Yosemite

Wow oh wow Yosemite National Park. I honestly can’t even write enough to summarize these few days in Yosemite. But I’ll share a few things we did. Now, I have never been to Yosemite before but I have heard a lot about it. From watching tv growing up, to my dad talking about the big trees.

Heck when I worked at Markforged I worked with a kid Sean who went for vacation one summer on the company shutdown and the photos he showed me made me say “yup bucket list it.” Now I’ve never been a huge national park guy. Lines, people, man made trails, trash, it bugs me out to think we pay to get into nature. But, let’s give it a shot I say. That’s been my mentality this entire hike and it’s been correct so far.

I leave Kernville at 6AM and start the 4 hour 39 minute drive. It’s a windy road on the edge of a cliff for majority of the drive north. I left early as I never sleep in and there’s almost no-one on the road. Would be wonderful in a little sports car. In my Jeep it handles it fine as well. This is also the first time I’ve driven a gasoline car in a while, so it’s an adjustment all around.

I get a bar of service and text Greenhorn. I’m meeting him in Yosemite. “Yo you want anything at Vons?”

“Dude grab some hot dogs and etc to grill.” He says.

I got you bud. I hit Vons and food shop. Blown away by the apple prices. Gala apple index? 2.99/lb non organic. Expensive town, things have gotten more expensive as we’ve gone north. The cashier says Apple prices are the highest they’ve ever been. No shit.

I get back on the road and realize I won’t have service from here on out. I switch to my Garmin and send Greenhorn a location to meet up. “Meet me here. I’ll be there at 1PM.” I need to replace my Garmin mini 1, it never works.

I pull up to the entrance in Yosemite and the woman at the gate is super nice. 36$ to enter and she tells me the rules and regs and reminds me I’m in bear country. Do not leave anything in the cars or the bears will break in and have a field day inside the car.

I meet up with Greenhorn as he’s fishing, he says he’s not having any luck. We can go start to explore. First we head up to see El Capitan from below. And holy shit is it wild, we head to the bottom of the rock face to see if we can get up it. Yeah nah yeah no. It’s even more wow when you get up to the rock wall and start to climb up.

Some climbers show us the ropes and lets us mess around as they get their gear together. One of them recognizes my accent and says he went to school in Boston.”Tufts” he says. Imagine that. .

After we head to the camp I reserved for us tonight, check into our #76 and cook food, I hang out Pickles, Shortcut, Patches, Greenhorn and Stealthy. It’s a solid night around the fire. Meteor shower tonight from Haley’s comet too let’s go!

The next morning I wake up and am completely packed up by 6. Antsy as hell to go hike, I tell Greenhorn let’s go dude let’s go. He wants to do Half Dome today, again lets go dude it’s 5300’ of uphill and like 16 miles round trip after a 45 minute drive to the parking lot. The cables are down so we are raw dogging it up.

We get to the trail head at 8:30 and start off. It’s about 2 miles of “paved” type road or trail until we hit the switch backs. Our legs in great shape we just start counting the number of people we pass. Some people look like they’re going to die. I feel ya.

We get to the first falls Vernal falls, pretty cool, then to the second falls. Even cooler, there’s a few places were we could’ve filtered water if we needed it. As thru hikers were keen to “find water.” We keep going past the last bathroom and say ok now let’s get to half dome. Another mile and we see a small ranger station and start to climb. I get to the point of “stairs” and say wtf. This is another mile of 1500’ climb. Let’s go what a slog.

We get above the stairs and the rocks are just slick, wet and straight up onto the sub dome. Then finally we get to the bottom of half dome. And wow, what an awesome hike up and climb. Pretty sketch but we got it done. We turn to leave and start the decent back beneath the tree line.

After Half Dome it was back down the 9 miles of trail then 45 minutes drive to camp to cook up steaks and relax for the night by the fire.

I wake up the next morning and decide to leave solo, everyone else is “sleeping in” and IMO wasting one of the best weather days. I head to hike Upper Yosemite Falls and spend the day there. The hike is 6.5 miles and I did it in 3.25 hours.

Even enjoyed a nice lunch and nap at the top. I tossed my tyvek down in a nice rack crack and nestled right in. Was chilly weather at that elevation, but warm sun. Even met a father son combo at the top of Yosemite point who were visiting as well. I gave them my info and where they could read my blog and they were off. Hope yall had a hell of a Yosemite trip too!. I ran into them later on on the way down too. If you’ve read here before, you’ve heard I eat up the downhill.

Afterwards I took it slow going back to the car and walked by the post office and mailed some post cards to my friends. I’m a sucker for post cards, I mail my self a blank one from every town stop. Yosemite had some good post cards. Cheap too.

On one other day I woke up and crushed 3 easy hikes while the others did laundry and showered, one of which was to the spires and then the groves of sequoias. Like most hikes in Yosemite a lot of vertical.

Afterwards I sat in El Capitan meadows and just chilled. Took a dirt nap on my tyvek, talked with some other visitors and really enjoyed a slow day for once.

One thing I’m battling is this is suppose to be my “off week” but I’ve still hiked 90 miles in 4 days. One family let me use their binoculars and we watched the climbers climb el cap. He tells me he hiked the PCT in the 70s and was out here road tripping with some friends. He hit all the right questions to ask me. Biggest one about shoes. How many pairs of shoes have I worn through so far.

As the day ends I head back over to camp to meet back up with the others and then I settle into number 80 and set up shop for the night. The reservation systems the national parks uses is trash. The campsite we had last night is empty tonight, but we had to move anyways. As thru hikers to me it’s no big deal, but annoying to see an inefficiency in the process as an engineer. The rest of the crew arrives at camp and we set a plan for the next few days. When we finish with Yosemite we’re heading to Sequoia National Forest.

Yosemite has absolutely captured my heart and has blown my mind. The amazing shear cliffs of granite and huge trees are something I’m now in love with. I know I’ll be back to Yosemite as the PCT cuts through it on the JMT, so I look forward to when I’m back in a few weeks! Maybe I’ll spend another week there, maybe two.