Latest news with #YosemiteValley
Daily Mail
6 days ago
- Business
- Daily Mail
Sickening discovery at Yosemite's most iconic hotel throws summer trips into chaos
Yosemite's most iconic hotel, known for its scenic views and high-profile guests, has been thrown into a chaotic scandal after several sickening and 'decrepit' discoveries were made. California 's Ahwahnee Hotel has long been known as a destination hot spot in the Yosemite Valley, and an oasis in the middle of a beautiful nature-filled setting - but its reputation has changed. A recent report by the National Park Service, detailing the hotel's 2024 annual performance review of Yosemite Hospitality, found that rodents, improper food storage, and overdue facility maintenance, have taken over the property. Yosemite Hospitality, a subsidiary of the Aramark Corporation, received an 'unsatisfactory' rating - the lowest it has gotten in previous years, the report, obtained by SFGATE, detailed. Officials found both food safety issues and rodent infestations in the hotel's bar and kitchen, and just last month, employees reported food contamination issues stemming from rodents living in the ceiling above the preparation area, per the report. Rodents were also found lingering in the Ahwahnee Bar, which was shut down multiple times last year for that very reason, the report stated. A number of staffers also got sick from the chemicals used to help control the pest problem at the bar, it continued. By June 14, the bar was back up and running, but just six weeks later, health inspectors discovered a Food and Drug Administration violation caused by a leak in the kitchen in the Ahwahnee Bar. The kitchen was then shut down by Yosemite Hospitality for some of the day to fix the pressing issue, according to the performance review. On September 4, the bar was closed yet again after a video surfaced showing 'ongoing rodent activity within the facility,' the review documented. By September 20, the bar was reopened for drink service only. Food was not served again until November 14, per the report. Rodent infestations can bring on a serious and sometimes deadly disease known as hantavirus - the same illness that killed Gene Hackman's wife Betsy Arakawa in their New Mexico home earlier this year. Humans can be exposed to the disease through rodent droppings, urine or saliva. In 2012 - before Yosemite Hospitality took over the contract - hantavirus infected 10 people and tragically killed three, SFGATE reported. Just last year, a store worker, who lived in on-site employee housing, was said to have contracted the disease, according to Bloomberg. The report said Yosemite Hospitality has gone on to develop a 'hantavirus risk reduction program,' but even with the initiative, employees were not consistently trained. For instance, workers at the Crane Flat Store - located on the property - did not receive the training until health officials visited the store during a routine safety inspection, the report said. In response to the frequent rodent incidents, the hospitality company hired new pest management professionals and doubled the number of weekly visits to inspect properties in the park in October 2024, the annual report stated. Several Yelp reviews also provide first-hand accounts from guests who dealt with similar situations during their stay there. One person posted images of cracked and peeling ceilings and walls, adding that the 'hotel is inferior to the $10 youth hostels one may find in Europe. 'What a sad, decrepit facility this once great hotel has become... It's full of mold, leaks, broken walls and failed or failing appliances,' the user added. 'I really wanted to give this place a higher rating because of the long history etc of the Ahwahnee. But for over $600 a night you should get more. I think the overall problem is the result of decades of neglect,' another posted. Other than rodent activity and deteriorating aspects in the hotel, Michael McEvoy, a recent guest who stayed there, said the hotel did not have electricity after a tree fell during a storm, cutting off power in the Yosemite Valley. 'The whole place was dark,' McEvoy told the outlet. He had checked into the hotel to attend the Bracebridge Dinner, but when he entered his room, the light switches didn't work. 'I don't know how you put on a tux without light,' he added. The highly anticipated dinner, which had just come back after a five year hiatus, was canceled due to the power outage. McEvoy said a backup generator ended up powering a temporary kitchen but not the hotel itself. During that time, he said he witnessed several people falling in the dark and an elderly woman struggling to navigate the stairs since the elevator was down. The recent report flagged electrical issues throughout the park, including an employee tent that went up in flames and loose electrical wires on a thermostat in a hotel room. Despite shelling out $1,100 for the dinner, plus $700 for the hotel room, McEvoy left and booked a room somewhere else, he said. 'We're looking forward to seeing it, and then to find all of the catastrophic, the cascade failures that occurred really pointed out to me that they've got a problem.' Customers were reimbursed for both their tickets and hotel stays, Aramark spokesperson Weinstein told the outlet. In response to the low rating, Debbie Albert, Aramark's senior vice president of corporate affairs, said the company is taking it 'seriously.' 'We take this rating seriously, and in working closely with the NPS, we have and continue to make improvements at Yosemite to ensure high standards are met for park guests,' Albert said. A park spokesperson said: 'We work closely with our concessionaires to identify and address issues, and we expect them to take prompt action to resolve any problems.' Despite their responses, hotel and park employees still don't feel safe or heard. 'At what point do you say, "This isn't right for the guests?" Someone could get sick. This isn't right,' an unnamed worker said. 'There has to be a limit where profit doesn't matter. Humanity matters more.'
