Rancheria Falls Trail Satellite View

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The trail starts, as usual, at the giant green hikers, who are a bit obscured by the parking lots at this zoom level. It crosses O'Shaughnessy Dam and then takes you through a puddle-filled tunnel before proceeding several uninterrupted miles along the north shore of Hetch Hetchy Reservoir.

The blue balloon marks the location of Wapama Falls, one of the hike's leading highlights. Many observers, us included, would say that it's more spectacular than Rancheria Falls, but no doubt you have good reasons to keep going from here.

The trail marker turns from green to blue at Wapama Falls. It's the same trail, but we changed the trail color because we wanted to make it easier to see where Wapama Falls is, and definitely not because we were too lazy to create separate maps for the Wapama and Rancheria Falls trails.

The green balloon marks the center, more or less, of Rancheria Falls. It's actually a long series of cascades that starts just above the point where the blue trail line ends and continues in a horizontal line all the way to the reservoir (we've ended the trail at the bridge across the falls, a good turnaround point).

If you follow the Tuolumne River upstream from the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir, you'll pass through the Grand Canyon of the Tuolumne and eventually reach Tuolumne Meadows. If you follow it downstream, you'll pass through the Central Valley and eventually reach Gavin Newsom's kitchen sink.