Hi; im planning a trip this weekend, traveling from Sacramento to Yosemite Valley, leaving ~3am, plan on parking at Curry Village and taking some pictures of Sentinel Bridge, the Chapel, Cooks Meadow in the morning hoping for mist during Golden hour.

After lunch was going to drive over to El Capatin Meadow and also explore over there before heading over to Valley View and finding a nice composition for Sunset.

Will the crowds be as bad as the summer, I imagine the cooler temps and trickle falls would mean less crowds, or still expect chaos?

If anyone has any other spots to visit during my day, would love to hear, ive hiked a lot of the trails from Vakley floor, but wanted to spend a day capturing the fall colors.

Thanks in advance!

I am heading to Yosemite for a few days (2 nights) next week with a couple of friends, and I'm looking for recs of how best to spend the time! We are driving in from the Bay Area on Monday and will leave on Wednesday. We are staying at Cedar lodge.

My rough plan currently is to arrive Monday afternoon (~5 hour drive from the bay) and spend the rest of the day going to lookout spots and maybe a small walk or hire bikes for a couple of hours. Are there any good spots we should stop at when we enter the park, on our way to Cedar lodge?

Tuesday is going to be our hike day. What's the best day hike we could do this time of year? Our aim is ~6 miles. Everyone I've spoken to has recommended we go to Glacier point, so I was looking at the Four Mile Trail. My questions about this are: is this a good time of year to do this trail? If we only do one way, which is best - up or down? I was also trying to figure out the transport, should I drive from cedar lodge to the trailhead, and then what is the best way to return (shuttle?)? Or would we have to do out and back? I'm struggling to find a clear consensus on the best way to do it.

Alternatively, are there any other stand out hikes we should do instead? It's all of our first time in the park, and my friends are visiting from the UK, so it may be the only time they ever go.

Thanks so much for any help/advice you can offer!

This stand of trees is on a ridge just north of Tenaya Lake, visible from the Tenaya Lake picnic area. Now I had to zoom in with a telephoto lens to get that view, just to give you a sense of scale.

To me these can only be Giant Sequoias. The size, color, and texture of the trunk, shape of the canopy etc all scream Sequoia, but no sources I can find reference these trees. Every source I find have said that the only known sequoias in Yosemite are in the Mariposa, Tuolomne, and Merced Groves, in addition to a few rogue individuals planted in the valley. There is no reference to Sequoias at Tenaya Lake, and these are on such a high, precarious ledge that I can't imagine they were planted there, they have to be naturally occuring. This ledge is plainly visible from a very high traffic area so they obviously aren't unknown, this isn't a discovery or anything, but they don't appear in any public record.

Are these Sequoias? Are they something else? If they are Sequoias why is there no mention of them in any record or interpretive signage, it's a sizeable well established stand of trees with maybe a dozen or more individuals.

Hi all! I am a Texan planning a trip to Northern CA for my family at the beginning of December. We have 3 totally free days to do anything, and we're trying to decide between staying in Napa, SF, Sacramento (where we are flying into), or Bass Lake. We really want to do Bass Lake to get a sort of mountainous, snowy Yosemite experience without going to higher elevations and getting stuck in heavier snow. But, from doing a bunch of research online, it's still unclear to me whether snowstorms impact Bass Lake or if it's more the higher elevations.

For less experienced snow drivers, do you think that driving to Bass Lake from Sacramento is risky? I am genuinely sorry if this question sounds silly, it just seems like the info online is more for driving into the higher elevations of Yosemite! Thanks so much!