Tenaya Canyon

Tenaya Canyon is not a safe place to just go wandering. There are places that are moderately steep, and if you don't know the route exactly, you can get cliffed out. The result is that you may not be able to continue up or down very quickly. People get in there, get overcome by darkness due to slow progress, and then it gets very messy.

–B.G.–

I've heard it's doable with a rappel rope going down canyon.

Where is Eric Chan when we need him?

–B.G.–

Yes, it is a technical canyon requiring a rope and rock scrambling skills. I descended it in October. A person who was on the Tuolumne shuttle bus with us in the morning, and who was just a few minutes behind us in the canyon, fell to their death after getting off-route on one of the scrambling sections.

there's a group of people over on Yosemite News and Information (discussion?) who write about their jaunts down Tenaya. Definitely technical. You can learn a lot about the routes on that site.

We've hiked up from Yosemite Valley into Tenaya Canyon. It is beautiful, and while there is some modest exposure in places, you can hike up quite a ways as a day hike. It is true that to through-hike up to Tenaya Lake you need technical skills and ropes (unless you are truly a gifted free-climber!)

But as a modest adventure from the Valley, hiking up into the canyon, and then back out again, it's pretty cool.

It's also where at least one pair of rangers needed to get rescued because they climbed up too far, and got themselves up on a ledge from which there was no easy way down, so be smart about it.