Yosemite Valley

TrailTale: Gateway drug to the wild

Just back from Yosemite, so here’s another mid-week TrailTale. On Friday, I’ll have a different take on Yosemite, but this one’s got pictures.

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Five months ago, whilst filling out the Spider-Van’s dance card I got sucked into the game that is getting a campground in Yosemite National Park. Armed with all the wisdom on the Internet, I took on the byzantine reservation system just as the clock hit 7AM, and after a few minutes of furious clicking I got a spot.

At 7 miles long and a mile wide, Yosemite Valley is a fraction of the park’s nearly 2,000 square miles. It’s that little slice in the middle. We camped at Upper Pines at the end of the valley, coming in the Big Oak Flat entrance.

We entered the park from the west on Highway 120. To the south, the Garnet fire was growing, churning dark thick clouds into an orange sky that burned our eyes. It was a dry, hot day — familiar and unsettling if you live in California.

Still, we made it to the park, and as we rolled through the tunnel for that first breath-stopping view of the valley, it started to rain. By the time we got to our campsite, it was dumping, and it felt good.

The rain passed as quickly as it came, clearing the smoke and cooling the air. We walked over to the Ahwahnee, Yosemite’s grand hotel we last visited in 2009.

This is one of two monstrous fireplaces in the lobby; I need to get the Chaos Monkey to come back for a proper ‘then and now.’

Half Dome from the back of the Ahwahnee

Our campsite was next to one of the valley’s great hikes up the Mist Trail to Vernal and Nevada Falls, so the next day we set out to see how far we could get¹. Six hours later we were back at the Ahwahnee, inhaling burgers, fries and Arnold Palmers.

The thing about the valley is every hike is straight up a cliff. The valley floor is at 4,000 feet, and everything up on the rim is 4,000 feet above you. We made it to Vernal Falls — hiking up around 2,000 feet. We stopped there. While we could see the higher Nevada Falls, another couple hours and another 1,000 feet in increasingly smoky heat didn’t sound good.

The trail was popping though — from babies in backpacks, to couples young and old, to inter-generational families — all excitedly making the trek and taking in the views.

New socks

This is the same route to reach Yosemite’s ultimate hiking challenge — Half Dome. That’s a 13 hour / 16 mile roundtrip. Once you reach Half Dome you climb the last 400 feet up these cables:

The next day our calves needed a break, so we set out to explore the rest of the valley. I have a core childhood memory at Yosemite Falls, so we took the bus over there. We had visited in the spring when the falls freeze overnight. The ice cracks as the cliffs warm in the morning sun, careening down the cliffs, echoing loudly across the valley.

We wandered over to historic Camp 4 for a tease of the Yosemite Falls Trailhead (7 miles / 3,000 feet), and then across the meadow to Swinging Bridge, planning a later plunge in the Merced River.

It was still early, so we took the bus to the end of its route, getting off at the foot of El Capitan, looking for climbers. From there we hiked around the rest of the valley, meeting the bus back up on the other side at Bridalveil Fall. Seemed like a good idea at the time, but another six hours later we were back, this time at Curry Village, wolfing down more burgers, fries and Arnold Palmers.

We ended up hiking another 10 miles that day, swimming the river and staring up at Bridalveil Fall.

The Valley startles you every time you look up with views like El Cap 3,000 feet above.

In 2007 Alex Honnold climbed El Cap without ropes in under four hours. A first that may never be repeated, his epic climb is documented in the movie Free Solo, which I highly recommend and have to rewatch.

We nearly skipped this view off the trail right before we crossed over the Merced to the other side of the valley:

Bridalveil Fall is that dark spot coming down the cliff on the right.

Social media fills with pictures of Yosemite this time of year, pulling lots of people into the wilderness for the first time. Instagram alone has 4 million #Yosemite posts. Stare up at El Cap or Yosemite Falls, lazily raft down the river, bike around the valley or hike up a cliff, it’s a good drug with something for everyone to make you feel more alive.

1. The Mist Trail is closed for renovations so we took the longer John Muir Trail.