CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Ordered leg totals agree within rounding. Stop distances are approximate sums of rounded legs. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
A one-way ride of 126 km, Yosemite Valley to the finish - roughly 2 h 36 in the saddle. On the way it passes Olmsted Point, Tenaya Lake, Tuolumne Meadows and Tioga Pass. The highest point is about 3,050 m. Tioga Pass is open in summer only - check it is open before you set off. A steady touring day rather than a sprint.
For about 76 km this is Tioga Road, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it. Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast.
Slow enough to look. The surface follows the shoreline, so the corners arrive where the water decided, not where an engineer did. Water arrives beside the road and stays for 8 km. The line follows the shore because there is nowhere else for it to go.
The ride follows Tioga Road for 13 km.
Check the pass is open before you commit to it.
Yosemite Valley is a mile-wide trench cut into the granite of the Sierra Nevada, with walls that rise three thousand feet or more from the flat, meadow-covered floor, and it is as astonishing in person as in any photograph. El Capitan, a sheer, blank face, stands on the north side, Half Dome, a sliced dome of granite, towers at the head, and waterfalls drop from the rim, most dramatically Yosemite Falls, which falls nearly twenty-five hundred feet in three stages. The Merced River winds through the meadows below.
Read the complete Yosemite Valley write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Yosemite Valley is where the day begins. Next is Olmsted Point.
Olmsted Point is where you finally see the back of Half Dome, and it is a shock. From the valley floor, Half Dome is a sheer-faced icon; from here, several miles away, it is a smooth, rounded profile, set at the far end of the long granite trench of Tenaya Canyon. The overlook is on the Tioga Road, a wide, flat shelf of pale glacier-polished granite, and in front of you the rock rolls off in great bare slabs toward the canyon, with giant boulders sitting about on it like dropped marbles.
Read the complete Olmsted Point write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Olmsted Point comes up about 76 km into the recorded legs. Next is Tenaya Lake.
Tenaya Lake lies right beside the Tioga Road at about 2,500 metres, a long, bright, glacier-carved basin ringed by polished granite domes, and it is one of the few places in Yosemite where you can park, walk thirty steps and be sitting on a beach with a mountain view. The water is startlingly clear and cold, and on a still morning the domes and pines are reflected in it so perfectly that it is hard to tell which way up the picture goes. A fine sandy beach sits at the eastern end and a smaller one at the west, and in summer people swim, if briefly.
Read the complete Tenaya Lake write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 80 km into the recorded legs you reach Tenaya Lake. Next is Tuolumne Meadows.
Tuolumne Meadows is the largest subalpine meadow in the Sierra Nevada, a wide, grassy bowl at about 2,600 metres along the Tuolumne River, ringed by granite domes and peaks. In the early morning the grass is silver with frost even in summer, and mist hangs on the river, and the sun comes up over Lembert Dome and the long, bare ridge of Cathedral Peak. It is a favourite with climbers, walkers and photographers, and the car parks and campgrounds are busy from July to September.
Read the complete Tuolumne Meadows write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Tuolumne Meadows, about halfway. Next is Tioga Pass.
Tioga Pass is the highest highway pass in California, at 3,031 metres, and it is the eastern gate to Yosemite. A small park sign, a ranger kiosk and a stony meadow mark the top, with snowbanks lingering into July and the peaks of the Sierra crest rising to either side. It feels like the edge of something, and it is: on the east side the road drops about 3,000 feet in a dozen miles to the high desert of Mono Lake and the Great Basin, a change of climate and scenery as abrupt as any in North America.
Read the complete Tioga Pass write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Tioga Pass sits at 81 km, late in the day. Nothing on this route is higher. Next is Lee Vining, mostly downhill.
Lee Vining is a tiny town on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada, at the foot of Tioga Pass and the edge of Mono Lake, and it is the eastern gateway to Yosemite. At nearly seven thousand feet, with a few hundred residents, it has a main street along Highway 395 of cafes, motels, gas stations and a store, a mountain town with a desert view. The air is dry and sharp, and the light, bright and clear, is the kind that makes the mountains look cut out of paper.
Read the complete Lee Vining write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 126 km.
Yosemite Valley → Olmsted Point is 76 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Olmsted Point → Tenaya Lake is 4 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Tenaya Lake → Tuolumne Meadows is 13 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Tuolumne Meadows → Tioga Pass is 13 km. This is the part worth slowing down for - look through the bends and use the pull-offs.
Tioga Pass → Lee Vining is 20 km. Brakes and eyes forward; the views are behind the corners, not in them.