It was a chilly morning in the Tuolumne Meadows in Yosemite National Park. After a hot summer, a cold snap arrived during the first week of September in the Sierra Nevada, driving down temperatures and signaling a shift to fall. The sun was still low in the Tuolumne Meadows Campground, casting angled beams through the towering lodgepole pines. I stayed warm in a beanie, gloves and an oversized puffy jacket. The water in my Jetboil began to steam. 

From my campsite, I had a filtered view through the trees of Lembert Dome. Rising around 800 feet above the meadow, the glacier-polished granite on its arced, east-facing backside had already caught the day’s first light. The birds had long been awake, flitting through the lodgepole pines, curious about the campers unzipping their tents. I made coffee and picked up my camp chair and then walked a short way to a path that led me to a sloping bench of granite above a swimming hole on the Tuolumne River. I set up my chair and drank my coffee, enjoying the view of the river, the forest and Lembert Dome entirely to myself as the sun rose higher and the morning grew warmer.

Getting a campsite reservation in a national park like Yosemite typically requires advanced planning. You need to be logged onto Recreation.gov, precisely at 7 a.m. and six months to the day before your visit, when the camp sites are released. There is a limited supply of coveted campsites and a high demand for outdoor recreation. But I booked this campsite — a riverfront location in the recently renovated Tuolumne Meadows Campground — just two days before I arrived. A park ranger at the campground entrance told me that campers tend to cancel their plans when the weather turns cold. “For sure, that spot gets filled, every time,” he said.

Article continues below this ad

Water gently rolls downstream in the Tuolumne Meadows, an area in Yosemite National Park, Calif. 

The Tuolumne River flows across boulders in Yosemite National Park, Calif.

The afternoon before that cold morning, I drove up Highway 120 from Lee Vining in the Eastern Sierra to Tioga Pass, elevation 9,945 feet, where the entrance to Yosemite is located. I waited all of five minutes for one car to pass through ahead of me. A ranger with shaggy hair peaking out below the brim of the flat-brimmed hat, an iconic emblem of the National Park Service,........

© SFGate