Memorial Day Special; Glacier Point Road, CA 41 North Terminus, and Road 222

[Max Rockatansky]

Fit as much of a description as I could into the thread title.  Given I had four days off this weekend I decided against staying home the entire holiday weekend.  Given that I'm not exact a huge fan of crowds I decided to use "home field advantage" and made my way up CA 41 and the Wawona Road to the entrance of Glacier Point Road in Yosemite by 6 AM.  For those not in the know Glacier Point Road goes to an overlook of the same name 3,200 something feet above Yosemite Valley.  I figured it was high time to get pictures of the 16 miles of Glacier Point Road as well, some of the results came out pretty well:

IMG_9444 by Max Rockatansky, on Flickr

Incidentally the photo above is the exact location of at least one recent car commercial that has been on TV.  Anyways, the full album is here:

https://flic.kr/s/aHsm1Gw4HM

The album is arranged so that the ascent up to Glacier Point is at the beginning and then back towards the Wawona Road towards the end.  Some stuff that I noticed that was interesting:

1.  The first ten miles of Glacier Point Road is pretty shallow as far as grades go.  The turn-off from the Wawona Road is at about 6,100 feet so there isn't much elevation to be gained.  The Badger Pass Road was already shut down for the season and the snow line was at about 7,000 feet. 
2.  For some reason the road is TERRIBLE shape between Mono Meadows and the Sentinel Dome Trailhead.  The road has been this way for several years and has been getting worse since 2012.  It wouldn't surprise me if the Park Service actually does a repaving of this section this year or the next.   The elevation briefly lulls below 7,000 feet which also results in a big temperature drop in the early morning.
3.  Glacier Point Road climbs to about 8,000 feet before dropping to 7,214 feet at Glacier Point.  All the really nice twisties and hairpins start a couple miles south near Washburn Point.  For whatever reason I've found that the people going TO Glacier Point always crowd the lanes which forces people leaving on the ledge face.

So one thing that I would like to see if anyone happens to have any information is on when Glacier Point Road was constructed.  I have pretty much everything I want for El Portal Road, Wawona Road, and Tioga Pass Road but for whatever reason Glacier Point Road eludes me for historic references.

Given that Yosemite Valley was largely just a mass of people I decided against going down to the Valley today.  That being the case I did have a closer look at the North Terminus of CA 41 and Fish Camp for the hell of it:

https://flic.kr/s/aHskXGqEWd

I tried to check out the Sugar Pine Railroad but it didn't appear to be open today or maybe I was just too early?  Huffing it back CA 41 really wasn't what I wanted to do so I took Bass Lake Road south to Wishon and hooked up on what I consider to be a pretty fun road with Road 222/Powerhouse Road which is roughly a 15 mile direct shot to Auberry.  Road 222 is the name of the aforementioned road on the Madera County side which starts out at about 3,300 feet before dropping down to 1,300 feet at Kerckhoff Lake/San Joaquin River.  The grades are as high as 9% on the Madera County side but really it is a pretty straight shot, it was kind of cool to see the 1983 and 1920 powerhouses in one photo.  On the Fresno County side the climb south to Auberry is about 1,000 feet with some equally high grades but way more twists and turns.  If you're ever looking for a cool way out of Yosemite back to Fresno I would give it a big recommendation over CA 41:

https://flic.kr/s/aHskW8Z4eV

And yes, traffic is as bad as probably advertised today.  It was a little surreal looking at so many cars and RVs from high above Yosemite Valley.  I'm looking at maybe getting over Tioga Pass and Lassen Peak maybe the week after the 4th of July...we'll see how the snow plowing goes.