemite administrators and the National Park Service will be taking an intensive look at development in the Tuolumne Meadows area, in part to meet requirements of the 1980 Yosemite master plan, but also to comply with the 1984 California Wilderness Act that incorporated portions of the Tuolumne River into the national wild- and scenic-river system.

Among the options the park service should consider carefully are relocation of tourist facilities and the meadows campground away from both Tioga Road and the river, in part to relieve traffic congestion but also to restore some of the wilderness feeling to the river banks. Meadow restoration is a must, although it may mean that some areas will have to be put off-limits to hikers for a time. One concept that should not be considered is the widening of Route 120 to carry more traffic, as has been proposed at times in the past. Parking, however, has become a major problem that must be dealt with.

For many park visitors, including those from foreign lands, a trip to or through Tuolumne Meadows and over 9,941-foot Tioga Pass is as close as they will get to a high-mountain wilderness. That experience will be lost without reasonable restraint on the sort of development and congestion that blights the natural wonders of this fine mountain region.