In Yosemite, High Water Drowns Out Fishing Prospects

Yosemite Valley basks in sunshine, with Bridal Veil Falls at right. It has been a record hot spring in Yosemite, and the waterfalls are peaking. (By Angus Phillips For The Washington Post)

The valley stretches east toward towering Half Dome, a barren outcrop of stark, pale granite, with picturesque Bridal Veil Falls tumbling down off to the right and the rumbling Merced River snaking through the bottomland, white with foam. The valley's sides are nearly vertical, 3,000 feet high, dotted with lesser waterfalls and stands of soaring pines; the peaks are craggy and darkly forbidding.

The price of all this beauty is popularity, of course, and it pays to look up at the peaks, not down at the traffic. A world-class wilderness this close to major West Coast population centers is bound to be crowded and Yosemite is, even midweek.

Between the motorcycles, camper vans, rental cars and tour buses spewing exhaust, there's not much space to stretch out, at least in the valley. One morning the wait to get through the gates into the park was 30 minutes, and the entrance to a famous grove of giant sequoia trees was closed for lack of parking. And school's not even out yet.

At times like that, you drag out the maps and find the little trails that go where most folks won't. Willow Creek near Bass Lake was worth tackling, we were told by a pair of mountain bikers from Orange County, so we set out one morning.

You never know what you're going to find. That day, nature conspired to create the ladybug hatch of the century, with millions of the tiny orange critters emerging from the pine needles and moss under foot. I felt like a mass murderer just walking the trail. "Don't worry," said my son. "I just read somewhere that by weight, there's more ants than people in the world. There are plenty of bugs to go around."

Halfway up Willow Creek, bushwhacking through the scrub oak and pine, we rounded a bend to find a hugely fat, tattooed man stretched out on a rock, stark naked and sunning himself. The women recoiled in mock horror.

Oh well, that's California for you, and that's nature. It's not always perfect.