-- a national Sierra Club activist outing in Yosemite National Park,
July 11 - 18, 1999
by Ron Good,
Chair of the Sierra Club's
Hetch Hetchy Restoration Task Force
John Muir would have been proud of us. As part of a national Sierra Club activist backpack trip, we followed in Muir's footsteps from Tuolumne Meadows, through the Grand Canyon of the Tuolumne River, then to Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite National Park.
Our purpose was to enjoy and explore the wonderful out-of-doors, and to learn about the Sierra Club's historical and modern-day efforts to preserve and restore Hetch Hetchy Valley, the place John Muir called "a wonderfully exact counterpart of Yosemite Valley . . . a grand landscape garden, one of Nature's rarest and most precious mountain temples."
We were led by long-time Sierra Club outings leaders Cal and Letty French. For the first evening's program, we were treated to a wonderful portrayal of John Muir by actor Lee Stetson in the Sierra Club's LeConte Memorial in Yosemite Valley. On the second evening, we camped at Tuolumne Meadows and enjoyed a campfire program on the human history of Hetch Hetchy presented by National Park Service Interpretive Ranger, Maggie Wolfe (who also led us on a geology walk to Hetch Hetchy's Wapama Falls upon the completion of our trip). After a filling breakfast of bagels, cream cheese, melon, cereal, and orange juice, and a division of the community loads we each would carry in addition to our own belongings, we hopped in our vehicles for one last taste of civilization and proceeded to the trailhead near Lembert Dome. After a brief picture-taking session and some words of wisdom from Cal, we hitched up our heavy backpacks and started down the trail into the
Grand Canyon of the Tuolumne.
John Muir's description of the Grand Canyon of the Tuolumne River
Describing his own similar trip in his book, The Yosemite, Muir said:
"Every one who is anything of a mountaineer should go on
through the entire length of the Grand Canyon of the Tuolumne,
coming out by Hetch Hetchy. There is not a dull step all the
way. With wide variations, it is a Yosemite Valley from end to
end.
"The Grand Canyon of the
Tuolumne . . . is from twelve hundred to about five thousand feet
deep, and is comparatively narrow, but there are several roomy,
park-like openings in it, and throughout its whole extent
Yosemite features are displayed on a grand scale -- domes, El
Capitan rocks, gables, Sentinels, Royal Arches, Glacier Points,
Cathedral Spires. . . . Its . . . cascades or sloping falls on
the main river . . . are the crowning glory of the canyon, and
these in volume, extent and variety surpass those of any other
canyon in the Sierra. . . . For miles the river is one wild,
exulting, on-rushing mass of snowy purple bloom, spreading over
glacial waves of granite without any definite channel, gliding in
magnificent silver plumes, dashing and foaming through huge
boulder-dams, leaping high into the air in wheel-like whirls,
displaying glorious enthusiasm, tossing from side to side,
doubling, glinting, singing in exuberance of mountain
energy."
Sierra Club's historical efforts to preserve Hetch Hetchy
However, despite the aesthetic charms of the Grand Canyon of the Tuolumne, its narrow portal, Hetch Hetch Valley, proved to be an attractive site for a water reservoir for the City of San Francisco. By 1851, San Francisco had burned down six times, due in large part to an inadequate and unreliable city water supply. And despite the creation of Yosemite National Park by Congressional action in 1890, the early 1900s witnessed the political leaders of San Francisco intent on securing Hetch Hetchy Valley as a reliable water source and they took their case to Washington, D.C. On April 18, 1906 a devastating earthquake rocked San Francisco, and tremendous fires resulted from the tremor. Civic leaders became even more determined to press their case for a reservoir in Hetch Hetchy, and they kept up their maneuverings for several more years in the United States Congress and through three consecutive Presidential administrations (Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft,
and Woodrow Wilson).
Sierra Club leaders John Muir and Will Colby were just as relentless in their defense of Hetch Hetchy Valley -- writing numerous articles for mass publication to the general public, forming coalitions with like-minded organizations, and arranging for testimony to be presented before various Congressional committees. Muir was moved to exhort: "Dam Hetch Hetchy! As well dam for water-tanks the people's cathedrals and churches, for no holier temple has ever been consecrated by the heart of man."
Sadly however, on December 19, 1913, President Woodrow Wilson signed the Raker Act, authorizing San Francisco to construct a dam and reservoir on the Tuolumne River in Hetch Hetchy Valley. The O'Shaughnessy Dam was completed in 1923 and, after the necessary pipelines and power houses were completed, San Francisco began using water from the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir for its water supply and electrical power generation, from which it has received substantial revenues.
Mention Hetch Hetchy Valley to Sierra Club members and their response is immediate: a heartfelt feeling of deep sadness for what has been lost, and a fervent hope that what has been lost can somehow be regained -- for Sierra Club members, for the people of the United States, for the people of the world, for the plants and animals, and for the glorious granite walls and booming waterfalls of Hetch Hetchy Valley.
Probably no environmental issue symbolizes the Sierra Club's historical role in protecting the Earth's natural wonders like its efforts to preserve and restore Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite National Park.
