Last month JFran and I spent a couple days in Yosemite Valley, but last weekend’s trip back with R was different. My girl is BUSY, and it was hard to find a weekend she was free. After we rescheduled a bunch along with the requisite campsite roulette, the federal government shut down!
But the park stayed open and we pushed through. Never. Give. Up.1
The summer before R started college we did a big hike together up the John Muir Trail to Lake Vogelsang, one of Yosemite’s High Sierra Camps.
That was over 10 years ago! We didn’t figure out that math until we got home.
When JFran and I went, we camped in the Valley and never left. R and I started out in the valley — it’s so dramatic and she hadn’t been in 10 years. We camped at Crane Flat, a short drive away, and first we checked out Bridalveil Fall which JFran and I didn’t get to see up close:
Afterwards we stopped to gawk at the climbers scaling El Capitan; ants stuck on a wall.
A few days before we were arrived, a climber fell to his death off El Cap. He climbed 3,000 feet to the top (livestreamed on TikTok), but then his bag got stuck. Still roped in, he went down to get it and accidentally rappelled off the end of his line.
The valley was crowded, and as I wrote before there are no moderate hikes if you want a view — so we skedaddled. We lingered at the Merced River on our way out, dangling our feet in the cold water before the road climbed up.
I played with my new camera. Here’s a side-by-side of new and old from that spot.
We drove up a bit to Glacier Point Road where you can hike in for views from the top. Down in the valley you’re walled in by natures drama, at the rim you can take it all in and the valley feels surprisingly small compared to the wilderness stretching out in every direction. We climbed Sentinel Dome and then looped around to Taft Point.
It’s a very different perspective:
We sat on a rock munching on snacks and watched as a teeny helicopter circled El Cap — the sound of the rotors echoing across the valley — eventually landing on top. We later learned some other climbers had gotten into trouble (one broke his leg) and Yosemite Search and Rescue — working through the shutdown — stayed with them overnight, getting them all safely off the face the next morning.
This TrailTale is brought to you by Rufus Edward Miles, Jr who came up with the subtitle aka Miles Law2:
Where you stand depends on where you sit.
If you can’t see where someone’s coming from, maybe their view looks very different — and you don’t have to go far to see it.
We listened to a few National Park After Dark episodes on the drive. Never. Give. Up. is their latest, a crazy survival story. On our way into the park we listened to an older but more topical Yosemite episode about getting stuck on Half Dome in a lightning storm — terrifying and ends badly.
NOT to be confused with this (annoying) one: “If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything.”