Yosemite Creek to the west, from which it cascaded down through the steep ravine that is now the route of the Yosemite Falls Trail. The Yosemite Creek watershed, which feeds the creek and Yosemite Falls, contains . It is largely a granite basin that was scraped clean of soil by glaciers. Because of the shallow soil base, the Yosemite Creek watershed has little capacity to hold water, so it quickly drains as the snow melts. Yosemite Creek Yosemite Creek is a creek of the Sierra Nevada, located in Yosemite National Park, Mariposa County, California. The creek's headwaters are at the Grant Lakes
Yosemite National Park River Gorge. Lee Vining Glacier carved Lee Vining Canyon and emptied into Lake Russel (the much-enlarged ice age version of Mono Lake). Only the highest peaks, such as Mount Dana and Mount Conness, were not covered by glaciers. Retreating glaciers often left recessional moraines that impounded lakes such as the long Lake Yosemite (a shallow lake that periodically covered much of the floor of Yosemite Valley). With its scrubby sun-baked chaparral, stately groves of pine, fir, and sequoia, and expanses of alpine woodlands and meadows, Yosemite National Park preserves a Sierra Nevada landscape as it prevailed before Euro-American settlement. In