Finding Hetch Hetchy

Not far to the north of Yosemite Valley sits another grand valley with towering cliffs and impressively tall waterfalls named Hetch Hetchy Valley. For almost 100 years this valley has seen very few visitors compared to the more famous Yosemite Valley. Within Yosemite National Park’s borders, Hetch Hetchy Valley was drowned to accommodate the need for San Francisco's water supply after the 1906 Earthquake that devastated the area. La Sportiva Athlete Lucho Rivera has been climbing in Hetch Hetchy since he first visited Yosemite in 2000. He established Wapama Rock’s first free ascent and has climbed and established many other routes in the area, always being one of the few climbers there. In this short film Lucho takes Yosemite Valley veteran, Timmy O'neill, to climb a route on a 2,000 ft feature named Hetch Hetchy Dome. This film touches on the fact that there are incredible granite walls with no crowds on any of them. They discuss what this valley may have looked like 100 years prior, and what a restoration of the Hetch Hetchy Valley would look like under the eyes of two Yosemite climbers. Modern water storage and improved tactics implemented by San Francisco could revert this incredible valley to what it once was; without losing a drop of water for the San Francisco Bay Area and allow the Tuolumne River to flow once again through the Hetch Hetchy Valley.

Finding Hetch Hetchy: The Hidden Yosemite from Restore Hetch Hetchy on Vimeo.