Week 57 Part 2 - Yosemite National Park, CA, USA

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We were collected for our 2 day Yosemite Tour by our guide, a big Kiwi guy who turned out to be very knowledgeable and joined the other 9 people for the long drive to the National Park. We stopped half way to choose our included lunch at a large deli with masses of choice where they made fresh sandwiches to order. We ate these, plus a whole load of other stuff we selected within our designated budget, at various stops around the Park later in the day while keeping our eyes out for Bears.

The weather was perfect, warm and sunny, and our guide decided to do the high areas on the first day and the Valley on the second, as the sky was so clear. First stop was the Toulumne Grove Trail, a winding path through the forest than ran just over a mile steeply downhill to a grove of large Giant Sequoia trees, including the famous Tunnel Tree and the Twins which are two trees that look conjoined. Unfortunately the only way back was the near vertical one mile climb back up, which was tough and involved numerous stops by most of us to catch our breath and to stop our hearts pounding. It was tough as I am still suffering with gurgling lungs after my bronchitis plus I am carrying tons of extra weight, but the frequent stops allowed me to appreciate the beauty and silence of the forest - that was the silence outside of my wheezing and panting.

The original loggers road ran straight through Tunnel Tree in the old days. These trees can live to 3,000 years old but the ones we were seeing were no more than 1,000 and were already true giants. Their softer cores often get completely destroyed by fire but the thick red outer bark is fire-resistant and remains, leaving hollow trunks that are big enough to live in. If you tap the bark it sounds hollow and loud like a huge drum. The most surprising thing is the tiny size of their seed cones, which are only as big as a ping pong ball which is strange when you see them next to the sugar pine cones that lay all around that are massive (almost 1.5 times as big as my foot) so I guess size doesn’t matter in the tree world. Further along the trail we were encouraged to sniff one of the trees - no it wasn’t a set up for candid camera, it was the very pleasant butterscotch aroma given off by the bark of the Jeffrey Pine (or some say pancake and maple syrup scent). Joy and I tried sniffing all sorts of other trees in the forest and also later on our trip to Lake Tahoe, but we didn’t get anything other than weird looks from passers by as we failed to find any other Jeffreys.

If the first hike had not killed you, the second one would more than wind you. Our guide broke the rules a bit and drove us reasonably close to our target, the prominent Sentinel Dome, by taking a short cut along a fire road (shhh), but after a reasonable trek along a delightful forest road that had been rising uphill for a while, our first sight of what we had to climb was more than a bit daunting. The final climb up the bare rock face of the Dome was tough and reminded me of a similar arduous climb to reach Ubirr in Kakadu, Northern Australia. As in that case, the effort was more than rewarded by the most spectacular 360 degree views and almost perfect weather conditions. A few days previously there had been a storm that left a very light snow dusting on the very highest peaks we could see, but although we were a bit hot and sweaty we enjoyed blue skies and only a little bit of heat haze as we scanned the mountains and forests of Yosemite laid out beneath us. We spent quite a while on the summit, taking pictures, posing in daft ways on frost-split rocks and by petrified tree trunks and chatted to fellow climbers. The top was just over 8,000 feet up and during the two day trip we constantly travelled between high and low altitudes as we wound our way up and down mountains and through passes and valleys, which meant that our ears kept popping.

After climbing back down the steep rockface we were given the option to do another 2 mile walk downhill through the forest to Glacier Point, or be driven. The high altitude must have got to us as we went crazy and opted for the extra 2 mile hike, but it was lovely - cool, shady, quiet, pretty and we got to see plenty more magnificent views of another prominent rock called Half Dome, a few blue birds with weird black crests and lots of squirrels. We also came across trees with one side covered in luminous lime-green moss that stood out for miles. There were signs of bear along the way with violently clawed-up areas of fallen tree trunk that they had shredded to sawdust in their attempts to get to the termites, grubs and ants, but luckily we didn’t encounter any. We had been told how to make ourselves look large and shout and holler to scare them away if we did meet any, but we were rather glad that we didn’t have to put the theory into practice.

