Other Sites with Good Stuff

I know it's shocking, but Yosemite Explorer doesn't necessarily have the best information or all the information on a given topic. I'm just starting with a couple of links here, but I want to add more — there are a million great sites with Yosemite information. And I'll be honest, part of the reason these links are here is because for one reason or another, I recently corresponded with, talked to or visited with the people linked here.

My policy is simple: you have useful info about Yosemite, I'll give you a link. If you think I have useful info about Yosemite, I'd appreciate a link. But just because you link to me, I won't link to you and just because I link to you, I don't expect you'll link to me. If you know a link that should be here, go ahead and contact me. It might take months, but if I like it, I'll add it.

Hiking Sites

Most people coming here are looking for hiking information, and while it's always my intention to add more trails, it always takes longer than I expect. While you're waiting…

  • Russ has an excellent collection of pages about Yosemite hikes on his site. Russ' site is what I'd always hoped Yosemite Explorer would be and hope it will be!
  • A lot of people ask me about hiking with kids. Michael Lanza, Backpacker Magazine Northwest Editor, has a fun article on classic Yosemite day hikes with his daughter (hikes include the Yosemite Falls Trail and the Mist Trail). He also has an article on fastpacking the John Muir Trail, a fair bit of which is in Yosemite and, depending on how you do it, starts or ends in Yosemite Valley.
  • The NPS PSAR Blog is not a "hiking" site per se, but rather the NPS Search and Rescue folks recap and analysis of various accidents, many of which involve hikers. So it's more about how to stay safe while hiking (and climbing and skiing and driving and eating cheeseburgers that clog your arteries... okay, maybe not that)
  • If Half Dome is your thing, then you pretty much have to pay a visit to Rick Deutsch's site. He's the self-styled Mt Half Dome and maintains the Hike Half Dome site. Rick is, well, more than a little obsessed with Half Dome (I think he would accept that characterization with pride).

Photography

  • My friend Tuan has an amazing collection of Yosemite images at Terragalleria.com. There are a lot of great photographers, but I think Tuan is one of the absolute best and his site is great resource for dreaming about your next destination.
  • Edie is the Horsetail Fall guru and posts some stunning images at Little Red Tent.

General Yosemite Information

  • Frankly you have to visit Dan Anderson's Yosemite Online to get a sense of all that's there. For years, Dan Anderson has been scanning and digitizing all sorts of public-domain materials and putting them on his site — writings by Muir, Thomas Starr King, Yosemite Nature Notes and more. He also has maps, old and new, and a discussion forum.

Nature and Natural History Resources

  • Pete Devine has been studying and teaching the natural history of Yosemite for... well a long time and now he has Yosemite Nature Notes Blog which partly fills the gap left by the disappearance of the quarterly Nature Notes with the loss of that Yosemite Assocation publication.