Former Interior Secretary Don Hodel's support for restoring Hetch Hetchy
In 1987, following Secretary of the Interior Donald Hodel's proposal to restore Hetch Hetchy Valley, the Sierra Club's Board of Directors reaffirmed its "historic and fundamental opposition to the damming of the Tuolumne River in Yosemite National Park," and called upon "all interests to take an open minded, long view of this issue, and to study and assess alternatives to meeting their needs and concerns through alternative sources of water, power and revenues."
Hetch Hetchy Valley, in the Grand Canyon of the Tuolumne River, should be restored to its natural condition in order to allow "one of nature's rarest and most precious mountain temples" to be available for public enjoyment, to be reintegrated into its natural ecological and biological systems, and to provide for scientific exploration.
In addition, Hetch Hetchy Valley should be restored in order to preserve the integrity and inviolate status of our National Parks. As a 1988 report prepared by the Bureau of Reclamation for the National Park Service states: "Such restoration would renew the national commitment to maintaining the integrity of the national park system and keep in perpetual conservation an irreplaceable and unique natural area."
Sierra Club's modern-day efforts to restore Hetch Hetchy
Our national Sierra Club activist outing was an integral part of the modern-day conservation campaign to restore Hetch Hetchy -- a wonderful wedding of purposes as described in the Sierra Club's motto: to enjoy and explore the Earth's wild places and, upon knowing those places from first-hand experience, working to preserve and restore them. Or, as Dave Brower, the first Executive Director of the Sierra Club, has said: "From his earliest Sierra days, John Muir had seen the importance of building a constituency to protect Yosemite. If people knew about a special place, they would want to protect it."
Going down through the Grand Canyon of the Tuolumne and, once in a while dipping ourselves into the cool, refreshing waters along the way, we hiked nearby the flush waterfalls and rushing cascades Muir described -- Tuolumne Fall, California Fall, LeConte Fall, and the singing, dancing, gyrating Waterwheel Fall. After a brief thunderstorm and magnificent lightning show, we camped near Return Creek, which we had to cross the following morning on a fallen log because the bridge was washed out. Then we had to scramble through thick underbrush once we safely reached the other side.
We continued our trip through magnificent Sugar Pine forests, climbed out of and around Muir Gorge, and camped that evening in Pate Valley. After dinner, the evening's campfire program was led by Ron Good, the trip's activist leader, who preached the "gospel" of John Muir's defense of Hetch Hetchy. We all hoped for a restful night in Pate Valley, because we knew we had a gruelling 3,200 foot climb up the mountain to Harden Lake the following day.
Our hike out of Pate Valley and up the mountain did prove to be the most difficult part of the trip. Fortunately, about half-way up, we all stopped to refresh ourselves at Morrison Creek and, soon thereafter, we had our first view of Hetch Hetchy Valley and the dormant demise of the fast-flowing Tuolumne River in the reservoir. With Hetch Hetchy Valley in the background, Ron shared some of his own thoughts and read Dave Brower's inspirational words advocating Hetch Hetchy's restoration:
"Join with people everywhere who" wish to "give Hetch Hetchy . . . back to its original owners -- all of us and all our children and theirs and all the natural things that should be living there forever.
"If Hetch Hetchy is restored and the world has the opportunity to watch the slow but beautifully inevitable recovery of a once sublime valley, you can smile again, John Muir, wherever you are.
"' . . . and do something to make the mountains glad.'"
W H A T Y O U C A N DO
Now, the Sierra Club's Hetch Hetchy Restoration Task Force is spearheading the renewed effort to restore Hetch Hetchy Valley. Your involvement is welcomed. The Hetch Hetchy Restoration Task Force invites you to:
1) go on an outing to Hetch Hetchy, take photographs, and write articles about your experiences for Sierra Club newsletters and for newspapers of general circulation. Watch for details about next year's outing;
2) encourage your Sierra Club group and chapter leaders, and the national Sierra Club Board of Directors, to take this issue seriously and to make it a priority;
3) circulate a PETITION encouraging the Secretary of the Interior to support Hetch Hetchy's restoration;
4) get a RESTORE HETCH HETCHY bumper sticker and display it proudly;
5) visit the Sierra Club's Restore Hetch Hetchy website, which includes early and modern-day photographs and paintings about Hetch Hetchy, at: http://www.sierraclub.org/chapters/ca/hetchhetchy;
6) volunteer your expertise (volunteer organizing and outreach, engineering, economics, geology, law);
7) make a tax-deductible contribution; and,
8) contact Ron Good, Chair of the Sierra Club's Hetch Hetchy Restoration Task Force, P.O. Box 289, Yosemite, CA 95389; (209) 379-9334; e-mail: rongood@inreach.com.
As you consider whether or not to get involved in the effort to restore Hetch Hetchy Valley, please remember the words of Will Colby, a friend of John Muir and early Sierra Club leader:
"Let me assure you that we have only begun to fight, and we are not going to rest until we have established the principle 'that our National parks shall be held forever inviolate,' and until we have demonstrated to the satisfaction of every one . . . that the American people stand for that principle. We are going to keep up the good fight without fear or favor, 'if it shall take until doomsday.'"
Thanks for your help!