Yosemite National Park

Yosemite Valley is a seven-mile glacial trench cut into the Sierra Nevada, bounded on both sides by granite walls that rise between 900 and 1,100 metres from the valley floor. El Capitan on the north side and Half Dome at the eastern end are the landmarks that have come to define the American idea of wilderness — reproduced so often in photographs and paintings that seeing them in person carries a strange doubling effect, a recognition that the real thing is larger and quieter and more present than any image suggested. The valley floor holds meadows, the Merced River, and a concentration of waterfalls that is unmatched anywhere in North America during the spring snowmelt.

The valley is also, in summer, genuinely crowded — it receives around four million visitors a year and reservations for day entry are now required between May and September. The crowds concentrate on the valley floor and at the most accessible viewpoints, which means that even modest trail elevation quickly separates you from the majority of visitors. The Mist Trail to Vernal and Nevada Falls climbs above the valley in a series of granite steps cut directly into the rock beside the cascades. The Four Mile Trail to Glacier Point offers the elevated view that Ansel Adams photographed and that remains one of the most compelling panoramas in the Sierra Nevada. Half Dome's cables route is a full-day commitment requiring a permit and a head for heights, but the summit view across the high country is unlike anything at the valley level.

Beyond the valley, Yosemite is a large and varied park. Tuolumne Meadows, at 2,600 metres in the high country, offers subalpine hiking through open granite landscape that is entirely different in character from the enclosed drama of the valley. The Mariposa Grove of giant sequoias, in the park's southern corner, contains trees that were already old when the Roman Empire fell — the Grizzly Giant is estimated at 2,700 years and has a base circumference of nearly 30 metres. The park's Tioga Road, crossing the Sierra Nevada at nearly 3,000 metres, opens in late spring and offers some of the most spectacular high-altitude driving in California before closing again with the first heavy snow.