National Parks

Yosemite National Park

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In 1859 John Muir built a Sugar Pine cabin some yards from the spot above and lived in the Valley for 2 years. Sugar Pines can live 500 years, so the decades John Muir spent saving this valley are just a fraction of their long lives. Muir saved Yosemite, lost neighboring Hetch Hetchy to a dam, and influenced Teddy Roosevelt who ended up protecting 150 million acres of forests nationally. Now the park is a World Heritage Site, with the Merced Wild & Scenic River running through Yosemite Valley, and it’s my favorite park for waterfalls. But in the near future, the crown jewel of John Muir’s legacy may still be lost forever.

Some species of trees still living here evolved in the Jurassic, long before the Chicxulub asteroid wiped out most dinosaurs and millions of years before humans arrived. Millenia ago, natives started fires for hunting and agriculture, and over a century ago, the timber industry clear cut forests throughout the Sierra Nevadas. But humans now present a threat bigger than any logging or dam. Now the threat is carbon pollution, which dwarfs all others, even logging. Fires burn hotter, more frequently and many times larger, because we have changed our planet’s climate dramatically—and it’s still getting worse. Species here, despite evolving 1000 times earlier than humans, are now threatened with extinction by our vehicle exhaust.

10 years ago, the 250,000+ acre Rim Fire burned over 10% of Yosemite, killing many Sugar Pines and Sequoias that had survived fires for centuries or millennia. At the time, it was the second largest fire in California history. Now it doesn’t even make the top ten. I visited the park with my family before that fire, and the park was undamaged. Now, the park is still beautiful, but it is still scarred badly, with many areas still closed.

Yosemite Falls should not be so glorious in the photo above taken in July. The snow should still be on the mountain tops, melting slowly over many months. Instead, every decade is warmer than the last and the rate of temperature rise in increasing. The Lyell Glacier that Muir saw in Yosemite has lost over 95% of its mass, no longer moves and will be gone in a few years. Man has messed up the climate, and many of the species, including the largest trees, can no longer live here safely. And it’s not the fault of Smoky Bear telling people to put out their campfires, it’s the fault of people who continue to drive gas powered vehicles. And yet the park is full of them, blithely surveying the damage they contributed to and continue to cause. If I were in charge of the park service, I would convert the shuttle buses to electric and ban all fossil fuel vehicles.

Lassen Volcanic National Park

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This boiling mud pot in the Sulphur Works area is so close to the road that the shoulder has collapsed. There’s a parking area a minute walk away and the views include many other steamy volcanic features, rough landscapes broken by eruptions and snow in July. The trail to the larger Bumpass Hell area was blocked by snow from the parking lot. I didn’t care, since I’ve been there before with my kids, before the fire. We stayed at Drakesbad Guest Ranch with their amazing natural hot spring pool where we swam and floated under the Milky Way, one of my fondest memories of any national park.

In 2021, the 1 million acre Dixie Fire severely burned 70% of this Northern California park, mostly the wilderness area. With Mount Lassen over 10,000 feet, many of the trees in the park grow extremely slowly, so the fire damage will be visible for up to a century, assuming we don’t have another fire before the forest can recover. Like much of the park, Drakesbad Ranch is still closed, although most buildings were saved. The devastation is terrible to see.

The park newsletter does not mention the Climate Crisis in a complete denial of reality, but it did congratulate itself for ‘30 years of fuel reduction that decreased burn severity’. We now live in the Pyrocene Epoch, the Age of Fire, where man has created conditions for multiple million acre fires each year, when the most beautiful places can be destroyed in a few hours. Once we imagined our parks would be there for future generations to enjoy. Now we wonder if they will still be there for our next vacation.

Crater Lake National Park

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The cloaked inhabitants can’t be seen on Wizard Island under Watchman’s Overlook above, nor can the massive moss beds in our nation’s deepest lake. But there’s plenty of evidence of volcanic activity, including lava flows, cinder cones and the caldera itself. The lake is restricted, but there are a few summer boat tours from Cleetwood Cove. The rim road on the far left side is often under construction, but there are many trails and overlooks elsewhere including from the Rim Village off to the right. Due to snow, the Scenic Rim Drive is usually closed from November through June, if not longer. The outside of the mountain is also worth exploring, such as a one mile hike through Godfrey’s Glen in the south. Signs of 2017 wildfires are seen near the north entrance, and the forests of Oregon are getting hotter and drier due to carbon pollution.

