The Sierra Nevada & Yosemite
Granite carved by ice, the biggest trees on Earth, an alpine lake of impossible blue — and the valley where the national park idea was born.
This is California's stone heart, and it runs the whole western slope of the range. Yosemite Valley's mile-high walls anchor the middle; the southern quarter grows the largest living things on Earth in the sequoia groves of Sequoia and Kings Canyon; and the northern end holds Lake Tahoe — 1,645 feet of blue in a fault basin ringed by granite and ski country. In between: the domes and meadows of the Tuolumne high country, the aspen passes of Carson and Ebbetts, the Kern River's granite trench. Nowhere else in America packs this much celebrated landscape into one region — yet the crowds thin to nothing the moment you pick a trailhead one drainage over from the famous one.
The Sierra Nevada is a single tilted block of granite four hundred miles long, and this region holds its most theatrical stretch. The rock itself formed as molten batholith miles underground roughly a hundred million years ago; uplift raised it, rivers cut into it, and then the Pleistocene ice ages sent glaciers down the river canyons to do the finish work — quarrying Yosemite Valley and Hetch Hetchy into sheer-walled troughs, polishing the Tuolumne domes to a shine you can see from a mile away, and scooping the hundred-lake basins of the Desolation and Emigrant high country. John Muir called the range the Range of Light, and the name is earned: this is pale granite under high-altitude sun, from foothill oak woodland up through giant sequoia groves to the 13,114-foot summit of Mount Lyell, Yosemite's roof. At the region's northern edge the Sierra does something different — a fault basin filled with the second-deepest lake in the United States, 1,645 feet of blue that the Washoe simply called dá'aw: the lake.
6 more chapters, plus when to go and the gateway towns — included with the Atlas subscription. Every destination in this region is listed below, free.
See plans →There are few hiking experiences in North America that match the moment you step off the Sub-Dome and onto the steel cable syst…
The Mist Trail to Nevada Fall packs more spectacular scenery per mile than almost any trail in California. From Happy Isles you…
The Congress Trail exists because a single statistic needs to be experienced to be understood: General Sherman Tree contains 52…
Mount Whitney is the highest point in the contiguous United States at 14,505 feet, and 'technically easy' is the accurate descr…
The Rubicon Trail traces the southwest shore of Lake Tahoe between Emerald Bay and D.L. Bliss State Parks, hugging the waterlin…
If the John Muir Trail is the graduate thesis of California backpacking, the Rae Lakes Loop is the ideal first big Sierra trip …
Despite the forbidding name, Desolation Wilderness is one of the most beloved — and most heavily used — wilderness areas in the…
Many who have hiked it will tell you the High Sierra Trail is the single greatest backpacking route in California — a 72-mile w…
The High Sierra Camps Loop is the grand tour of Yosemite's high country — a roughly 49-mile circuit through the Cathedral Range…
To camp in Yosemite Valley is to sleep on the floor of the most famous glacial valley on Earth, beneath the sheer granite of El…
Tuolumne Meadows is Yosemite's sublime high country — a vast subalpine meadow at 8,600 feet ringed by granite domes and peaks, …
D.L. Bliss State Park occupies what may be the most beautiful stretch of Lake Tahoe's shoreline — the west shore's granite cove…
Emerald Bay is Lake Tahoe's crown jewel — a glacier-carved cove of impossibly blue water cradling tiny Fannette Island, with th…
Lodgepole is the heart of Sequoia National Park — a large, well-equipped campground on the rushing Kaweah River, minutes from t…
Tioga Pass, topping out at 9,943 feet on Highway 120, is the highest highway pass in California and the eastern gateway to Yose…
The Lake Tahoe loop is one of the most iconic rides in the American West — a roughly 72-mile circumnavigation of the largest al…
The Death Ride — officially the Tour of the California Alps — is the most legendary one-day mountain cycling challenge in the s…
To run the Western States Trail through the American River canyons is to run the most storied ground in the sport. The full rac…
The Rubicon Trail along Lake Tahoe's west shore is the most beautiful lakeside run in California — a flowing singletrack that h…
Truckee, the lively historic railroad-and-mountain town just north of Lake Tahoe, anchors one of California's most accessible h…
One of the most scenic mountain bike routes in North America is right here. The Flume Trail follows a historic water flume rout…
Northstar is the polished, family-friendly counterpart to Mammoth in the Tahoe MTB world — over 100 miles of trails with a worl…
Mr. Toad's Wild Ride is South Lake Tahoe's legend — a rocky, technical descent on the Saxon Creek Trail that has been thrilling…
This is one of the most famous descents in North America and the anchor of the entire Lost Sierra. From Packer Saddle at 7,000 …
This is the marquee bike-legal stretch of the Tahoe Rim Trail and one of the best big-day rides in the basin - roughly 20 miles…
South Lake Tahoe's beating heart of town singletrack - a TAMBA-built flow-and-jump playground where families on trail bikes and…
Yosemite National Park pairs some of the most famous scenery on Earth with rewarding, accessible Sierra wildlife watching. In t…
There is no more consequential piece of rock in the history of climbing than El Capitan. The 3,000-foot granite monolith that r…
Tuolumne Meadows is Yosemite's other personality. Where the Valley is dramatic and vertical — walls rising 3,000 feet above the…
Emerald Bay is the most photographed paddle in California, and for once the hype holds — a glacial cove of impossibly clear, de…
Sand Harbor, on Tahoe's northeastern Nevada shore, is many paddlers' favorite spot on the entire lake — a spectacular mix of bl…
The Rubicon Trail is the reason Jeep named their most capable trim the Wrangler Rubicon. Among four-wheel-drive enthusiasts wor…
Yosemite National Park may be best known by day, but its night skies are spectacular too, especially away from the busy valley …
The 1960 Winter Olympics were held in what was then Squaw Valley — a mountain that had barely been developed, chosen partly for…
Heavenly straddles the California-Nevada border and holds the largest vertical drop of any Tahoe resort — 3,500 feet — along wi…
Palisades Tahoe's sidecountry gates are one of the most popular entry points into backcountry skiing in California — because th…