Hike from Tuolumne Meadows to Lake Elizabeth

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It wasn’t a long hike to Elizabeth Lake and he shared a million different views with me as I walked around him. These beautiful granite mountains took in the morning sunlight and cast ever-changing reflections as hazy smoke crept in and out.

Where: Yosemite National Park
Distance: 5.5 miles (approx 4.6 miles from trailhead to lake and not around)
Difficulty: easy to moderate
Elevation range: 8,589 ′ – 9.518 ′
Elevation: 917 ′
Date: September 16, 2021
CALTOPO: Lake Elizabeth Hike
Canine hiking? No

I just returned from the campsite at Tuolumne Meadows, the last week of the season it was open. It was a good base camp to do a few hikes in the comfort of my campsite without going through the many road constructions each day. Tuolumne Meadows Campground is located along Tioga Road, approximately 8 miles east of the Tioga Pass Entrance Station to Yosemite National Park. Reservations are required and each reopening can be made here.

The start of the Elizabeth Lake trailhead begins near the horse campsites at Tuolumne Meadows Campground, almost opposite the bathrooms below these sites.

When the campsite is closed you can cross it to reach the trailhead, following the signs, but I have also included a map at the end of the blog.

I followed the signs for Elizabeth Lake as the trail went through a few crossroads and then it started to climb.

Some locals checked me out as I passed.

I soon reached Elizabeth Lake. Yosemite place names by Peter Browning says RB Marshall of the USGS named the lake in 1909 for Elizabeth Crow Simmons, a niece. (Farquhar: Marshall) The name appeared on the third edition of the Mt. Lyell 30 ′ map, 1910. Note that he also named Cora Lakes and Creek in honor of Mrs. Cora Cressey Crow, his mother-in-law. I did some research on this Crow’s Landing family a while back when I wrote about Cora Lakes. It was not easy to sort out this Crow family that Robert B. Marshall got married to, but I have tried in this blog and not so sure that the information shared by Peter Browning is all correct, but sometimes the best. way to prove something is to try to disprove it.

Could the lake be named after Elizabeth Crow, born 1909 in Hughson, Stanislaus County, California, Ralph Browder Crow and Elizabeth Ann “Betty” Osvald? If so, she married Earl Leslie Brown, had 2 children and died on March 27, 1940 in Modesto. Find a grave link him to his burial place. I located a link to a Modesto obituary, but I was unable to access the broken link and was unable to locate it in any other way. I was sad that she passed away so young. Or the lake could be named after his mother or someone else entirely different.

A bit of hazy smoke hung in the air to the south and I decided to walk around the lake to see what reflections I could see. Hope you can join me on my walk around the lake. There are several ways to view the images. You can simply scroll down the page, clicking on the one you want to see larger. Or you can click on the first image and like in a slideshow, click on the right arrow to go to the following images.

And then I saw something that looked like old metal and checked it out. It was an old, rusty, rectangular tin can from a long time ago. I wondered what was in it. Could it have been a can of sardines or something? It would have been a lovely place to camp at the time which is not allowed these days.

And I continued my walk around the lake.

I got back to my campsite in time for lunch. Thought about doing another hike in the evening, but ended up saving it for the next day. Reading a book and relaxing seemed more fun.

Canine hiking?

No, dogs are not allowed in the wilderness of Yosemite National Park.

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What is a doarama? This is a video playback of the GPS track superimposed on an interactive 3-dimensional map. If you “grab” the map, you can tilt or rotate it and look at it from different viewing angles. With the rabbit and turtle buttons, you can also speed it up, slow it down or pause it.

Elizabeth Doarama Lake

Card and profile:

CALTOPO offers free options for mapping and here’s a link to my hike this week, which you can check out or download: CALTOPO: Lake Elizabeth Hike