1 Year Pictures and Yosemite...A great combination Pt. 2

Tunnel View at Sunset

Well that was longer than I expected between posts, but it is what it is. The second part of this combo post will be recapping my trip to Yosemite for Milan's 30th. I'm not sure if it was the fact that he is moving back to Minnesota or turning 30, but he decided the best way to spend it was hiking in a national park. Either way, I signed up and it turned out to be a great time. 

After flying into San Francisco we made the 2.5 drive to our house in Groveland, CA where we were spending the long weekend. If you are ever in need of someone to diligently search VRBO for the best deal, ask Wyatt. He is a pro. This location was about 1 hour away from most of the trail heads, which was pretty manageable. 

View from the Glacier Point trailhead of Half Dome

After a good night's sleep, all 12 of us woke up at the crack of dawn and headed towards the park for a day of hiking and adventure. Wyatt and I determined that the Pohono trail would be the best option for us. It had a lot of great views, a mix of forest and mountains...however it was long 14 miles. As you can see, the views started out spectacular as soon as we arrived at the trailhead. 

Day 1 Crew - Vipul

We stopped to take a group picture around the 3 mile marker (at the turnoff for Sentinel Dome). As you can see we are already down to 11 people. Vipul developed some cramping about 1 mile in and had to turn around and go back down. The camera did tilt a little, which cut Deepak off a bit...but overall it turned out great since it was sitting on my Camelbak in the dirt. 

After continuing the rest of the way up Sentinel, we had an amazing 360 degree view of the mountain range. None of the pictures I took do it justice, so just imagine the picture on the right as your view in every direction. 

We continued on, eventually stopping to eat lunch just prior to reaching the forest section of our trail. One of the best lunch views I have ever had. After a short rest it was time to continue on. 

The next few sections are going to be a little picture heavy, with a few random comments mixed in. 

Perspective: Look how small the people are.

This moss was everywhere

All of the trails are marked with these cool signs

This 'small' tree was probably 14' tall

Its all downhill from here.

We ended Day 1 with a great sunset while walking towards Tunnel View (opening picture). All in all, I had a great hike. I was a little sore, but no blisters or pulled muscles. The rest of the group...not so lucky.

Day 2 Crew @ Vernal Falls

The Day 2 hike started off pretty similar to the Day 1 version...except we were 9 people short. The Mist Trail turned out to be about as hard as the first day even though it was only 8 miles long. The difficulty was primarily from the 1,900 ft of elevation gain (in a shorter distance = lots of stairs) and it was taking place on a much warmer day.

As you can see, the Mist Trail gets it's name from the Vernal and Nevada Falls that you walk right next to. It is a pretty cool site. If you enlarge (click on) the picture on the right, you can see people coming out of the woods (right center) and walking up stair after stair towards the left side.  

Nevada Falls

Day 2 lunch view

The view from the top was worth every step! We ended up having another great lunch view even though this area was 200x more crowded than Day 1. On Day 1 we saw less than 10 people that weren't in our group...over 8.5 hours! On Day 2, we were constantly passing or being passed by people for entire 4 hour hike. Great views, but I'm not sure I enjoyed the constant flow of people. 

Up close view of Half Dome during lunch.

Half Dome and Nevada Falls

Day 2 and our hiking adventure ended with a trip to the Rainbow Pools which are about 15 minutes away from our house and on the way back from Yosemite. 

The view from up top is a little nerve-racking and you are definitely in the air longer than you would expect...but it was worth jumping off. A fun end to the trip.