Tenaya Lake

Tenaya Lake is a high-country lake on Tioga Road between Yosemite Valley and Tuolumne Meadows, with granite domes and peaks all around it. It's the largest lake in Yosemite's frontcountry and one of the park's favorite summer stops for swimming, paddling and picnicking. Leave time to get out of the car: clear water and a big granite setting make this more than a quick roadside view. At 8,150 feet, the water can feel cold even on a warm day.

Several roadside parking areas serve the beaches, picnic tables and lake views. The east end has designated accessible parking, an accessible vault toilet and a paved accessible path to open views of the water; vault toilets are also available at some other parking areas. The informal walk around the lake is about 2.5 miles and mostly level, but it follows Tioga Road along the north shore and may involve stream crossings. It isn't a continuous paved waterfront path.

You can only drive here while Tioga Road is open, typically from late May or early June into October or November. The opening shifts with snow and conditions.

Swimming is a big part of the summer visit. Paddleboards, kayaks and canoes are allowed, but motorized boats aren't part of the lake experience. Everyone aboard needs a personal flotation device immediately available, and children under 13 have to wear one.

For the classic lake view, walk a few minutes south along the west shore and look across the water toward the granite promontories. Keep the sandy edge or low driftwood in the foreground; it gives the lake some scale and makes the far shore feel farther away.

The lake sits in a basin scraped out of granite by glaciers. Murphy Creek, Tenaya Creek and Cathedral Creek feed it, and snowmelt carries much of the watershed's flow in late spring and early summer. You're looking at a still alpine lake, but its water is tied closely to the high country around it.

Look for old stumps poking above the lake surface. They are the remains of trees that grew on the lake bed during a much drier period, when the bottom sat roughly 50 feet below today's waterline. Some of those trees are estimated to have grown for about 80 years before the lake rose again.

The lake was named for Chief Tenaya, a leader who lived in Yosemite Valley when the Mariposa Battalion invaded it. Ansel Adams photographed the lake in 1948. Later, he and Sierra Club president David Brower campaigned against a Tioga Road realignment near the shore, but the road was built. Adams returned to the argument in a 1958 essay called “Tenaya Tragedy!!!”