Spring in Yosemite is a wonderful thing. The crowds are still manageable, the weather is beautiful, and the waterfalls are full of water.
On our way into the park we stopped to take at the valley..
Next it was into the valley to the Upper Pines campground where we setup camp in the warm mid-day temps. We had a great spot by some beautiful rocks and a soft pine covered ground…
a gentle running stream was also running down the side of our campsite…
After our tents were setup and our gear stowed it was time to gather some firewood. Gathering firewood is no longer allowed in the valley so we drove out of the valley to look for dead wood along the road…
This second spot had tons of nice size wood for burning
and dry enough to break up and put into the car… look at a job well done 🙂
After getting the wood back to camp Sara and I changed into hiking gear and headed toward the mist trail just up the road from our camp. From a bridge over the water we get our first view of vernal falls the the rocky stream…
The climb up to Vernal Falls is a set of steep stone steps that are often covered with mist from the waterfall…
There is a reason they call this the mist trail heading up to vernal falls, you can see in this video how the mist flows over the trail and creates a rainbow in the afternoon light…
Vernal and Navada Falls Video
The view from the top of Vernal falls is amazing with the rushing water going right by us down into the valley…we will see this view from another vantage point on our next hike..stay tuned…
Heading up the trail across a bridge on the river we headed to Nevada Falls.
Nevada Falls was really flowing hard, as you can see behind Sara….
That was all the hiking we had for the day so we head down (which is almost harder) to camp to meet with the Kara, Jim and John and get dinner going..
Saturday was for trying out some new hikes that Jim had for us to try. The first hike was Sierra Point and is off of the start of the Mist Trail.
Lets just say that this trail starts up directly up hill…you can see John below hanging onto an old cable to help himself up the hill
Closer to the top an old trail emerges. Apparently this was once a “regular” trail in the valley however many trails are abandoned and let to go back to the forest…
There are views like of the valley while hiking up the trail.. you can see Upper Yosemite Falls off in the distance. We get up close and person with it on Sunday so stay tuned…
The viewpoint into the valley was breathtaking…
Check out this video of us struggling up the hill and arriving at Sierra Point – magnificent viewpoint…
Video of Sierra Point
After that first hike we were psyched to find another gem of a trail. The next trail was one called Fern Ledge and would lead us to a view spot to the right of the base of Upper Yosemite Falls.
The initial hiking was by the horse stables and then into the forest
It wasn’t long before we were climbing up over these huge granite boulders.
and then we started to traverse looking for the trail to show itself, and that is where we found we made our mistake because we hadn’t gone high enough yet to pick up the Fern trail.
After over non-trail for awhile we gave up and went down and studied where we had been and John and Jim started obsessing 🙂 over how to get it done next time. The views up to the rocky peaks above were amazing, and we will get it next time…
On the way back to the valley I saw this guy out of place in his grove of tree’s, but man does he stick out…
Wanting to do another short hike we hopped on the valley bus (free) and headed over to the Mirror Lake trail. We hiked up the horse trail on one side of the lake. In recent years the park service has stopped dredging the lake and it is slowly turning back into a meadow.
After hiking for awhile we could see the beautiful lake. What we couldn’t find is a way to get across the lake to head back… So leave it to John to take the hit and he took off his hiking pants and waded across the lake…
So we all took off our shoes, zipped off our pant legs and waded. Let me just say the water was painfully cold this time of year..
After getting or stuff together and looking for way to the trail we noticed that lots more people that saw us were lining up on the edge of the water, getting ready and going across the water….John is a trend setter :)!
From this side of Mirror Lake you can look up and see the back side of Half Dome towering above us.
The impressive picture in the past I hear was always taking a picture of the reflection of half dome in the water of mirror lake.. I kind of like this view as well – what do you think?
Sunday morning we ate breakfast, closed up the camp and headed over to hike the Upper Yosemite Falls Trail. This is a maintained trail but is pretty steep going up and we were pretty sure we didn’t have time do hike it all unless we wanted to get home really late.
We started up the steep trail and saw this view of Upper Yosemite Falls as we rounded a corner..
Jim showed us another lookout on the way down where we could see the Upper Middle and Lower Yosemite Falls.
The view from here was amazing to see the upper falls and the pools below..
especially how far down it was to the valley floor
The hike down went well and we parted ways with Jim and Kara
to checkout the climbers on El Capitian in the meadow. It was a great trip (too short) but we are already talking about when we will come back and explore this great park again.
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