Yosemite Was Magical

Emily (scroll down for Dan's perspective)

It’s taken me awhile to write this particular post just because it’s been difficult to capture just how incredible Yosemite was! Dan and I have agreed that it was easily our favourite place we have visited. Partly because Yosemite is beautiful and full of things to do, but also because we got to share the experiences with great friends - new and old.

I certainly had high expectations for Yosemite. We had seen quite a few documentaries and short films that describe the park as the place to be when it comes to adventure. It’s also the place where a lot of key climbing history was made, including the introduction of free climbing to the US.

El Capitan is undoubtedly Yosemite’s (and maybe the US’) most famous rock formation with its most famous climbing route being The Nose. It was Lynn Hill who was the first person to free climb The Nose in 1992. Up to this point, no one had climbed the route without using aid (pulling up on gear in tough sections). Lynn Hill was also one of the only prominent women climbers on the scene at the time. When she reached the top of of the route, she exclaimed “it goes, boys!”. A year later, she was able to complete the 34 pitch route in just 1 day! It takes average climbers 3-4 days to complete the route using aid. Pretty badass.

More recently, you may have heard of Alex Honnold, who was the first to free solo El Capitan (climbing no rope or gear. Yes, you fall - you die 😑), which was documented in the film Free Solo (a movie that I disliked very much).

El Capitan featuring the Blue Van!

Yosemite's history didn't start with climbers though. Like most of the US National Parks, Yosemite was created at the expense of Indigenous peoples. In this case, the Awhahnee people were displaced. Many of the early explorers (e.g. John Muir) continue to be celebrated today.

On our way to Yosemite, we had to take a pretty significant detour due to a highway that was closed due to extreme flooding. Many parts of California had experienced record levels of snow over the winter (that’s climate change for ya 😔) and now it was all melting! Needless to say, we were a little concerned we might arrive at Yosemite to find everything either closed or un-climbable.

As we entered the park, we saw massive waterfalls gushing from most of the large rock formations, feeding into the Merced River, which was absolutely roaring through Yosemite Valley. Several of the park’s campgrounds were almost completely underwater, and the river was creeping up onto many parts of the road. It was unsettling but also a little beautiful at the same time.

We quickly learned they had just recently closed the park for a week, and issued an alert that they may close the park again in the case that the River’s water level rises too much more. Thankfully, the temps cooled down, slowing the snow melt and, consequently, lowering the water level of the river.

For the majority of our time in Yosemite, we stayed at Camp 4, which is considered the “climber” campground in Yosemite. We were a little concerned about finding a spot given it is an extremely popular campground and it’s first-come-first-served. But we immediately found the perfect campsite with several trees for hammock-hanging and plenty of space for our tent, along with Amy and Bill’s, and our friend James’ who would be joining us shortly!

I immediately texted Amy: “There is a FREE SHOWER at the campground!!!!!”. We had been pretty lucky thus far with finding convenient places to shower every few days, but it was extra nice to shower a little more frequently.

It was pretty neat - Camp 4 was super easy walking or driving distance to a lot of Yosemite’s crags. So for the first few days, Dan and I racked up at the campground and walked less than 15 minutes for a sweet day adventure.

Then our friends arrived! Some of Amy and Bill’s friends that they had met on the road - Stéph, Thom, Hannah, and Corbin - also joined us, and we quickly all became friends.  I have so many amazing memories, but I’ll just share a couple of my favourites.

The biggest highlight for me was probably hiking and climbing Half Dome. Half Dome is less well known than El Capitan, but still one of Yosemite’s most beautiful and prominent points.

We had gone back and forth on climbing Half Dome. It would be a 3-ish hour hike to the base of the route via the Half Dome hiking trail, a few hours of climbing to the summit on a route called Snake Dike, and then another 3-4 hours descent, including descending the Half Dome cables. Looking up at Half Dome when we got to the park, we could see patches of snow on the top. We heard several people say that it likely wouldn’t be climbable until late summer, and we read first-person accounts of folks who hiked the Half Dome trail that they got soaked on the way up and there was a few feet of snow covering parts of the descent trail. We were disappointed, but felt it best to skip it.

Finally, we heard from a few folks who had recently climbed Snake Dike, and confirmed that there was no snow on the route, and the descent was snowy, but doable. I’m SO glad we ultimately decided to do it. Our good friend James also joined us, which made the day extra fun and memorable.