Yahoo
17-05-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Yosemite's ultra-deep canyon may have been carved in part by a ghost volcano and river, provocative research suggests
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. A provocative new hypothesis suggests that Yosemite Valley was carved by an ancient volcano and a disappearing river, both of which have long since eroded away. Geologists have long debated why Yosemite Valley is so deep, with walls that tower up to 4,000 feet (1,219 meters) above the valley floor. The prevailing explanation is that in the last 10 million years, the Sierra Nevada mountains of California experienced a period of uplift, steepening their slope and causing the rivers to flow more quickly and erode more quickly into the granite around them. But a new study, published April 3 in the journal Geosphere, suggests uplift wasn't the real reason Yosemite exists. Instead, said study co-author Manny Gabet, a geomorphologist at San Jose State University, the landscape of Yosemite and the surrounding Sierras is better explained by a long-vanished river. Millions of years ago, this river would have increased the flow to the modern day Merced River and Tenaya Creek, which would have then had enough power to slice through the Sierras to create Yosemite Valley and nearby Tenaya Canyon. "At some point in time," Gabet told Live Science, "there was a big river here. And now that river is gone." Geologists agree that in the last 2 to 3 million years, Yosemite was under a glacier that helped deepen the valley. But they also believe that this glacier filled a pre-existing deep valley, said Kurt Cuffey, a geologist at the University of California, Berkeley, who was not involved in the new research. "So why did the canyon form in the first place?" Cuffey said. There are a lot of faults on the east side of the Sierra Nevada that likely would have caused the mountains to rise and get steeper, Cuffey told Live Science. But geologists can't say how much higher the mountain range got, or if it was high enough to substantially increase the erosive power of the rivers. It's a controversial topic, he said. Uplift also doesn't explain three odd observations, Cuffey said. The first is that Tenaya Canyon, a steep and treacherous canyon that runs from Tenaya Lake into Yosemite Valley, is way too deep to have been cut by the stream that runs through it today, Tenaya Creek. "It's just a really small river," Gabet said. "You can jump across it. The mystery is, how did this tiny creek cut through thousands of feet of very resistant, very massive granite?" The second mystery is that in California's Central Valley, where the Merced River spills out of Yosemite and creates a fan-shaped layer of sediment it has carried from the mountains, there are huge deposits of volcanic rock that shouldn't be there. "You've got 8 cubic miles [33.3 cubic kilometers] of volcanic sediment deposited in the Central Valley by the Merced River, but you can't find a scrap of these volcanic rocks," in the area around the river, Gabet said. The third mystery has to do with the uneven shape of the valley cut by the Tuolumne River just north of the Merced, Cuffey said. This valley is much larger on one side than the other. It's a relatively subtle point to a non-geologist, but "that needs an explanation," he said. Gabet's hypothesis harkens back to 5 to 10 million years ago, when a chain of volcanoes had buried the northern Sierra Nevada in huge mudflows, creating a gently sloping volcanic plain with only a few mountain peaks poking out of it. These deposits are still seen north of Yosemite, but not in the area around the Merced River. "I realized these volcanic rocks that had been transported by the Merced River must have come from this chain of volcanoes," Gabet said. The peaks of such a volcanic chain would have been drained by a large, now lost river, he said. This river would have flowed from now-vanished volcanic slopes north of where the National Park is today and then gushed into the ancient Merced and Tenaya Creek, enabling them to carve out Yosemite Valley and Tenaya Canyon. RELATED STORIES —Flowing fire? Yosemite's burning waterfall explained —Photos: Take a tour of spectacular Yosemite —Earth's crust is peeling away under California The influence of this river would have made both the Merced and Tenaya Creek much larger than today's relative trickle — so large that they could have cut down the canyons. The drainage patterns from this ghost river would also explain the lopsided topography around the Tuolumne River , Cuffey said. Finally, the river would have carried the volcanic rock now found in the Central Valley down from the northern Sierra Nevada, a journey that is hard to explain otherwise. The river and volcano would have themselves eventually eroded to nothing, so there is no way to check if they ever existed. One of Gabet's students is now working on a project to try to recreate the ancient topography of the Sierra Nevada to better understand how the geology of the mountains evolved and perhaps shed more light on the possibility. "He's got a really interesting thing going," Cuffey said of Gabet. "I really don't know if it's true or not at this point, but it's a great hypothesis that we should think about."
