Yosemite’s Tenaya Lake area being renovated
By Julie Cart, Los Angeles Times
Yosemite National Park’s favorite beach is getting a face lift.
Tenaya Lake, the sparkling alpine oasis along the park’s busy Tioga Road, is being upgraded this summer with new parking and picnicking facilities. The trail system is being rerouted to avoid harm to the shore’s delicate wetlands.
The renovations are intended to undo decades of neglect to basic services, repairing parking lots and restrooms, and also to ease damage done by the free-range trampling by families trekking to the lake to swim and paddle in the summer and ice skate in the winter.
A portion of the new East Beach trail will include a boardwalk that guides hikers over the wetlands rather than through them and for the first time will provide easy access to the beach for visitors in wheelchairs and families with strollers.
The $1.7-million project is underwritten by the Yosemite Conservancy and expected to be completed by the end of summer.
Conservancy President Mike Tollefson, a former Yosemite superintendent, said the renovations have been much needed, especially because they add to the handful of sites in the 1,200 square-mile park that are handicapped accessible.