We got an early start, getting to the trailhead around 6am. I hate waking up early, but it is truly magical hiking in the morning light.

Not too long after we started, we found out why hikers were reporting getting soaked on the trail - we had to hike right beside Vernal Falls! Because of the snow melt, the waterfall was way bigger than usual. This was one of my favourite parts of the day. We got soaked as if we jumped in a pool as we ascended steep stony steps beside the falls - it felt super adventurous! The rest of the hike to Snake Dike was fun and breathtakingly beautiful - more waterfalls, bridges over the river, massive trees, and some unique flora:

Dan holding a Sugar Pine pinecone

A beautiful Snow Plant

We made it to the base of Snake Dike in 3ish hours after getting turned around a handful of times (saved by the GPS on James’ watch!). The climbing itself wasn’t super interesting, but it was neat to climb a dike (when one type of rock cuts across the layers of another type of rock). Most of Half Dome is smooth granite, with thin veins of textured rock cutting across it vertically. The very top of the climb turns into what people refer to as the “endless slabs” - meters and meters of low-angled calf-burning climbing. Definitely some type 2 fun that made topping out even more rewarding.

James and I climbing the dike!

We made it to the top! Quite easily one of the most beautiful views I’ve ever seen.

Me taking in the view at the peak of Half Dome

James admiring the view from the peak

For the descent, we had to descend the Half Dome cables. Eventually the park raises the cables so hikers can hold onto them as they hike up/down, but they hadn’t been erected yet, so we used prusik knots to secure ourselves to the cables to go down.

James and I descending the cables

Next came about 3.5 km of steep-ish hiking in the snow, followed by another several hours of hiking to get back to the van. The trail was beautiful but we were totally beat. We had a goal of getting back  before 8pm so we could go out for pizza, so that kept us going at a swift pace. I was very unfortunately suffering from thigh chafing from my wet pants so I had to hike like a penguin for the last half hour.

We made it! We ate the pizza and guzzled down some delicious drinks.

Some other sweet memories:

-On one of our first days, we discovered that Yosemite had a FREE bike share. All 9 of us searched for bikes so we could go get pizza in the village. We only found 7, so Amy and I rode in the bike baskets.

-Celebrating Amy’s birthday! Starting the day with a pancake breakfast, followed by scoping out the famous boulder Midnight Lightning that sits right in the middle of Camp 4, walking to El Capitan Meadow to play scrabble with a view of El Cap, playing frisbee and having a super fun campfire where we traded stories of our adventures.

Ever had Oreo pancakes? Surprisingly quite good

Dan trying the first moves on Midnight Lightning

Scrabble in El Capitan Meadow

-Dan and I ticking off a good number of Yosemite “classic” climbing routes.

-Witnessing someone run after one of the park's creepy massive ravens that stole their big bag of pistachios and flew away, followed by a war over the bag between at least 10 ravens + 2 brave squirrels. James swooped in and won the fight (by taking the pistachios away).

-When we volunteered at the disc golf tournament in Stockton, we got yellow t-shirts that say “STAFF” in bolded capital letters on the back. At first, Dan was puzzled by why he was getting so many questions about the park by random people in Yosemite. We eventually figured it out when someone shouted at him “HEY STAFF!”.

-Seeing and learning about the giant sequoias in Mariposa Grove - the tallest trees on Earth. Some of the trees we saw were thousands of years old!

-Our last day together with Amy and Bill where we did a little multi pitch climb together, got served super strong margaritas at the Yosemite Lodge bar, and then parked our vans next to one another to make a “tunnel” with the doors and made a delicious curry.

When we were driving out of the park, I really didn’t want to leave. Dan and I are already talking about how and when we can go back!

Next stop - San Francisco!

--

Dan

Yosemite is the best. We had a really great time here and I can’t wait to go back.

Going into it we were a little worried about the camping situation in the Valley. There’s a 7 day limit for camping there and the best option for camping outside the park involves sleeping on a pullout just outside the park limits. Turns out though things are a lot more chill then we thought they would be. At least during May when we were there. Nobody was enforcing the 7 day rule and lots of people were spending the night in the park without a campsite with no issues. I did end up meeting somebody who did overstay their welcome and got a 230$ ticket but it seems if you move around a bit you shouldn’t be bothered.

We ended up spending the first couple of days sleeping at the pullout but then we got a campsite at Camp 4 which is kind of famous for being the campground that all the legendary climbers stayed at while they were dirtbagging in the park. The documentary Valley Uprising gives a really great history of climbing in the valley if you’re interested in knowing more.

