Project overview: Use native plants to revegetate and restore the Murphy Creek area of the Tenaya Lake Loop Trail.

How your support helps: Yosemite’s stunning Tenaya Lake glitters at the base of granite domes and peaks beside Tioga Road. In the summer, people flock to the mile-long lake’s sandy shores to wade, swim, paddle, picnic, and relax. In the past decade, Yosemite Conservancy donors have funded multiple projects at Tenaya Lake to protect habitat and create a pedestrian route around the shoreline. Through those grants, park crews have rehabilitated the lake’s popular eastern beach (2012), restored the trail along the southern edge (2013), installed a new accessible trail and a boardwalk to carry visitors over a sensitive wetland area at the west end (2014), built an accessible viewing area (2016), and most recently, initiated construction of the Tenaya Lake Loop Trail (2021).

This year: In 2023, finishing touches will be made to protect the sensitive shoreline habitat around Tenaya Lake. This will be particularly meaningful in the Murphy Creek area, where a former parking lot is being demolished to complete the pedestrian-friendly loop trail and create a new and improved picnic area and parking lot.

With your support, crews will collect native seeds for propagation and salvage plants that can be preserved and relocated in construction areas. Once construction is complete, they’ll also perform soil decompaction and plantings to revegetate the old parking area and line sections of the new trail and boardwalk. This will help combat erosion, minimize the establishment and spread of non-native plants, and preserve the integrity of the lakeshore’s wetland ecosystem.

After initial plantings and soil decompaction, funds from this project will also contribute to site care and upkeep, including mulching revegetated areas and continued lakeshore restoration.

Project partner: Yosemite National Park