Looking along the Tioga Road, there was also Tenaya Lake, which was a beautiful natural lake backed by granite domes. Focused look at the backside of Half Dome as seen from Olmstead Point In the distance was an unusual view of Half Dome and its saddle, which was the side of the iconic rock formation where we would ascend to its summit if we did the epic Half Dome hike. lone boulders seemingly dropped onto the scene) along with Jeffrey Pine Trees settling on exposed granite as if they were subjects of some kind of art piece. Olmstead Point was a pretty popular spot for photographs as there were glacial erratics (i.e. The Tioga Road cuts across Yosemite’s high country, but is closed during the Winter due to snow and avalanche danger. In order to get the view you see in the photos above, we had to start our hike from Olmstead Point, which is at signpost T24 along the Tioga Road (Route 120). Hiking to the Pywiack Cascade Viewpoint Glacial erratics and Jeffrey Pines at Olmstead Point However, the following is how we managed to experience this cascade. To my knowledge, there is no official trail to get to the base of this waterfall for Tenaya Canyon is too rugged and said to require technical gear to navigate through the terrain. Thus, a visit to this waterfall would require timing to be in the late Spring. This claim is supported by the fact that Mirror Lake tends to dry up once the snowmelt period is over in the mid- to late Summer. Zoomed in look at the elusive Pywiack CascadeĮven though this waterfall is on Tenaya Creek (so it’s sourced by Tenaya Lake), I believe Tenaya Creek still only has seasonal flow. I’m sure there must be ways to gain better views than we were able to attain given a photo we saw in the Osborne book on Yosemite Waterfalls, but it seemed to be a bit too much trouble for something that didn’t seem worth an inordinate amount of effort to see. To illustrate how elusive Pywiack Cascade was, we either had to be very observant from the lookouts near Glacier Point, or we had to go an a bit of a little-known minimum of six-mile round-trip out-and-back back overlooking parts of Tenaya Canyon. This characteristic seems to be typical of waterfalls in Tenaya Canyon (another example is the elusiveness of Snow Creek Falls) and I suspect a big reason why would be the inaccessibility of Tenaya Canyon itself. Moreover, it’s another one of those Yosemite Waterfalls that manages to elude most of the park’s visitors since it’s rather hidden as well as difficult to view satisfactorily. It’s said to slide from a cumulative height of 600ft though it seemed to be difficult to get a full view that would have made us confirm or deny the plausibility of that claim. Pywiack Cascade (sometimes known as Slide Falls) is an interesting sliding waterfall at the head of the rugged Tenaya Canyon.
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