Yosemite: Major damage to buildings discovered in high country from record snowfall

Crews have finally finished clearing the massive amounts of snow that buried the Tioga Road, the famous 46-mile route through Yosemite National Park’s scenic high country that is enjoyed by tourists every summer from all over the world.

But the key roadway still can’t be opened to the public, park officials said Monday, because of major damage that workers discovered to the facilities in the area.

Record amounts of ice and snow damaged at least 60% of the buildings at Tuolumne Meadows, caving in roofs at employee housing there and damaging the Tuolumne Meadows Lodge, gift shop, post office and other facilities.

Boulders and trees in danger of falling still need to be cleared along some portions of the road. And the roadway itself near Olmstead Point, a breathtaking overlook that is prone to avalanches in the winter, has crumbled.

“This was a huge snow year. It’s great that we had it. But these are the impacts,” said Yosemite spokesman Scott Gediman.

Gediman said crews finished clearing the snow last week. Park officials are hoping to have the road, which is Highway 120, opened to the public by the end of July. But they don’t have an exact date.

The most significant damage: The wastewater treatment system that serves the Tuolumne Meadows area also was damaged, with broken pipes. Officials are scrambling to line up everything from portable toilets to road construction contractors.

“In order to get the road open we have to have the sanitation and public safety requirements,” Gediman said.

Like much of the Sierra Nevada, Yosemite received massive amounts of snow this winter, from a series of powerful atmospheric river storms that ended the state’s three-year drought.

On April 1, the snowpack at Tuolumne Meadows was 15 feet deep — 241% of its historical average — the most of any winter since records began in 1930.

The road closure already has broken modern records for the longest it had remained blocked due to snow.

The prior record, back to 1933, for the latest opening was July 8, in 1933. The road wasn’t paved until 1937 and before World War II there weren’t modern plows and advanced snow-clearing equipment.

One of the marquee drives in America’s national park system, the two-lane Tioga Road bisects Yosemite’s alpine center, passing through subalpine meadows and forests of lodgepole pine and juniper. It runs 46 miles from Crane Flat to Tioga Pass, where it crests at 9,945 feet in the highest highway pass in California.

The road typically closes every winter in November. Then it usually reopens in mid-May. It is a key route not only for tourists, but for local residents who need to cross over the Sierra Nevada.

The route for centuries was a footpath for Miwok Indians, upgraded to a mining road in 1883 during a brief silver boom, and then a private toll road that charged $2 per horse and rider.

In an unusual act of philanthropy, it became public and part of the park in 1915, when Stephen Mather, the first director of the National Park Service, bought it for $15,000 with his own money and donations from the Sierra Club and the Modesto Chamber of Commerce. He sold it to Congress that year for $10, hoping to bring more tourists into the park.

The closure of the road this year has contributed to significant traffic jams in Yosemite Valley on recent weekends. Tourists coming to see the huge waterfalls, raging from the melting snowpack, have had fewer routes available to drive, increasing congestion in the valley.

That congestion was eased somewhat this past weekend, when the road to Glacier Point reopened after months of snow-clearing activity.

But nobody knows exactly when the Tioga Road will open or what facilities, if any, will be available for visitors in the high country.