In our continuing pursuit of getting into appropriate shape for hunting season (which is only a month away,) we took ourselves another hike this weekend. In the last episode, we’d driven by the trailhead to North Dome but decided that it was a little too far for rookie hikers to start in the middle of the afternoon.
This time, we planned to get after it a little earlier, and boned up on maps and hiking equipment. We plan to do some overnighters starting next spring, so we went a little overkill for our day hike just to test some things out. We dropped off the kids at school and headed for Yosemite on Friday morning, turning up at the trailhead at about 11 AM.
It was a little bit of a cold start for me, with the uphills kicking my butt a bit. Still, I’m in much better shape than I was 30 pounds ago, and part of this trip was to see how I did with the asthma and the altitude. The first half of the hike was pleasantly shaded by the same kind of forest we hunt in, at about 8000 feet. We came across a doe who couldn’t care less about our presence – those Park deer are totally immune to people – so we watched her for a while.
Once we got to a real uphill pull, I started to flag. Junior walked up ahead for a bit so he could push himself physically too, and eventually we came back together. His walking back and forth to me may have added a half mile to his weekend’s mileage total. When we rounded the point of that hill, everything changed. What was once shady forest floor was suddenly bare granite spotted with trees here and there.
We walked out onto Indian Point, at first thinking it was North Dome thanks to the great view of Half Dome to our left. But every time we came to what looked like the end of a dome, we’d look down and there would be more, accessible just over the crest. We were off the trail by then but found it again as we kept going down. I hated to look behind us, because every step down means two or three back up for me. Once we could see North Dome, we obviously had to drop off even lower and come back up it, so we paced ourselves, had a little chocolate fortification, and got to it.
It happened to be that everyone on the Dome at that time was coming off of it, and we were the only ones going up. So once we got there, we had the entire thing to ourselves, spectacular views and all. Now, views are nice and all, but not usually my driving force, but this was incredible. It’s just like us to stumble upon the most fantastic vista in all of Yosemite on our first hiking trip. How are we going to top that next time?
We circled the dome. You’ve got a 360-degree viewpoint from there which encompasses the Yosemite Valley, the Merced River, the front face of Half Dome, Glacier Point, Nevada Falls, Basket Dome, and a whole hell of a lot of high country wildlands beyond. For once, the air was pretty clear up there; I’ve seen Yosemite with such a haze that the mountains are hard to pick out, but this was almost as clear as after a scrubbing thunderstorm, but without the lightning hazard.
We must have spent an hour up there, all by ourselves save for a bold chipmunk and a red-tailed hawk flying below. We could see other trails headed other places, and immediately swore to ourselves that we’d be on them. As crowded and annoying as the valley floor gets, this was as far along the scale towards peaceful.
On the way back, Junior carried my pack through the worst of the climb. Pride was going to stop me from that but common sense prevailed. We found the trail back up Indian Ridge that didn’t go straight up the nose, so it wasn’t quite as hard going as it could have been. When we hit the breakover point between up and down, we sat down and tested out one of our backpacking stove options with a little freeze-dried lunch. We learned a couple of lessons with that that I’m glad came to us on a day hike and not in the middle of nowhere; namely that my belly really does not care for a full meal while still hiking and that small snacks are the way to go until we make camp. Good to know.
By the time we got back to the truck, we’d gone nine miles. Our legs were both tired but we weren’t exhausted. Neither were we ready to call it a weekend, so in spite of only having packed day packs, we pointed the wheels east instead of west. We thought we’d try to get a room in Lee Vining, but ten minutes of circling that town twice (in a summer squall) made it clear that that wasn’t going to happen. As a last resort we spotted Lee Vining’s Chamber of Commerce office and bookstore, and popped in there. The lady working there was a jewel; she told us to head for June Lake, ten miles south, and gave us a flier with hotel phone numbers on it, and suggested one to try. Sure enough, they had plenty of rooms, so we booked a lakeside king and handed our phone to some also-stranded Italian tourists so they could book one too. Then we dropped some money as I discovered that my husband, who is not much for recreational fiction reading, has a serious jones for reference books. I’m happy to play along with that game, so we came out three books and an atlas richer, as well as a complimentary membership to the Mono Lake Committee complete with a neat steel canteen.
We seem to have a gift for leaping blindly and coming up roses these days, and June Lake was exactly our sort of place. It may have been a little touristy, but it’s fishing-touristy, not city-touristy. Only thing was, we rolled in after the sole minimart had closed, so we had to scramble to find a toothbrush the next morning. At least we weren’t out of place in our camoflauge in a higher-end restaurant at dinner. That’s the sort of town where they wonder if you’re bowhunters (that season is open) rather than wonder if you’re crackpots.
Our token reaason for going east was to see the Devil’s Postpile National Monument. I vaguely remembered seeing it when I was a kid, so it was on my list of road trips to be taken. We really weren’t all that far away, so off we went. I hadn’t realized that to get there you have to catch a bus from the very crowded Mammoth Ski Resort, which is a serious mountain bike place in the summer. It was a little bit of a shock, going from peaceful solitude to a sardine can, but there wasn’t any point in turning around.
We hiked down to the Postpile, which was pretty damn cool, and then kept going down to Rainbow Falls. Apparently you can see rainbows there almost any time of day, but not on a day threatening to storm on us. Still, it added another four miles to our weekend total, and got us to see some things which we otherwise wouldn’t have. But every time I see Yosemite, it just makes me want to see more of it, and I think I got my fill of Mammoth in the one shot. Too many people.
Come late afternoon, we were sore and ready to start heading home. Back over Tioga Pass we went with another stop in the Tuolumne Meadows Visitor’s Center for some more reference books and maps. Junior intends to learn to use a compass if it kills us, and I’m having a hard time remembering exactly how to teach it, but we found a good started book on the subject.
He wanted to see the Tuolumne Grove of Giant Sequoias on the way home, so that was our last stop. It’s a two-mile round trip hike, but the first mile is all downhill. Unfortunately, that of course means the last mile is all uphill, and after we saw our very large trees, I got the bit in my mouth and may have become a little stubborn. I was damned if I was going to let the last mile of fifteen kick my ass, so I put it down into granny gear, breathed like a freight train, and huffed and puffed my way up that trail without stopping once. I didn’t even need my inhaler; at this time last year, a hundred feet uphill would have had me wheezing.
So our trip was an unqualified success. We did more than we’d intended to do and had a great time doing it. Now it’s time to plan one last hike before hunting season starts and our hiking reverts to involving dogs and firearms and dragging large amounts of weight behind us. This will be the most prepared for any season I’ll have been, and I plan to get to twice the number of trees as I did last year, all the better to take the pictures.