I’m finally catching up on my summer travel backlog, just California national parks for the remaining Mondays of the year. Thursday posts will also continue eclectically.

Olympic National Park

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Even though the Hoh Rain Forest is on the far side of the park from Seattle, it’s popular in July, so I watched an otter playing in the water for half an hour while waiting my turn to drive through the gate to look for parking. (A parking map at the gate would save everyone time). The Hall of Mosses Trail above is easily hiked from the visitor center, and it’s impressive and definitely worth the trip. Several of the trees appear to be 1000 years old, and the streams are clear from spring water, where I saw tiny salmon among the bright green watercress.

There are some signs that the increased heat from carbon pollution is damaging some of the mosses, and while the overall annual precipitation has remained the same, it’s more concentrated in heavy downpours and less in the misty fog-drip that these sensitive plants require. The glaciers are also disappearing rapidly and will disappear completely in a few decades or less, severely impacting all the downstream ecosystems. Still, it’s my favorite park for moss.

Of course, Olympic also has mountains, including Hurricane Ridge and Mount Olympus, which feeds the Hoh and Queets Rivers. There’s a Hot Springs resort at Sol Duc and boating at Lake Crescent. The Olympic Peninsula also has Native American Reservations which help manage the coastal wilderness, wildlife refuge and marine sanctuary. For me, their crown jewel is their large temperate rainforest, but the other areas are also stunning. Some artists are painting the glaciers before they melt, but wouldn’t it be better if we all did our part to reduce our carbon footprints?

Mount Rainier National Park

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Panorama Point above is about 1,500’ above the Paradise parking lot, halfway along the 5 mile ‘strenuous’ Skyline loop trail, just under halfway up the mountain. In July, there were waterfalls, snow on sections of the trail, wildflowers and marmots. Mts St Helens, Adams & Hood all visible in the distance. The northwest and southeast corners of the park both have old growth forests, along the Carbon River Rainforest—which is open for bicycling on the first few miles—and the Ohanapecosh River Grove of the Patriarchs Trails respectively. I understand why Muir extolled Rainier as the best of the volcanic peaks in this area.

“Of all the fire mountains which like beacons,
once blazed along the Pacific Coast,
Mount Rainier is the noblest.

John Muir

For me, it’s another return trip after several decades since my brother and sister and I took a hike and a photo up here somewhere. I was pleased to see the forest looking healthy, the clear streams near the top, the glacial gray rivers on the way down and the blue glacial lakes below, as I remember. Of course, when the rapidly receding glaciers disappear, the whole ecology will be severely disrupted. But for now, I’m happy to visit a place like this when the rest of the country is under a carbon fueled heat dome.

North Cascades National Park

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This photo looks down from the High Bridge at the end of the road 11 miles from Stehekin (rent an e-bike) on Lake Chelan. Here the bridge connects to the Pacific Crest Trail which cuts northeast across the southern wilderness on the last leg to Canada. The northern wilderness section of the multi-park complex is across the Skagit Wild & Scenic River and west of Ross Lake up to the Canadian border.

Both the north and south roadless wilderness areas have many high peaks with receding glaciers, so the hiking isn’t easy. And the wildlife includes black bears, cougars, gray wolves and grizzly bears. Careless campers closed one campsite by leaving food for bears to find, and another was closed due to grizzlies fighting over a nearby carcass. Being long of tooth and short of courage, I just hiked the short Agnes Gorge Trail on the edge of the wilderness to catch some more glimpses of rushing Stehekin River.

Wilderness, of course, has now ended. Now that our carbon pollution is changing the climate globally, there is nowhere on earth unaffected by humans. With that change comes responsibility. Since we no longer allow nature to keep itself in equilibrium, we must act to restore balance. We broke it, so now we own it. The park has increasingly fierce wildfires, which we exacerbated. So the extra damage is our fault, and we must fix it.

Voyageurs National Park

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I have dreamed of Voyageurs since childhood. Imagine, a park dedicated to canoeists, fur trappers, traders and explorers, with remote boat-in campsites along the Canadian border in Minnesota! The Kabetogama Peninsula is almost an island with only a short portage around some rapids connecting it to the mainland. To the north lies the large Rainy Lake. Kabetogama, Namakan, Sand Point & Crane Lakes lie to the south, with three visitor centers open in summer.

