Yosemite hamlet finds a sense of community in a taco

Published online on Saturday, Sep. 20, 2008

EL PORTAL -- It's late summer in this hamlet just outside the western border of Yosemite National Park.

The party is dwindling down, or just getting started, depending on how you look at it.

The 200 or so "seasonals" -- park employees and interns who swell El Portal's numbers to around 800 during peak season -- have mostly left. Summer concerts are over. Now it's down to basics: a tight-knit group of year-round residents and their time-honored, twice-a-month, taco night tradition.

Every other Thursday, Sal's Taco Truck makes the climb from Mariposa to El Portal. The drive on Highway 140 along the Merced River is less than 30 miles but takes more than an hour in a taco truck. Turns are tight amid hills denuded by the latest wildfire; the narrow canyon is cut into jumbled, angular rocks stacked like dominoes askew.

There's a flashing stop sign at the one-lane detour around the spot where 90,000 cubic yards of those granite dominoes came crashing down in 2006. The sign says to be prepared for 15-minute waits -- it makes the five minutes (when traffic is light) feel short.

Sal Gonzalez didn't take his taco truck to El Portal for three months after the rockslide, while the highway was closed.

When he returned, the Yosemite Marching Band -- "one of the best high-altitude marching bands in the country. We might not be good musicians but we're the best climbing, skiing, snowshoeing bands you'll find," says band leader Paul Amstutz -- met the taco truck and triumphantly marched it to the community center.

"I don't know if they know how to play instruments or not, but they were hiking in front of me and around me and making loud noise," Gonzalez recalls. "I felt happy and special. My face was red. People in El Portal show that they want you there."

It's not that there isn't anything to do in El Portal.

You can run down to one of the swimming holes for a dip.

"There's nudity involved. Makes it more interesting," says Robbie Borchard, 23. "Of course, for safety reasons, we always wait an hour after eating to go swimming."

Residents say El Portal is tolerant of the sort of recreational pursuits often celebrated in rock anthems from the '70s.

El Portal is not isolated -- tourists are always passing through -- but it is remote. There are only a couple of hilltops where cell phones get more than two bars of reception.

The community's only market burned down in April after longtime owner Hugh Carter retired.

"Hugh worked that market for 30 years. He'd open the store late at night, at any hour, if somebody needed medicine," says Gail Dreifus, one of two teachers at El Portal's high school, which currently has four students ("I'm the English, social science and art department. We fight over who gets to be the football coach and guidance counselor," she says.).

Most residents are construction workers, hotel staffers and park employees whose "real" identities are climbers, kayakers and travelers.

"People work long hours and lots of different jobs, because the priority is living in El Portal. The goal is to be next to Yosemite," says Amstutz, the marching band's bass drum player and the high school's math and science department.

"In this town, there are a lot of people who are always game for adventure. I bet we have the highest per-capita number of climbers, trail builders and people who have been to the Himalayas."

But while living next to Yosemite offers unparalleled opportunities for outdoor adventure, night life is limited.

So, when Sal's Taco Truck pulls into El Portal, it is a community event.