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CLICK IMAGE TO VIEW THE FULL PRINTJohn Conway was Yosemite’s veteran road and trail builder. He surveyed and constructed the Yosemite classics: the Four Mile trail in 1872, and the Yosemite Falls trail in 1885.
In 1871, upon the arrival of the first carriages, packed into the Valley by mules, Conway was hired to build a road down the north side of the Valley to a junction with the horse trail near El Capitan. Starting from the clearing in the forest below El Cap that his road passed through, the foot trail to the base of the Nose bears all the earmarks of a John Conway creation – it fits with Nature, it is elegant, and it delivers you where you want to go.
Conway’s trail to the Nose of El Capitan was in place and ready to go for Yosemite’s Golden Age climbers 85 years before Warren Harding and the rest of us arrived on the scene and fell in love with it.
Thank you, John.
The following note appeared in an 1869 issue of the Mariposa Gazette:
Conway – a “Walkist”
“John Conway, of Sherlock Creek, last Saturday walked from the Sentinel Hotel, Yosemite Valley, to Mariposa in fourteen hours, including all stoppages. He left the hotel about seven o’clock in the morning and made the trip to town by nine o’clock the same evening. The walk did not seem to fatigue him, much, for he soon left town for his home on Sherlock Creek, six miles farther. Mr. Conway says it is no trip at all for him on foot.” (NPS Four Mile Trailhead marker)
CONWAY’S GIFT to future Yosemite climbers, the 1871 foot trail from the clearing in the forest to the foot of the Nose of El Capitan, Yosemite National Park, California, October 2007.
Photo: Tom Frost
CLICK IMAGE TO VIEW THE FULL PRINTJohn Conway was Yosemite’s veteran road and trail builder. He surveyed and constructed the Yosemite classics: the Four Mile trail in 1872, and the Yosemite Falls trail in 1885.
In 1871, upon the arrival of the first carriages, packed into the Valley by mules, Conway was hired to build a road down the north side of the Valley to a junction with the horse trail near El Capitan. Starting from the clearing in the forest below El Cap that his road passed through, the foot trail to the base of the Nose bears all the earmarks of a John Conway creation – it fits with Nature, it is elegant, and it delivers you where you want to go.
Conway’s trail to the Nose of El Capitan was in place and ready to go for Yosemite’s Golden Age climbers 85 years before Warren Harding and the rest of us arrived on the scene and fell in love with it.
Thank you, John.
The following note appeared in an 1869 issue of the Mariposa Gazette:
Conway – a “Walkist”
“John Conway, of Sherlock Creek, last Saturday walked from the Sentinel Hotel, Yosemite Valley, to Mariposa in fourteen hours, including all stoppages. He left the hotel about seven o’clock in the morning and made the trip to town by nine o’clock the same evening. The walk did not seem to fatigue him, much, for he soon left town for his home on Sherlock Creek, six miles farther. Mr. Conway says it is no trip at all for him on foot.” (NPS Four Mile Trailhead marker)
CONWAY’S GIFT to future Yosemite climbers, the 1871 foot trail from the clearing in the forest to the foot of the Nose of El Capitan, Yosemite National Park, California, October 2007.
Photo: Tom Frost