Time limited, I focused on Ash River and took a tour boat out to Kettle Falls, where the southern lakes flow north on their way to the Arctic Ocean. There’s an old hotel there with a wide porch & lawn for enjoying sandwiches & summer sun. There’s another busier portage here, along with a dam and one of the few places in the states where you look south to see Canada. The highlight of the tour for me was going through the islands and stopping briefly at an old resort (see photo).

The park is on the old trading route from Montreal to Great Slave Lake all along the southern edge of the Canadian Shield. Glaciers pushed most layers of soil and rocks south, revealing some of the oldest bedrock in the US at 2.8 billion years ago. The Ojibwe are the traditional gatekeepers of the lands northwest of the Great Lakes. After the Voyageurs, or French fur traders, came miners, lumberjacks, and eventually a few hearty resort owners tried living here. Huge blocks of ice were cut and dragged out of the lake and stored through summer. Logging was massive and filled the coves with timber to be loaded on rail.

Now the forests have begun regrowing, and some wildlife, like elk, have mostly moved north due to climate change. I saw maybe a dozen bald eagles total, including juveniles flying high. The few remaining moose are rarely seen, preferring the swampiest areas far from trails.

I hiked a scenic trail out to Kabetogama Lake Overlook from the Ash River Visitor Center, and there are a couple of other boat tours, one which goes to a rocky garden. I stayed in Chisholm to be near a CCS charger (Combo Adapter needed) and a delicious ‘supper club’ called Valentini’s (order the Walleye). The biggest improvement opportunity would be to have more electric vehicles. There are a lot of noisy gas-powered fishing boats, some being towed by large houseboats. Sound carries far across the lakes, so they definitely detract from the natural setting (and pollute with carbon). Houseboats, slow-moving, sitting in the sun for long periods with large flat roofs, would convert well to solar-electric.

Glacier National Park

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The horizontal line across the Garden Wall on the other side of the valley is the Going-to-the Sun Road, which I finally drove—3rd time’s the charm. This year the dramatically scenic road opened on 13 June with little ice & snow visible in July. Just over the wall in Many Glacier, old photos show the many large glaciers are now very small, rapidly melting glaciers. My son and I rode horseback up in 2018, and the area should be renamed Many Lakes. Combined with its neighbor across the border, Waterton Glacier International Peace Park is still a UNESCO World Heritage Site, despite the obvious melting problem.

Melting ice and glaciers are one of the tipping points that will flip our Climate Crisis into a catastrophe. Consider the Arctic ice cap. Every year recently, the multi-year ice has been shrinking at an accelerating rate. Eventually, the ice will disappear in summer. Then the same energy that currently raises ocean surface temperatures by 1° will raise it by a multiple of that amount. There are two reasons for that. First, the white ice will no longer reflect the sun. Second, the existing ice will no longer be there to act as a temperature break. When you boil water with ice, it takes something like three times the energy as water without ice, because most of the energy goes into melting the ice first. So, not only is it bad that glacial ice is melting due to flooding and dry rivers in the fall, but once the ice is gone, the surface temperature rise will accelerate much more rapidly. Please, reduce your carbon footprint.

Yellowstone National Park

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Clockwise from top: Morning Glory pool, Daisy, Grand and Old Faithful geysers.

Most of the world’s geysers are here, near the country’s largest high elevation lake and the headwaters of the longest free-flowing river in the lower 48, in a park bigger than some states. For wildlife alone, this is my favorite national park, plus the geysers are my favorite geologic feature in a park. There’s a lot to see and do, but I’m not going to write more about it. Come see for yourself.

Grand Teton National Park

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Oxbow Bend (above) is popular at sunrise as wildlife gathers in the coils of the Snake River and the light hits the Teton Range high on the right. Owls, a bald eagle, beaver and bugling elk all appeared out of the mist. Elsewhere in the park, pelicans, geese, ducks, osprey and many different small birds, then foxes and a large herd of bison wandered into view. Black bears foraging for hawthorn berries forced a trail detour, but I only saw scat.

Pronghorn migrate from here in Wyoming as far as New Mexico, and the headwaters from the nearby Continental Divide eventually reach the Pacific. This is an important park, ecologically, more than just a great photo stop. Still, the many lakes provide lots of flat hikes with steep mountain backgrounds, and lots of mountain hikes with water vistas. Or you could take the Jenny Lake boat across for even more views. Kayaking is a hassle with the permit & inspection process, and the views are wonderful on scenic drives and trails. Jackson Hole is crowded and expensive now, so look elsewhere for a place to stay.