Friends had told me that the Wapama Falls Bridge on Hetch-Hetchy was taken out during the storm two weeks ago. It turns out to be true:




Other sights:

Nice pictures, Bee. Thanks for posting them here.

That must have been a huge surge to dump that much water over the falls and take out the bridge. With the bridge gone, will that pretty much close that trail during high water months?

Here's a Postholer.com map of the spot:  Wapama Falls
And the same map using Gmap4:  GMap4 Link
Embeded map here:

This is the second time that this has happened: It happened during the flood of 1996?, too. At that time, while it took 2 years to re-build the bridge, they constructed a temporary trail that went down/up around the damaged bridge (I am not sure how much water actually drains under this, the first of 2 or 3 small bridges -- the next one is where the falls actually drain)

The general consensus is that a huge boulder (loosened by the water) took out the bridge, rather than the water, itself.

Nice use of the topo! The map accurately depicts the Hetch-Hetchy switchbacks (unlike the trailhead map that just shows them as a brief, straight line up the ridge -- verrrry misleading.

Bee, these pictures are beautiful. Bummer about the bridge. Every time I visit Yosemite with my friends I tell them they need to see Hetch Hetchy, but they never seem interested enough to see it so we never make it over that way. I remember that bridge well. Thank you for sharing this unfortunate news.

A lot of people scoff at Hetch-Hetchy as "too easy" or "not high enough" to interest real mountaineers but the truth of the matter is that I have seen more wildlife in this area than on any other hikes I have done.