Cathedral Lakes Trailhead Location

Cathedral Lakes Trailhead Location
Original artwork by Heinrich Berann

That patch of green where the Cathedral Lakes trail starts is Tuolumne Meadows (trailhead street view here), one of the more memorable locations along Tioga Road. The artist has the enviable superpower of mixing geography and time in the most scenic of ways, so Tuolumne Meadows and its high-country cousin, Dana Meadows, are in full summer green, while the Tenaya Creek Canyon, a couple thousand feet lower, is wrapped in winter snow, and the Yosemite Valley waterfalls are at peak spring runoff. There's a Homeward-Bound-meets-Brigadoon-meets-Groundhog-Day movie waiting to be realized from this localized Yosemite time concept, though it'll have to be all CGI, since the park service is reluctant to let movie production companies run amok in the wilderness. Then again, most of Yosemite looks like CGI anyway.

In case you're on a small screen and clicking on the map doesn't pop up a larger version, here's a direct link to one.