And we love and we shove it aside
Aside
-Dispatch
I think we’re ready to declare the Day 14 curse officially lifted. The only real negative of the day for me was that I only slept about two hours in the yurt last night. Between the people showering, cleaners cleaning, babies crying, and bears prowling (I assume) I didn’t manage to doze off until after 1AM and the baby woke me up again at about 3. With our alarms set for 4:30 I did my best to fall back asleep, but without any success.
Once everyone else was awake the rest of the day was all uphill. WAY uphill. 3,600 feet uphill. After transferring the food back to Fred one more time we made it to the trailhead by 5:30. We geared up and grabbed a Clif Bar and made our way onto the trail just before 6.
There were only a couple other groups of hikers who had begun as early as us. A group of three guys passed us pretty early on, and a group 5 hikers leapfrogged us a few times before we ended up taking the lead for good. Most of the time we were on our own on the Yosemite Falls/Point Trail. There were beautiful views of the Falls as well as the Valley at various points along the climb. We moved quickly and easily. I think we were actually all a bit shocked at how easy the climb was.
Our first stop at the top was the Upper Yosemite Falls Viewpoint. The name must refer to the view of the valley, because the Falls were just barely visible. We did get the experience of hiking what has been the scariest trail so far. To reach the final viewing area it is necessary to walk on a foot wide ledge of rock with a metal railing bolted in on one side and a 3,00 foot drop on the other. We didn’t stay long, but pressed on to Yosemite Point instead. Even with numerous stops for pictures, snacks, and rests we were to Yosemite Point by 9. We were able to enjoy the vista on our own for 10 minues or so before another hiker joined us. This spot was the highlight of the day.
Ellie took a fall just below the summit of Yosemite Point and scraped up her knee to coordinate with Zoe’s injury from a few days ago. After cleaning and bandaging her up she bounced right back and rarely even mentioned it the rest of the day.
The hike back down was in many ways the polar opposite of the hike up. As soon as we repassed the Upper Falls area we began encountering throngs of people. At first the were normal hikers like us, but they quickly shifted the the obnixiously stupid type. The worst was a guy wearing flip-flops and carrying a portable speaker blaring at full volume with three small kids in tow. When we encountered a pile of human poop on the trail a bit further down I was certain that it was either from speaker guy or one of his kids.
It was also really hard. I’ve always had a harder time with down than up, and that was totally obvious today. It was exhausting trying to keep myself from falling down the slippery rock. Finally, it was really hot. On the way up we’d had shade most of the way and the temperature was about 20 degrees lower. We all persisted though, and made it to the bottoom together with positive attitudes intact.
We did have one really cool encounter on the way down – a bobcat. I was walking in the front of our group and saw it cross the trail in front of me. I called back to everyone else and they were able to catch a glimpse of it and then double back up the previous switchback to catching crossing again. In the morning on our way up we had also come across a deer walking back down the trail as we were coming up. We both stopped and looked at each other. As they say on the trail we “saw a deer, it saw us too.” We stepped as far to the side as we could and told it to go ahead past. It understood, bounded by us, and continued on its way.
The other major highlight of the day was dinner at In-n-Out, our only one of the trip. I wish I could go back in time and have it again. We also had a six hour drive today, so that combined with everything else has me ready to go to sleep.
