Photographer Leanne Bracey is entranced by Yosemite National Park, in California’s Sierra Nevada mountains, famed for its giant, ancient sequoia trees and jaw-dropping Tunnel View

Well Travelled

PHOTOGRAPHS: LEANNE BRACEY

Winter has arrived in Yosemite National Park. We’re near the top of Columbia Rock, around 7,000ft from the valley floor. We climb the steep incline with Scott Gediman at the helm, the park’s long-standing public affairs officer. He takes our minds off the tiring hike by reciting stories from when Barack Obama visited in 2016. The sky has been ‘painted’ with a light winter’s blue; the sun streams through the valley floor, a blanket of pine trees dusted with a sprinkling of fresh snow below. We can see Yosemite Falls, North Dome, Half Dome and El Capitan; just a fraction of the 704,624 acres of designated wilderness in Yosemite. This is nature at its best – nothing is more humbling than standing among such huge granite giants.

We touched down in Oakland, spending the first night in San Francisco. After the chaos of the city, we head to Mariposa County, home of Yosemite – the nature reserve that Theodore Roosevelt created the National Park Service to protect.

Despite my skewed romantic perception that Yosemite will take several days and horse-drawn carriages to reach, Mariposa is surprisingly quick to get to by car, as city highways lead to simple straight roads where we eventually see the snow-capped peaks glinting in the distance, surreal like a paper backdrop. I feel a flurry of excitement. The terrain of Merced County reminds me of Dartmoor; soft undulating hills by the side of the road, grazing animals and lush green grass. Mariposa itself is a small, sleepy, original gold-rush town, all Midwestern-style buildings exuding a certain kind of charm. Over four million people visit Yosemite every year, but Mariposa remains fairly quiet and charming.