Couple retrace famed naturalist's 1868 route into Yosemite Valley

By CARL T. HALL
San Francisco Chronicle
Tuesday, June 05, 2007

Millions of people have marveled at the view of Bridalveil Fall since John Muir first spotted it from a mile away when he entered Yosemite Valley in the spring of 1868. Not nearly as many see the "dainty little fall" quite the way Muir did.

Now, a Santa Cruz, Calif., couple are hoping to restore some popularity to one of the classic early views of Yosemite, reopening a 19th-century door on what Muir came to regard as a holy vista -- the "sanctum sanctorum of the Sierra."

Donna and Peter Thomas, a husband-and-wife team of artists who spend most of their time producing hand-bound fine-press books, have rewalked a long-forgotten trail from San Francisco to Yosemite that Muir took, also mostly on foot, for his first Sierra visit in 1868. The couple spent two days last week on the last -- and certainly most spectacular -- segment of the trail into the valley, the culmination of a guidebook they're writing to help others follow Muir's footsteps.

Eventually, they'd like to see directional signs and even overnight accommodations along the 300-mile route they are calling "John Muir's trans-California ramble" -- as reminders of the continuing power of Muir's legacy and his infectious love of Northern California's outdoors.

"In 20 years, hundreds of people could be doing at least parts of this trip, maybe thousands," Peter Thomas, 53, said as he and his wife walked the last portion with a San Francisco Chronicle reporter and photographer.

Muir, the famed naturalist, was 30 years old and new to California when he came along a narrow trail clinging to the northern rim of Yosemite, across the valley from Bridalveil. He was riding horseback after he and a companion had crossed California from San Francisco.

The trail they took down into Yosemite -- which was later widened into a stage route, the original Big Oak Flat Road -- was one of the most popular routes into the valley until car traffic was redirected to lower elevations when tunnels were blasted through the granite hills.

Old Big Oak Flat Road, as it's known these days, is now partly a hiking trail, partly just a ruin unmarked on official Park Service tourist maps. Even agile hikers may have some trouble negotiating the massive rockslides and fallen tree limbs that obscure sections of the remnant roadbed.

Bridalveil Fall, 620 feet high, is one of the most photographed natural scenes in the world. But it's not captured very often from the place where Muir first saw it, from a spot 4,943 feet above sea level, with purple milkweed and lavender yerba santa blooming in springtime among sugar pine and cedars.

It was a famous destination for decades -- known, among other names, as "Oh My! Point" -- until the main travel routes were changed. An old metal guardrail still marks the spot. From there, it's understandable why Muir at first glance judged Bridalveil Fall to be no more than 70 feet high -- a mere wisp blowing sideways in the wind, dwarfed by the great bulk of the Cathedral Rocks and Leaning Tower. Muir discovered how tall it really is after he got a little closer.

"This is the most beautiful place in the world," said Donna Thomas, 50, endorsing Muir's ranking of Yosemite as "by far the grandest of all of the special temples of Nature."

Muir, of course, is best known for his poetic nature writing, his scientific studies of Sierra plants and geology, his role in the founding of the Sierra Club and his lost fight against the damming of Hetch Hetchy Valley. And in hiking circles, he's linked with the Sierra high country, namesake of the famed John Muir Trail from Yosemite to Mount Whitney. But he never actually walked that trail.

It was only when the Thomases set out last year to retrace roughly the path he did walk -- he left few notes -- that it began gathering attention in the lower elevations. Longtime Sierra hikers, they appeared to be the first to reprise Muir's entire "ramble" in the modern era.

Muir had just arrived from New York when he set out for Yosemite in early April 1868. He could have taken an all-night ship ride up the San Joaquin River to Stockton and then ridden by stagecoach to Mariposa. Instead, he and a British traveling companion he had met on the ship from New York, known to history only as "Chilwell," decided they would just as soon walk.

They arrived about May 22, having rented horses for the final mountain leg of the journey, plunging along part of the way through snowdrifts that obscured any sign of a trail.

The Thomases and their publisher, Wilderness Press in Berkeley, Calif., hope to produce the guidebook next spring.

(E-mail Carl Hall at chall@sfchronicle.com.)