The first few days we took our time getting used to the climbing in Yosemite. Granite climbing is probably my favourite and I’ve climbed a bunch in Squamish over the years but the rock here is known to be a lot more polished and slippery from the glaciers that carved out the valley. Also being such an old school climbing area the grades are known to be a little sandbagged (I.e. hard). Em and I were pretty happy how comfortable we felt on the moderate routes we were doing. The climbing was really fun and the grades felt a lot easier compared to Joshua Tree.

After a few days our friends Amy and Bill made it in along with our friend James who was taking a vacation from Ottawa. We moved into camp 4 with them and the valley started to feel kind of homey now since we didn’t have to shuttle in and out of the park everyday. Amy and Bill’s friends from Baja also made it up the same day as them so we had a pretty big group now which was a fun change.

Other great things about the camping in Yosemite. There were free showers and in Curry Village campground they even gave you a towel!! When you’re living in a van these perks really feel luxurious. There was also a free bike share program which was a really fun way to get around the Valley. The highlight was when we were able to get 7 bikes together for 9 of us. We rode together to get pizza for international pizza party day and Em got to sit in my bike basket at the front. It felt like we were a high school bike gang.

It’s been a dream of mine for a while to climb the Nose which is probably the most famous climb in the world and takes you up to the top of El Capitan. Unfortunately it’s not in the cards for us anytime soon. There’s a lot of aid climbing technique and gear I would need to learn to do it. In the camp 4 parking lot you could see climbers laying out all their gear getting prepped for some big walling.

We were able to do a bunch of classic climbs while we were there though. You can google Nutcracker, After Seven, Central Pillar of Frenzy, and East Buttress of Middle Cathedral to get of sense of some of the climbs we did. Overall they were really fun and good! All the climbs in the valley reward you with spectacular views.

One classic I was happy we got to do was Snake Dike. This climb is very technically easy and takes you up to the top of Half Dome bypassing the cables people usually use to get to the top.

Photo featuring Half Dome

This climb is sometimes referred to as Snake Hike because the wall is so low angled that it’s basically all you’re doing. Your arms are just there for balance and your legs are doing all the work.

Dan leading Snake Dike

With an almost 4 hour hike to just get to the base of the climb, seven pitches of climbing, and 1000ft of calf burning slab, the three of us (me, Em, and James) we’re pretty pooped by the time we got to the top.

The view was worth it though and we spent a good amount of time just relaxing and taking pictures at the top.

We then descended the cables and started our 3 hour hike back to the Valley. What really kept us going throughout the day was the promise that we would get pizza back at Curry Village. It tasted very very good.

Overall I don’t think I would ever do the climb again because it’s so long and slightly sketchy but I’m happy we did. Now I never have to think about it again.

One of the worst parts of our time in the Valley was Memorial Day weekend. When you’re working long weekends are awesome but when you’re living the retired life long weekends bring in an insane amount of people. We had to spend 2 hours one day just trying to get into the park on our way to see the Sequoias and on another day we spent hours circling to get a parking spot at the campground where we had a campsite booked! We had ambitions to do some climbing but I think I lost my mind a bit dealing with all that traffic so we got ice cream and beer instead.

After all that craziness we climbed for a few more days and we did a fun little multi pitch together with Bill and Amy called Munginella. On our last day Emily tried another classic called Reed’s pinnacle. We ended up having to wait quite a bit because the group ahead of us was having a really hard time getting up the second pitch. They took a few falls and ended up having to bail. I also ended up struggling a lot but luckily I had enough gear to just aid my way up. It felt kind of good to struggle on something because I was feeling like I hadn’t pushed myself too much on this part of the trip.

It was a little sad leaving. We definitely could have stayed longer there’s just so much stuff to do. I definitely want to come back one summer and check out other areas of the park that were closed like Tuolumne Meadows.

Random things I’ll remember:

-the red bike that didn’t move the whole time we were there except the time James took it for a spin.

-The dirt bag artist scene in the valley which consisted of big white bearded men with raggedy clothes craning their necks with a seemingly insatiable desire to paint the beauty around them

-10$ Oreos, an 89$ thin as hell t shirt but also only 1.79$ tall boys

-The guy who borrowed our kitchen scissors to cut his hair and then inquired if we knew anybody doing stick and poke tattoos in the park.