Down In The Valley

There are places in America worth saving for future generations for their pure, stunning beauty alone. One of those most magical places started deep in the earth's crust, in fact some future components were laid down in ancient seas half a billion years ago. The layers were taken down, eventually passing near the grinding fiery boundary of two, long vanished tectonic plates. Over incomprehensible stretches of time and under unimaginable pressure, dollops of granite and other minerals were baked out of the mix and accumulated in growing, city-sized lumps soft as taffy. They would begin a journey so long that single human lifetimes would barely rate as a spark in comparison. Far above, on the surface of a changing planet, the dinosaurs would rise from the ashes of a devastating extinction event, reign uncontested for tens of millions of years, before they would perish. Through it all the patient plutons rose, bobbing elegantly up through denser rock like grand waxen blobs in a lava lamp, each solidifying in its own unique way.

As chance would have it, when the massive chunks were still creeping higher through the cooling rock around them, a large swath of underlying earth the size of a small state recoiled and bunched up, thrusting them ever closer to the light. Still pressed under miles of overlaying rock, each chunk began to assume it’s final rigid shape. Fierce erosion consumed the weighty burden above and the blocks lurched upward. As the pressure dramatically lessoned and the stone cooled for the last time, they were each fractured and shattered by huge branching cracks taller than mountains. By ten million-years ago, all that lay between them and the surface was a relatively thin layer of gravel and soil. Water and ice would take over, two of nature's most prolific sculptors, but even for nature, the pieces being forged here were built for giants.

Over geological time, a cluster of  a dozen or so colossal blocks burst out of the ground and were alternately cut with torrents of running water and carved by rivers of ice. One after another grinding glaciers wound through and around the monuments, enormous sheets of solid igneous rock were sliced away from their original block, pulverized into sand and pebbles, and transported out of the growing valley. When the ice last melted, the towering angular faces left behind had been buffed and polishing to a glossy granite sheen.

       
Left: uplift beginning 10mya increases the rate of erosion of a large region, rivers and creeks flow faster and begin to cut deeply around the hills creating a rugged, hilly valley. Center: Ice Ages come and go, each one filling the valley anew with relentless rivers of ice and rock. Right: The last glaciar begins to melt and the polished plutons are revealed. (Click image to enlarge. Source)

The first humans to venture into the region some 10,000 years ago were greeted by a breathtaking vista. They found a lush green carpet of giant redwoods, black oak, ponderosa pine populated by browsing megafauna, nestled between monumental spires and rippling walls reaching nearly three thousand feet above the valley floor. Along the both rims, smaller hanging valleys end abruptly fifty stores above the ground. Water pours out of the passes in between the rocks into space and falls for hundreds of feet, splashing noisily into pools shrouded in mist and highlighted by rainbows come to earth. One of the last inhabiting groups of Native Americans, the Miwok, called it Awoonie, because the valley walls resembled a "gaping bear’s mouth". But today we call it by another local name: Yosemite.

I defy anyone to adequately describe in mere words the scale and beauty of this place. Two massive formations that immediately draw the eye stand eternal guard over the Valley: Half Dome and El Capitan. Both these majestic sentries are exfoliation domes. Like their smaller brethren nearby, they started out as individual plutons millions of years in the making, formed under immense pressure miles beneath the earth. In the comparatively new low pressure conditions of the surface, they formations slowly inflate, shrugging off megaton sized veneers of solid rock along onion layer like fault lines which are then lazily eroded by wind and water. The process often leaves a pile of jumbled debris near the base called talus. What we see, when we stand transfixed by an illusory frozen, monumental glory, is but a snapshot of an active, evolving rocky exterior driven in part by a creaking, at times shrieking, interior as pockets of stony pressure are violently relieved.

El Capitan juts out of the steep valley rim like a massive fist of granite. Like the entire valley, El Cap beckons seductively to the explorer in us all, our inner hunter-gatherer, our ancestral trekker. Of course a number of people get hurt every year following that inner voice, but it's easy to see why! It's just a hypnotic, delightful place, as though nature had constructed a cornucopia of rugged winding trails littered on all sides with rocky jungle gyms built with derived, bipedal primates in mind. What climbers and hikers call "The Nose" of El Cap follows that sweeping leaning edge for three-thousand exhilarating feet above the valley floor.

Last week a two man climbing team reclaimed their speed climbing record for the Nose with a time of two hours, forty-three minutes, and thirty-three seconds:

NYT -- Florine and Yuji Hirayama on Wednesday morning set a speed record on the Nose, the most famous route on the most famous wall in the world’s rock-climbing Mecca. Their ascent shaved 2 minutes 12 seconds off the previous record set in October by the German brothers Thomas and Alexander Huber.

Which means they were ascending the three thousand feet of steep to dead vertical to slightly overhanging rock at an average rate of almost twenty feet a minute. You can see what it looks like staring straight down into the emerald abyss near the top of the Nose in the thumbnail right. The hand, beaten and grimy from thousands of feet of climbing is mine; except it took my two partners and I almost three full days to complete the same route. It's easy to get gripped when you're up there, but there are also moments when the view surpasses spectacular in more ways than I can articulate. And while I’ve described mostly the summer Yosemite, I’m told that Yosemite in Winter, dressed in soft white snow and gleaming icy lace, can bring tears to the eyes no matter where you look.

That's a big part of what make places like Yosemite so worth preserving. Anyone who has explored them from a hiking trail, through the lens of a camera or the eye of an artist, or from a hawk's perch on the side of the wall thousands of feet off the valley floor will agree; they are in their own way more spectacular than any manmade firework show and some are as impressive a display of our national heritage as any Revolutionary Battlefield. From all the members at Daily Kos, to all our allies here in the US and across to the world, we hope your summer weekend is going great no matter if you're enjoying our nation’s scenic parks or unique historical sites.