At Yosemite National Park, a landscape defined by breathtaking views and stunning scenery, the Mist Trail stands out.
The seven-mile round trip, which begins near Happy Isles in the eastern edges of Yosemite Valley, takes hikers up the Merced River as its pristine waters roar out of the park’s high country, cascading through granite boulders over two spectacular waterfalls, the 319-foot-tall Vernal Fall and the 594-foot-tall Nevada Fall.
The trail, which is used by up to 4,000 people a day during summer weekends, is also slippery and steep, drawing dozens of rescues every year, and occasional deaths when people fall into the river. But now a $5 million project planned for the popular trail aims to make it safer and more enjoyable.
“We’re excited about this,” said Frank Dean, a former Yosemite ranger and president of the Yosemite Conservancy. “The Mist Trail is the most popular trail in Yosemite and one of the most popular trails in the whole national park system. And for a good reason. It’s beautiful. There are waterfalls along the way to Half Dome. We want to make it a better experience for everyone.”
Park officials are teaming up with the conservancy, a nonprofit group based in San Francisco, to make the improvements. The group, which raises money from private donors, has agreed to provide $500,000 to pay for design work, which should be complete early next year, Dean said, with construction in 2025 and 2026.
Among the main changes: moving the trailhead back to the area near the Happy Isles Nature Center. It was near there until 1997 when a huge flood around New Year’s Day wrecked a pedestrian bridge over the river. Since then, visitors have had to walk several hundred yards along the shoulder of the road to access the trail.
Plans call for rebuilding that bridge, and also installing interpretive signs in a forested area at the new trailhead.
Improving safety features, including better railings, a new observation deck, and perhaps new half steps on some of the steeper granite-stair sections, also are in the works, Dean said. Upgraded restrooms at Vernal Fall and removal of old crumbling asphalt on the lower part of the trail also are likely, he said.
The trail’s most famous and challenging features, including the overlook at the top of Vernal Fall and the granite stairs, will remain, he said.
Kevin Killian, chief ranger at Yosemite, said that he anticipates the work will be done in stages, and won’t require the trail to be closed.
This year, with the biggest Sierra Nevada snowpack since 1983, waterfalls all over Yosemite Valley are thundering and are expected to be spectacular all summer.
“Those waterfalls are huge right now,” Killian said. “The Merced River is as big as I’ve ever seen it. The people I’ve seen coming down the Mist Trail are absolutely soaked. But with huge smiles.”
The trail, which connects the valley to Little Yosemite Valley and Half Dome, was a route for native tribes before California became a state. It was a popular route for tourists starting in the 1870s and was later upgraded by crews from President Franklin Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration in the 1930s.
But like many of the landmark features in the park, it has shown signs of wear and tear.
The Yosemite Conservancy has worked on dozens of similar projects over the past 35 years. Since 1988, the nonprofit has donated $152 million to Yosemite.
The money has paid for major upgrades to facilities around Lower Yosemite Falls, Glacier Point, Tunnel View, Olmstead Point, Bridalveil Fall and other locations. One of the conservancy’s top projects, paying half the costs of a $40 million renovation of the trails and facilities at Mariposa Grove, the giant sequoia grove on Yosemite’s southern edges, opened in 2018.
This year the conservancy will donate $17 million for more than 50 projects, educational programs and research efforts.
There are about 200 similar “friends groups” set up to donate money to individual national parks around the nation.
“These groups are very important,” said Kurt Repanshek, editor of National Parks Traveler, an online publication. “They are more important than they used to be because Congress is not funding the national parks the way that is needed.”
Last year, the National Park Service estimated that it has a $22 billion maintenance backlog of projects, including roads, wastewater treatment plants, visitor centers, campgrounds and other facilities in need of repair and modernization.
“It used to be that the friends groups provided the margin of excellence,” Repanshek said. “But more and more they are funding muscle and bones.”
In 2019 Congress passed the Great American Outdoors Act that provided $9.5 billion over five years to the National Park Service, along with other funding to the U.S. Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management and other agencies to upgrade facilities.
Apart from the Mist Trail study, other projects funded by the conservancy this year include:
- $143,000 to help fund the park’s Junior Ranger program for kids
- $379,000 to reduce the threat of wildfire to giant sequoia groves
- $427,000 to restore wetlands at Ackerson Meadow by removing invasive plants
- $153,000 to protect nesting locations of endangered great gray owls
- $71,000 to track and study populations of bighorn sheep
Next month, the park will open a new $9 million welcome center in Yosemite Valley near the main village store. And in late summer, a $14 million project to provide new parking, restrooms, trails and observation platforms at Bridalveil Fall will be complete. Both were funded 50-50 by the Yosemite Conservancy and the park.
“The National Park Service does a great job,” Dean said. “But they don’t get all the congressional funding they would like. We are trying to provide the margin of excellence to help these projects go from good to great.”
