Rocks, rocks, rocks

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Hopefully today some of yesterday’s questions can be answered… We are going to drive into Yosemite and find out! The sky is clear and the forecast is for 71 degrees (22° C), just perfect for riding the bike - and we might get a chance to do that too!...

Statistics

Starting Destination: Midpines, California
Ending Destination: Midpines, California
Ending Destination GPS: N: 37° 32.581’ W: 119° 55.374’ Elev: 2645’
Miles Driven: 101
Distance Walked: approx. 1 mile
Distance Biked: 12.7 miles
Average Speed on the Bike: 9.7 mph

Rocks in the Wrong Place

Midpines is about 30 miles from Yosemite National Park - so there was lots of road to be “open” before we reached the park. We followed the road up and over the local peak and then along the Merced River, it actually looked like there were two roads in places - the one on “our” side of the river and the one on the other… We speculated later that the “road” on the other side was probably the old railway line. Finally… we reached the location of the Ferguson Rock Slide, and as you can see from the picture, there was a reason why the road would have been “closed,” such that it was now “open!” The slope above the road started sliding downwards in early April of this year, from what we could find out (thank you Google) somewhere in the region of 2 million cubic yards moved itself down-slope piece by piece and into the river!! However, this hardly impacted us as the wait for the one-way section around the slide could have been 15 minutes, but we timed it pretty good and didn’t have to wait hardly at all - I.e., there wasn’t time to take a photo! We continued up river, through the town of El Portal and into the National Park.

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Lots and lots of Granite Rocks

The closer we got to the Park, the bigger the rocks got… There were huge boulders just “sitting” in the River, there was a rock arch that we had to drive through to get into the park, and there were sheer, stark rock faces… Unfortunately, most all of them were this light grey granite color!! Our first major stop was at El Capitan, the largest monolith in North America and a Mecca for rock climbers - we just had to stop and try and find some of those hardy souls who were pitting their strengths against “The Big Stone” as dubbed by the rock climbers.
We stopped next at the Swinging Bridge, where we found a bridge, but it wasn’t swinging!! The bridge, did however, allow us to get to the other side of the River and take some really cool reflection photos of Yosemite Falls; minus the water as the falls were not flowing! We also got our first view of Half Dome - impressive, but would we or would we not attempt to climb it tomorrow?
A little further up the road was the site of the old Yosemite Village; it has been removed, except for some of the trees planted by the villagers - one of which was displaying fabulous color - and the church which was moved across the road. Our next stop was the Visitors Center - a very challenging place to get to as there was a lot of road construction and re-routes… But the results were worth it… We got an answer to our question about the cables—the cables were still there but the poles that suspend them to “hand rail” height had been removed... also the wooden “steps” were still in place. Of course, we still had to decide whether we would attempt the hike before we could even get to the cables!! We viewed this awesome film about Yosemite and saw what the Yosemite Falls look like when there is actually water flowing…
We walked through the Yosemite Indian Village exhibit where we were visited by one of the locals (I.e., a Steller’s Jay), and then into the Museum where there was an exhibit of photographs from all 58 National Parks (StanJorstad). We were both in awe… Our attempts at photography are just scratches in the surface when compared to the images on display… Our last stop was the Ansel Adams gallery, which didn’t really make us feel any better about our photography skills; so off we went to practice some more!

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Biking to the Rocks

Because of the sheer numbers of people that visit the park every year the Park Service has made some adjustments to traffic flow and facilities within the park. The main road into Yosemite Valley is one way, one section is cut off to car traffic, there are Free Hybrid shuttle buses that run every 5-7 minutes to take you wherever you want to go, and there is a bike path - with lots of people using it! Because of this we just couldn’t resist… We got the bikes out and took off - first stop Mirror Lake, except that at this time of the year it is more like Mirror Meadow because there is no water in the lake, next to Happy Isles and then to investigate the trailhead situation for Half Dome… The ranger at the Visitors Center had said that the trailhead parking lot would probably be full, so we wanted to find out exactly where it was and where the back-up parking was - we were sure that if we did the trip we wouldn’t want to add any extra miles to the tail-end of the trip! Once we had this sorted out we rode backwards some of the loop that we drove coming into the park, across the “swinging bridge,” past the entrance to the Yosemite Falls and back to the day parking lot. It was a great adventure; you could really see the park from a different perspective, even if when we got back to the truck we confused our average speed with the distance traveled… we seemed to be forever stopping to see the sites, read an interpretive sign or to try and negotiate around all the other bike riders!!

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One of the most Famous Rock Views

Our last stop for the evening would be “Tunnel View,” Carl had thought that afternoon would be the best time to take photo’s and we probably wouldn’t make it tomorrow if we attempted the mega hike… so off we went, negotiating the detours and one-way roads. Tunnel view is a view from a turn-off on Route 41 leaving the park to the south, just before you go through a tunnel. From this point you can see right up into the valley and all the major geologic formations - it is a great view! We also spent some time trying to find some of the climbers we had seen earlier in the day - we found some, but it was a little difficult to tell as they were not much more than specs!!

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Carl’s Travel Trivia

Yesterday’s Answer: 1874
Today’s Question: In what year was the face of El Capitan first climbed?
Carl’s Trivia Response: A Tomato is a fruit indigenous to South America and is skinned automatically… Hmmm, without looking at Google we don’t know!

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Comments

[D McKenzie]

The last to climb El Capitan
Captain Kirk tried and failed in the 1989 Star Trek "Final Frontier" movie. Since that occurs on star date 8454.130 it technically hasn't happened yet. Not the answer to your question about who was first, but the answer to "who was last". Ha

[Eddie Wilson]

Cables
I just looked at some online pics of the climb on the "cables". NO WAY! Good luck.

[Dad]

You are right the tomato is a fruit. Those that are skinned as is with fruit are skinned with acid which is neutralized with high pressure water as the skin is washed off. Most of the proccessed tomatos are not skinned. Canned whole and crushed tomatos are skinned. Every thing else is proccessed skin and all.

[Marv Bush]

Trivia answer
It was first climbed in 1869. MB