Glacier Point

Yosemite National Park

Being near Glacier Point and having someone along who had never been to Yosemite, we had to take the little extra drive to the end of the road and have a look around. We started at a nearer lookout point before getting out to the main feature view point. It's not as jarring as looking up at 3000-5000 foot cliffs, but it's still an impressive way to look at the grand valley.

There's some of the Yosemite Valley with the cliff of Half Dome standing over it.

And over here, if you know where to look on a lower cliff facing the photographer, is Nevada Fall below a smaller dome.

It was smoky, as we expect of an August day. Except, hold on! When I was very young, they had many smog days. When I was older, they had signs about how they used to have bad smog days and what was done to clean it up. As a teenager, I had a few backpacking trips in these Sierra Nevada mountains and not a single one of them was smoky even though they were in August. But now I expect smoke. It's the new normal. And we don't seem to want to do the things we need to do about it so that later we can read signs asking how clear is it today? And then talk about what we did to make sure you've got that precious view. There's more to see than we could see.

A selection of hard to see domes on the far side of Yosemite Valley including an interesting fin.

Once moved to the main view point, we took a moment to look down, then look up how far we were looking down. It is 3000 feet to the Merced River.

The Merced River winds through the valley carved too wide for it by glaciers.

The huge blind arch directly across is Royal Arch. There's going to be a test on this one.

More winds as the Merced River winds through the lower valley.

Zoom in to catch Yosemite Falls, although in this morning shadow it is hard to see but the trail winding up the green to the left of it is easy to spot.

Just trying to take it all in.

Of course I eventually had to see what people were getting up to on Half Dome.

The people stand out like little hairs on the top of Half Dome.

Maximum zoom, pixel by pixel, of course there's someone out on the diving board.

Trying to capture those upper waterfalls on the Merced River. Nevada above and Vernal below.

Then we remembered we needed to get started on seeing all this from a rarer angle and headed back for the parking lot where a sooty grouse was happily foraging, ignoring the people.

The sooty grouse wants a berry.

Dinosaur.

*photo album*




©2025 Valerie Norton
Published 9 Nov 2025