If you visit Yellowstone, you have to see Old Faithful. We’ve been in Yosemite for 5 full days and we’ve seen beauty that the average visitor doesn’t even know exists. When we hiked into Tuolumne Meadows yesterday, we missed the idea of Covid because it was so damn crowded. We had to wait in lines for everything. We’ve been in the backcountry where the only waiting we do is for Bear and Sassy to get ready in the morning and Bear and Sassy only wait for us to climb a hill (be it 10’ or 1100’, it’s sad).
As always when we come into crowds, we can smell the brand of laundry detergent of the people we pass. Thank god Axe seems to be falling out of favor with the twenty-something males. We present a unified single smell to the tourist, a subtle mixture of sweat, dried urine, and the occasional whiff of dead flowers since we forget we can’t fart in public. I’m thinking we’ve all become pretty deft at the clenched cheek SBD (silent but deadly). It’s fun to walk 50’ behind a hiker in a crowd of tourists and suddenly see the crowd disperse. It brings a tear of pride to the eye.
The Yarts bus schedule said there would be a bus to the valley departing at 8:31. I am my grandfather’s grandson. He told me three things as a little kid: 1) more than a mouthful goes to waste (hmm, that may have been part of my dad’s sex talk), 2) always go to the funeral, and 3) if you’re not 20 minutes early, you’re late. Bear suggested we leave the campsite at 8:15. I countered with let’s be at the store by 8. Bunny and I were cold and lonely until they arrived at 8:15. We all got on the same bus.
It’s an hour and a half ride down to the valley. Not once do we leave the park. This is an amazingly large and beautiful place. It can also be scary driving by a few controlled burns that are active as well as seeing the results of recent, uncontrolled burns. After 7-10 years, the areas begin to look inviting again.
Other than burns, there are amazing alpine lakes with sandy beaches, stunning views, more granite domes than I ever knew existed, and then, there’s Yosemite Valley. We were expecting crowds: they were there. We were expecting high prices: check. We hoped for cell service and/or WiFi: got it. We thought we had seen the best of Yosemite already: hold the phone, we have and haven’t.
Yosemite Valley is a 2000’ deep box. The valley floor is pretty flat, level, and square with the walls. Usually a valley has an arced rise up the canyon walls. Not so here. It’s as square as nature can get. About 100 million years ago…wait, let’s go a bit further back, to pre cell phone times. The domes we see now were once lava flows that pushed up thousands of feet but didn’t break the surface. Over time erosion washed away the softer rock and dirt covering the granite domes. Then, 100 million years ago, (I knew I could get us more current) in a huge ice age, glaciers almost a mile deep pushed through the valley pushing all the sediments off of, and fully exposing the domes and valley walls. When the glaciers receded and melted, they left behind 2000’ of sediment that was trapped in the ice. The valley is actually 2000’ deeper than it appears. If we dug out the 2000’ of sediment, we’d have a granite floor that matches the walls we see. Instead, we have Half Dome, El Capitan, and the other formations we all know by sight, but only in their stunted 2000’ form.
That’s really what we wanted to see, the canyon walls and the familiar formations we all know from Ansel Adams. Since we could see the actual items in his pictures, we chose to visit his gallery to see the pictures of what we saw outside so we could say “I just saw that” and not feel obligated to pay $7500 for a picture that isn’t even framed (did I mention we expected high prices?).
After that was accomplished, we had a few more tasks in mind. Mainly snacking followed by eating, followed by dessert, and another bite to tide us over until supper. We might be getting our hiker appetites after a mere 200 miles of hiking.
Once we got off the bus, we needed a snack to tide us over until we could find a meal. The first place we came upon was a coffee shop with a bakery. Cinnamon Rolls and coffee will work for the 20 minutes it takes us to walk to the Ahwahnee Hotel, a grand old hotel near the base of Half Dome. Here, we could have a semi-sit down meal.
Afterwards, we explored the hotel and took advantage of the presence of cell signal to call family we haven’t been able to talk to for almost 2 weeks and make use of WiFi. It was here that we discovered our Good Samaritan act we performed on July 11 was all for naught. I’m talking about the small fire we reported just off of the trail North of Sonora Pass near the rock formation known as the Nipple. What was a little smouldering burn of less than an acre has now grown into a major burn of 40,000 acres with less than 4% containment. The Forest Service opted not to extinguish the fire when we reported it and the storms about a week ago that pinned us down, hailed on us, and scared Bunny, whipped the fire up and allowed it to jump over the ridge. The PCT is still open in the area, but many hikers heading towards it are rightly concerned.
We tried to go to the visitor center to see a film about Yosemite and some of the history of the area, but it was closed because of Covid. We wanted to have a canyon bus tour, but they were cancelled because of Covid. So we did what we know best, we had ice cream and I had another cheeseburger to hold me over for the hour and a half ride back to Tuolumne Meadows and supper. I think we ingested enough extra calories to cover our deficit for the next 3 days into Mammoth Lakes. To be on the safe side, we won’t leave until after the store opens in the morning and we can get one more high calorie meal…say a giant burrito and coffee.
EFG