Erin and I went to Yosemite Valley for the weekend of December 8-10 (for her birthday).
Mirror Lake
We had a lovely drive up to the park ( during which I got the highest mpg I’ve yet managed in my car, yay two people and cruise control). It’s been a very long time since I’ve entered the park from the south entrance, going through Wawona. In fact, the only other time was when I came with my family when I was 16 or so.
Anyway, we drove up to the park and came through the tunnel to the Valley, and of course we had to stop and stare at the view, as everyone does. It actually wasn’t the best day for it, but we had to take what we could get, you know?
This is why people stop here
We did some random walking around that evening, around Yosemite Falls a bit, and just around where we were staying (Yosemite Lodge). We then walked a bit further towards the village, and caught the bus back. After we had some dinner, we decided to go check out the ice skating rink. We were the only ones there at the beginning, and as it’s man made, it was in pretty terrible shape. But we rented some skates, and started going. A few more people showed up as time went on, but eventually we just got tired and went to go catch the shuttle back to the lodge. (The shuttles over the weekend were quite amusing: at once point, we saw a whole middle school trip that was just finishing up a week, and another time I saw at least a dozen Hasidic Jews. And there was also this adorable little boy I kept running into (and his family) all weekend.))
Anyway, the next day we did the only thing you could really call much of a hike. We started at the shuttle stop to Mirror Lake, and took the right hand path when we got to the bridge over Tenaya Creek, which put us on the more woodsy part of the loop trail that goes way out past Mirror Lake (which is really more of a meadow at that time of year, and will eventually stop being a lake at all). Pretty nice mossy forest as we wended our way towards the base of Half Dome and the lake, not really seeing anyone at all, because the few people out walking that day were generally on the more well taken care of road/trail on the other side of the creek.
We continued on, and then walked out sort of to the middle of the “lake”, and then continued upstream , looking for a place to cross the river. (There is , in fact, a loop trail, but it didn’t cross around until a fair bit further than we had realized or really wanted to go). We finally find a log we could cross over on, and with a small amount of effort, managed to do so. This let us meet up with the trail on the other side, and we walked back along that side of the lake.
View of North Dome from the road.
When we got back to the road, we continued along the trail that runs right alongside it until we hit the base of the trail to Vernal and Nevada Falls. It is, among other things, the start (or the end, depending on how you want to think of it) of the John Muir Trail, which will take you all the way to Whitney Portal if you’re that awesome.
We started up this trail, stopping at the bridge to get a look at Vernal Fall (which had very little water in it). That trail wastes no time going up, which I guess is to be expected of starting out in a valley, but, oh well. It was pretty well carved out of the rock, and, as always in the case when hiking in situations like that, the view just got better and better as you went up. At this same bridge, we took a break on a huge rock to eat our lunch, and then continued on up the trail.
Long way to go!
We had wanted to go up the Mist Trail, but it was closed due to the lateness of the season. Not that there was anyone there guarding it, but I generally trust stuff rangers try and tell me, and from all I had heard, the trail was incredibly slick, and there was in fact a fair amount of danger from falling rocks. Instead, we went the other way at the junction and continued up the John Muir Trail. This takes you away from the water and switchbacks up the side of the hill , with some nice views of the rock but nothing really spectacular until you round one more random turn and suddenly you are at a location called Clarks Point. This is a rock shelf where the JMT meets up with a spur trail that will take you back to the trail along the river, and well above the top of Vernal Falls.
At this point there was a fair bit of icy snow around (which there had been none of before) and the JMT was formally “closed” after this point, and the footing was pretty unsure if we wanted to take the spur back to the Mist Trail (and we didn’t have crampons or even yaktrax or anything with us) so we just sat around for a bit and soaked in the view and decided that the better part of valor involved not continuing, since we didn’t want to plunge to our sorry sorry deaths.
But the view here was nothing to sneeze at. When you come around that last corner, you have the most amazing view of Nevada Falls, Liberty Cap, and the backside of Half Dome.
From left to right, Half Dome, Mt.Broderick, Liberty Cap.
This route is also the way one continues on to go up the backside of Half Dome , but since the Half Dome cables were down for the season anyway, it made it a little easier to turn around. (We did sort of want to see the top of Vernal Falls, but oh well). We got our photo taken by a random Israeli who happened to be out there, and went back down the way we came, marvelling as we went at a Japanese woman who seemed to have made it all the way up in heels. Now *that*, that is hardcore. We then caught the shuttle at the base of the falls trail, at Happy Isles. So, this hike day was ~7mi RT
We then proceeded to shower, and go have dinner at the Ahwahnee Hotel, which was quite good, although the best part was honestly the crab cake appetizer. Weird.
That night it was raining as we went back to the lodge, and as it turns out, it was good we had done the hike that day, because when we woke up everything was covered in snow! Which admittedly was what we had been hoping for, since why else do you go outside in the winter? If I’d wanted early fall I would have gone in early fall…. Well, also you go in an effort to avoid having lots of people around.
Lower Yosemite Falls after the snow.
We drove around the Valley a bunch and marveled at the snow. We saw some deer around, and just looked at pretty things, and then went to leave. Now, keep in mind that despite how pretty it was, there really wasn’t all that much snow in the Valley proper, which is only at 4000′ or so. But we decided to take the route out of the park by which we had come in, which goes several thousand feet higher. There was a ranger guarding that way out and checking that people had either AWD or chains, and as I had both, he let us go on.
As we kept going up the road, the snow kept getting thicker and thicker, and it really was very impressive. Of course, as it turned out, we had a lovely little spin out, though it was conveniently at the one point in the road where we weren’t going to die. We hit a snow bank, and everything seemed alright. So we pulled over (this was at the turnoff to Badger Pass) to put on my snow chains , where we discovered, wonder of wonders, that the snow chains that had come with the car were the wrong size! Oops. Anyway, we then carefully but successfully made it out of the park, and on home.
Mmm, partly plowed.
