Satisfied, showered and happy to see another couple in love take the plunge, Liz and I nosed the Subie Easterly to find Yosemite National Park. Liz had spent all of one real day at the park in 2002, and I had only done one real hike myself in 2003, so we were completely geeked to get to spend a week in our favorite park.
Arriving late on Sunday night, we got our backpacking permit at the Hetch Hetchy wilderness station and immediately found out that our planned campsite (Tamarack Flat) was a) Full and b) only taking reservations, anyways. Taking it as a sign to stay put, we pulled into the Hetch Hetchy backpackers campground and took to completely sorting out our car of all bear-attracting things. We took a walk of the reservoir that nearly killed John Muir (spiritually, not literally.. though that could be argued) and eventually got some sleep.
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| Hetch Hetchy Reservoir |
The morning found us excited to get to the beginning of our trip, a hike we originally read about in
Backpacker last year. The original recipe (and hook of the article) was that the hike began from the valley floor on very old, rockslidden road that is no longer listed on any maps. Doing a little poking around and reading trip reports revealed that not only is the beginning portion of the hike on said rockslidden road sketchy, but difficult and not necessary. A cursory examination of the area gave us our starting point of the Tamarack Flat Campground and a downhill jaunt to where the original recipe met us at Cascade Creek. From there, we actually continued on up to Ribbon
Creek where we camped next to El Cap for day 1. The 2000' ascent in less than 2 miles was a bit of a burner, and we got to enjoy the late snow melt running down the granite slope of Ribbon Creek to celebrate our first night.
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| On top of El Cap |
The next day was another 7 miles, though this time punctuated by crazy-awesome views of the valley as we continued. We first topped El Cap, and I scrambled down to see the spot where most climbers ascend from climbing this monster. Scampering around and up to Eagle Peak proved to give the best (and highest) views of the valley for the entire week - and the day eventually ended on the banks of Yosemite Creek, directly before it turned into Yosemite Falls.
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| The view from Eagle Peak |
Day 3 began with the knowledge that it was our longest day, and day 2 had ended with some nasty blisters from our dainty feet who were not used to actually carrying weight. (wah!) Taking a glance off of Yosemite Point and greasing up with sunscreen and DEET, we made it around multiple creeks to eventually have lunch on top of North Dome and get yet another perspective on the valley. From there its a good five miles around to the top of the Snow Creek trail and our campsite on the lip of the valley wall that was
literally directly across from Half Dome. This site won for best campsite of the entire trip (including every other campsite we'd come across in Washington, Oregon and California) and gave us an awesome show at sundown.
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| Half Dome Sunset |
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| Day 3 Campsite Under Cloud's Rest |
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| A Lovely Spot for Breakfast |
The final day began with the 2500' descent over 1.5 miles to Tenaya Creek and a deluge of tourists at Mirror Lake. We made some friends who were also doing nearly the same hike as us for the week, and were very graciously given a ride back to our little car hiding out on the wrong side of the valley from where we ended up. That night we ended up having dinner in Lee Vining just East of the Park at the Mobil gas station, where we had the best fish tacos we've ever had. Seriously. At the Mobil. The whole California segment of our trip was capped with a free campsite just south of Mono Lake, where we were basically on a large sandy beach covered with sage and juniper and another nice view of the sunset.
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| Mono Lake Campsite |
As far as having a first time multi-day backpacking experience goes, ours was incredibly rewarding and a lot of fun. We feel like our wimpy car-camping personas were (finally) stretched and are excited to explore more of our own backyard in such a fashion... as soon as I can talk myself out of needing a real pillow. Seriously. Real pillows are amazing.
To catch all of the shots, head over to
the set on Flickr. And I finally tagged all of our recent pictures to show up on the
Flickr Map, if that suits your fancy.
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3 comments:
I'm gonna take "best fish taco's" with a grain of salt. You were weary from all the hiking and smitten by the lands around you. How could a gas station have fresh cilantro, grilled fish, fresh tomatoes, crunchy cabbage and a great sauce... Sir I must ask you to come to your senses!
Nope, the comment stands. All of the things that you include as being useful for fish tacos were on the plate.
for reals. just google the phrase 'Lee Vining Mobil station'
Liz: I will also defend the best fish taco title. 2 tacos, one prepared with a fresh mango cilantro salsa, the other prepared with a ginger horseradish cole slaw. Hiker's hunger, aside, this were some amazing fish tacos.
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