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Day 2, 5pm - Lake Merced, West End
Found a hidden campsite on the lake with a well-maintained fire ring. Set up camp, bathed, and ate Indian food. First part of the hike today was crossing the amazing and windy Vogelsang Pass at 11,600 ft. Gorgeous views and crazy granite formations with trees growing right on top of them. Descended pretty quickly into redwood/pine forest and had some good views of Lewis Creek and the surrounding granite Mtns. This was the best part of the hike today... J would have loved it: Soft ground, pretty trees, lots of birds and tiny chipmunks and a few deer really close. But still no bears.
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| Lake Merced and Half-Dome From Yosemite |
Today's views were great but the walk was brutal. I can't imagine going the opposite way, but sure 'nuff, we crossed paths with a few. The campsite we're at now has lots of cute birds and a few mosquitos are bugging us, but hopefully smoke from the fire will get rid of them. Also, we saw a small black snake and a big black lizard with a blue chin. Crazy.
Day 3 - Lima Bean Lake, ~1 mile north of Long Meadow
I was really slow and tired on the trail today. The beautiful Echo Valley (just past Lake Merced) quickly gave way to a short climb up a sheer granite face (via many switchbacks) and then we were in this amazing meadow that had recently burned. Huge granite peaks towered over us all around. We made good time through the meadow, surrounded by short pines and huge old burned ones, which shared the space with tall grasses and shurbs. Amazing scenery. Hopefully the photos do justice. When we came out of the meadow, we hit a small climb that brought us to a water-smoothed granite surface with a trickle of Echo Creek running through it and a bunch of flat rocks that made for the perfect lunch spot. The sun was out, a gentle breeze was blowing, there was shade, fresh cool water, and a huge sharp peak to one side and a deep glacial valley on the other side (where we had come from)... these are the moments and places that will really stick out in my memory! Then we had another (slow) climb to finish off the day's 2000 ft. elevation gain (over 6 miles) to put us back around 10 K feet in beautiful Long Meadow.
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| From Yosemite - Showing the Perfect Lunch Spot |
Then a funny thing happened. See, we had been planning on staying around Long Meadow b/c the topo map shows lots of water and creeks around that area. In fact, one of the backpacker's campsites is there, as is a summer-only High Sierra Camp. So we told one of the wilderness rangers: "hey... we're gonna stay up in Long Meadow near Sunrise Lakes." They told us we'd be fine and that's a good place to stay because there's water up there. Great. The only problem was that although the whole meadow (all 2 miles long by half-a-mile wide of it) was bone dry!
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| From Yosemite - Showing the dried-up Echo Creek in Long Meadow |
No water had touched the bottoms of those watering holes in weeks! Dry, cracked clay and yellowing grasses were plentiful, but water was nowhere to be seen. Even a huge section of Echo Creek was bone dry! Things were getting serious, too, since it was already 4 pm and Cathedral Lakes -- the nearest source of permanent water in the direction we were supposed to be going tomorrow -- were about 4 miles away. There's a small chance we would have rolled in to Cathedral Lakes just before sunset, but it would have been tough since my knee was really causing me problems on hills today. Well, we saw a small lake about a mile away to the North (the direction of travel for tomorrow, anyway) and about a quarter-mile off the trail. It was un-named and didn't have a real trail going towards it, but it looked pretty flat around there and it was at least on the way to Cathedral Lakes... So we chanced it, and even though the creeks that drain this little mud hole (which Dan kept calling "Lima Bean Lake") were bone dry, too, there was still some water. Yay!
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| From Yosemite - Showing the best campsite ever! |
We had a great snack while watching the sunset (black bean hummus and tortillas) and made a fire and ate dinner. A great evening in the best campsite (see link and see above) we've had all trip!
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| From Yosemite - The mud hole that offered us water at sunrise on Saturday |
I'm so glad I could get out here. Calif. can be dry and dusty but it's so pretty.... Being in Texas, now, I really miss the mountains and it's so great to get fresh air and water.
Okay... sorry this second posting took so long to get up. It appears there will have to be a Yosemite (Part III) posted later this week, whenever I get time. We've had visitors last week and again this week, so keep your browsers pointed here for updates (or better yet, simply get the feed so that you know whenever there's updates!)
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