I am not generally a spontaneous person; I like to plan things out. Jeff and I had plans for this weekend (maybe not perfect plans, but plans nonetheless). As you might guess, our plans didn't exactly work out.
We had been planning to hike the Alder Creek Fall trail (starting at Wawona near Yosemite's south entrance). I worked a slightly short day on Saturday; Jeff picked me up, and we headed straight to Yosemite. The drive was excellent — nice traffic levels, and we saw no fewer than four large gliding birds that we thought were California Condors (I could be wrong — I don't remember seeing white on the bottom of the wings although I didn't get that good a look).
The plan was to stay the night in Wawona, then start on the trail on Sunday morning. It would be a two-day hike, in-and-out, camping at Alder Creek Falls. Unfortunately, what I hadn't planned for well enough was where we would stay the night on Saturday. I had sort of figured that would work itself out, I think; I guess I figured there wouldn't be many people there in the off-season. When we got there and realized that, gee, there were people there and we didn't have campground reservations, we panicked a little and decided to start hiking with the last of the sunlight and camp somewhere on the trail. Then when Jeff tried to fill out a wilderness permit (on paper from my organizer since they were out of actual forms), he noticed that the Alder Creek Trail was closed for controlled burns. Expletive!
This made me pretty mad at the park ranger who had responded to Jeff's query about hiking in the Wawona area that weekend, since she had not mentioned any controlled burns. I'm sure they plan these things in advance, and that's important information!
So scratch those plans. We decided to head to Yosemite Valley in search of (non-reservation) camping opportunities. When we got there, we had a hard time finding it; the visitor's center was closed (which we expected) but had no map posted outside (which would really be useful for people coming after hours!). By way of roadsigns we found the campground reservation office, which was closed as well. It listed campgrounds and their availability; Wawona was apparently not full (doh!), but most in the Valley had no availability. The list included "Camp 4" (tents-only, no reservations), but of course there was no map of where to find it.
We ended up asking some fellow tourists if they knew where Camp 4 was; it turned out that they had a park map, which showed its location. Yay, finally some success! We drove to Camp 4, but the parking lot was completely full, by which we gathered that the campsites were probably full too. Sigh.
At this point it was pretty much dark, and we still had nowhere to stay.
Eventually we got a cabin at Curry Village at about 8pm. We put our bear cans and miscellaneous bear-attracting stuff in our bear locker and then headed to the "Pizza Patio" for dinner. We shared a table with two Germans and a Bulgarian who were working in the Bay Area; that was probably the high point of the day. Then we went back to our unheated cabin, burrowed under four blankets, and fell asleep.
In the morning we readied our packs and headed to the Visitor Center as soon as it opened at 9am. A ranger suggested we hike the Yosemite Falls trail or head up to Vernal Fall and Little Yosemite Valley. We opted for Little Yosemite and headed off pronto.
Unfortunately, this is an extremely popular trail and therefore paved, which made it harder on our feet. Jeff was very unhappy about that, but it was a pretty trail!
This isn't called the Mist Trail for nothing; Vernal Fall throws up a lot of water. (It must be really nice in summer!) I tried to be careful and quick when I took my photos, so I wouldn't get water on the lens.
When we got up above Vernal Fall, we decided to head up the ridge to the John Muir Trail and then over to the top of Vernal Fall. There's also a trail that goes up the north side of the Merced River, but the signage was a little weird, and Jeff thought he had seen something saying that trail was closed.
But then, when we got to the junction with the John Muir trail, that trail was closed in the direction of Vernal Fall! Apparently that section of trail is closed in winter because of snow and rockfall, and since it's a north-facing slope it hasn't yet fully melted. We could have just jumped the gate, but I don't like to do things like that, and neither does Jeff. So we decided we'd head back down the John Muir trail in the other direction.
We still hit some snow, but it wasn't too bad. Crossing it was slightly stressful and tiring, but no catastrophes occurred.
Close to the junction with the Mist Trail, we saw a few bright blue birds that we later determined must be Steller's Jays. We also heard squirrels fussing (at us or at the birds, I'm not sure), and as we got closer the jays started scolding us too. We were obviously intruding on their territory.
When we hit the solid concrete again, Jeff got very unhappy. We got back to the car, eventually, but I needed more breaks than Jeff wanted to give me. He just wanted to get his boots off. We drove back home that night, quite uneventfully.
Overall, the trip was not very successful. I am particularly unhappy with the information we got from the park rangers; I expect them to be knowledgeable about the park trails and their conditions, and I think they should have mentioned relevant trail closures when we asked about our intended destination. Considering that and the crowds, as well as the fact that wilderness passes must be picked up in person, I don't think I'll be hiking in Yosemite again any time soon.
Flickr photo set for this hike: Laurabelle's buddy icon
Vernal Fall and Nevada Fall - Apr 2008. Also check out the Flickr exploration map of the area, including photos that are much better than mine.
