Annabel and Dave's Awesome Adventures: Yosemite Valley

Unbelievable views of half dome and the valley along the route

We did a walk in the valley, which is really the main tourist location in the Yosemite national park. For those who have been following the news, Yosemite was featured quite a lot recently because of an outbreak of Hantavirus, which has a 30% mortality rate. For a while authorities couldn't work out where it was coming from. They managed to narrow it down to a few cabins in a particular campsite. The carriers are deer mice, and they were living in the double walls of these cabins. There sure were a lot of deer around, so I can only assume that there are an equally large number of deer mice hanging out too.

Some of the many deer in the park - they were pretty mangy too

Non-existent lower Yosemite falls - you have to use your imagination

It feels very much like a resort in Yosemite valley, you are encouraged not to drive around, but instead use the free shuttles. There is a grocery store, and library, and post office there. But no one really lives there, and the thousands of people you see are either camping in one of the designated campsites or in one of the hotels. Walking around at dusk it felt almost like being in a resort in Thailand, it just had that same atmosphere, everyone there was obviously on holiday.

Ground squirrel - masquerading as a chipmunk - the cutest rodent ever, with a piece of Dave's apple core

No water here

At first we were planning just a walk along the valley floor, there are a lot of waterfalls and things to see, but then it quickly became clear that you could just drive (or catch the shuttle bus) between all these stops. And it wasn't so fun just walking alongside the road. So at the first opportunity we changed our plan to instead scale the cliffs and walk to Upper Yosemite falls instead. It was well worth the plan change, even though we were seriously lacking in both food and water and both only wearing sneakers, which made for a sketchy descent in some parts.

It wasn't a very long walk, in terms of horizontal distance, but the vertical distance was a bit of a killer, more than 800m over only 6kms. The last third is tough, endless switch-backs, with the sun blazing straight down on you, and no breeze since the trail is climbing a cleft between two ridges. Let's just say it was nice to reach the top of the cliff at that point. At the top of the falls you are at almost 2000m, which is again so incredible to me. That sounds like it should be alpine, and yet it was incredibly hot and you were surrounded by pine trees and I was in shorts, desperate for a drink.

The dry, dry upper Yosemite Falls, you can kind of see where the water falls - this is halfway up the climb

Enjoying the view at the top

I wonder how many rescues have to be performed during the summer though. The walks all seem incredibly tough, in that they all have some climb in the 100s of metres and yet it can be so hot. And Yosemite has to be one of the more popular parks in the US. When we were climbing up we certainly passed some people in distress, looked like some sort of heat exhaustion. I don't know which is worse, heat or cold. I mean with cold you can wear more clothes, but with heat it's hard to combat, especially with no water, and it was dry as a bone up there. I was kind of hoping since we were walking to upper Yosemite falls that there would be somewhere to dip my hat along the way. All there was were distant, dried up ponds, not a trickle coming over the falls. You could see where the water would go if it was running, but not as impressive as after the winter snow melts.

Cannot get enough of that view - Dave at the top of the falls

Me with the sheer cliff faces, we climbed up the ridge to the left

This trail is apparently one of the oldest in the park, being built by 1877, which is quite impressive when you see the terrain it has to climb up. The falls themselves are one of the largest in the world, coming in at number 7, and the highest in the US. I'm not sure how this is measured though, since the falls actually consists of the Upper, Middle and Lower Yosemite falls, and the total drop is taken as the combined fall of all three of these.

Not only did we finish with an unbelievable view, but we also got some pretty cool fauna that day. We saw the mangy deer (least impressive), chipmunk-type ground squirrel, stellar jay, they kind of look like a prettier jackdaw, with more iridescent feathers, but one of the best was a woodpecker. We actually got to see it pecking at a tree, and because we had our binoculars with us (what self-respecting birder wouldn't) we got to see it fairly close up. It had chosen a tree quite close to a hotel though, so people walking past probably thought we were spying on the hotel guests. I wanted to point out the woodpecker to them, but they didn't have binoculars, loser non-birders.

What can I say - I can't get enough of that view!

Looking across to Glacier Point - where we had been the day before

The walk started at camp 4, which is one of the designated campsites in the valley, it was packed when we walked through. It looked like a major mecca for rock climbers, they were all over the place. The rangers were fairly insistent on anti-bear measures. All food had to be in these massive bear-proof containers, they were like small shipping containers. I wonder just how many bears they get in these campsites. Even with those precautions there must be heaps of bears around, just looking at the numbers of squirrels feeding off the humans. That would be a scary sight, walking up in the night to find a bear prowling around. Apparently if the rangers see one in the campsites they let off fireworks to try and scare the thing to death, or at least to never returning.

Dave - savouring the top

The incredible cliff faces we walked alongside

One of the main people who really pushed for the creation of Yosemite National Park was John Muir, they have all these little monuments to him all over the park. Dave and I were in Glasgow the other week, and while we were there we learned that this John Muir was actually a Scot, born near Edinburgh. He lived in Yosemite for 3 years, eventually returning to civilisation and getting married. Must have been a strange 3 years, I don't think there was a grocery store, or library when he was living here.