On reaching Glacier Point we were rewarded by more Wow moments as the views were stunning. We could see a couple of tall waterfalls and the magnificent Half Dome on one side and on the other side was a lookout point with views straight down into the deep Yosemite Valley below, a drop that was so sheer and deep that many people refused to go near the railed edge. We lingered here for quite a while then headed to the base of the infamous El Capitan rock for our last treat of the day. The sun was starting to sink but the sheer rockface was illuminated in a golden glow as we stood in a meadow and tried to spot climbers on the rock. Even with powerful binoculars or with high-powered zoom camera lenses we had difficulty in making out the tiny coloured dots that were teams of climbers. You don’t get the sense of scale in the pictures or even by being at the base of El Capitan - its huge and takes between 3 and 5 days to climb, with the mad, crazy people sleeping in hammocks strung from metal pegs hammered into the vertical cliff face. If this wasn’t enough of an extreme sport, there are also free-climbers who go up without ropes or gear, just their bare hands - and another bunch of crazies who climb the damn thing then jump off with a tiny parachute that they throw out at the last possible moment - free base jumpers. Its one of the “holy grails” of climbing and base jumping but sadly there have been lots of fatalities in the process. We watched and argued over possible sightings until all of us had stiff necks.

Our lodging for the night was a nice clean motel with huge rooms and plenty of hot water in the showers. Joy went in their hot tub and came back a rather unflattering shade of puce and said it was bloody hot. Next morning we were free to do what we wanted in the Valley until 3pm, so we started with a huge buffet breakfast then used the free hop on buses to tour the major areas, stopping to view from beneath many of the places we had been climbing on top of the previous day. We decided that one gentle, reasonably flat walk would be good for our aching legs and made our way leisurely along the 4.8 mile roundtrip along a shady forest path alongside a stream that contained huge boulders bigger than cars, to see Mirror Lake. The man-made area where they built a reflecting pool was grandly named Mirror Lake in the late 19th century and should reflect the view of Mt. Watkins and the rear of Half Dome. In the early summer when it still has water its one of the most popular swimming holes in the Park, but at this time of year the lake is dry. However we did manage to get some imaginative mirror shots in a puddle that was about the size of a small rug and in a tiny stream that was only 3 foot across. The lake bed is made of pale sand so we felt as if we had been on a trip to the beach and because the sand and spring-fed water in the lake is so pure and clean, when the shallow waters froze in Winters during the 19th and early 20th centuries it was a prime site for collecting blocks of ice which were shipped to the city wrapped in thick layers of hay to keep them frozen on the journey.

We saw plenty of wonderful vistas during the day and although the Yosemite Valley is stunningly beautiful, we both preferred the experiences in the high country around the peaks. We had been really lucky to have two beautiful days with blue skies too. We didn’t get to see any bears at all which was a disappointment as many people we met were talking about various sightings of the native black bears (that are actually brown) who are much less aggressive then their grizzly cousins. We did see a few deer, hundreds of squirrels and a couple of tiny chipmunks. Surprisingly we didn’t see or hear many birds, even when we were well away from other people, but the silence you encounter along some of the forest paths is incredibly peaceful.

In the late afternoon we met back up with our Incredible Adventures tour group for one last stop at the River Viewpoint, which is the beautiful scene people see most often when they advertise Yosemite, then we all piled in the bus for the long drive back to San Francisco. On the way we stopped for 45 minutes at a good buffet restaurant for another included meal, reaching our hotel about 9.30pm. We were shattered but it was a wonderful trip and we would definitely recommend going for at least 2 days, as the guys we met who were on day trips were rushed and missed out on lots of the best stuff.

More Californian adventures follow, including our trip to the magnificent Lake Tahoe.

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