Yosemite Valley

[Hobbes]

Any of you Bay Area peeps planning on hitting the Valley this week? As a kid growing up in Saratoga in the 60-70s, my dad always waited for this kind of May weather to make the call. If it was during the week, he'd pull us out of school, shoot up there and secure a place @ Curry for night 1. Then we'd roll over to the Lodge, put our name down on the waiting list, and see if we got lucky. After that, it was off to see Bridalveil, Yosemite, Nevada, and the others.

The Yosemite falls cam is looking incredible right now:

http://www.yosemiteconservancy.org/webc ... mite-falls

It's expected to hit 77 degrees both Thurs & Fri before another small front moves in Monday.

As for myself, I'm heading to Lone Pine on Wed, hiking to Trail camp on Thurs, and shooting for Whitney via the Chute & main trail on Friday.

[Wandering Daisy]

Yes, I am doing a 4-5 day trip to Yosemite in a few days, probably leave Wed. afternoon. Still trying to decide between the North Rim Traverse, or Pohono-Panorama traverse. Also an added day to just day-hike and photograph in the Valley. I have done both these trips several times. Always good this time of year although a few patches of snow and soggy feet can be guaranteed! These are two trips that have nice big bridges over the larger creeks. Still have to wade the smaller ones.

[Hobbes]

Soggy feet can be guaranteed!

The last time I was in the Valley during spring was 2005. (Been back a few times in summer coming over from Tuolumne for the day and always seem to regret it.) We had reservations for two nights at the Ahwahnee, but first stayed at Wawona the night before after driving up from SoCal. (For some reason I think it's harder to drive to Yosemite/Tahoe from SoCal than it is to the east side from the Bay area.)

Well, we wake up pumped about getting down to the Valley, only to find out the park is closed due to flooding! OK, being disappointed is one thing, but then the question arises: where are we going to stay? Because of course everyone else was in the same boat - can't get into the Valley, but new arrivals are showing up expecting to get their reserved rooms. So, the Wawona opened up some ancient, dark and musty back quarters for the night, and we and a host of others made the best of things.

The question was still whether the park would open the next day, but we wouldn't know until the next morning. So you can imagine our excitement when they announced that we could go in around 8am. Yipee! Now, while the flooding wasn't anywhere close to the epic event 8 years earlier, the ring road was under about 2-3" of running water. We stopped at Bridalveil, and it was going off like Niagra - the path was under at least a foot of fast flowing water and the entire area was misting like a rain storm. We didn't care however, since we were only minutes away from the Ahwahnee, where we could check in, get dry and change clothes.

I may be mistaken, but I believe the park was still closed at the entrances when we were allowed down. Since we were technically already inside the park, the park service let us continue. That's why I seem to recall the park being essentially empty as we drove through the wide, shallow flowing creek aka ring road.

As you can imagine, all the waterfalls were going crazy. Yosemite was like a fire hose - the water was shooting way out 90 degrees from the cliff face, then eventually falling back in a long arc. All in all a memorable trip: