After our daughter’s wedding last month, we decided that instead of a long slog home from LA on Interstate 5, we’d continue the celebration with a long slog on a trail in Yosemite Valley. So after the post-wedding goodbye breakfast, we drove to the cute town of Mariposa, positioning us for a restful night before an early morning entry into Yosemite. Since it was a weekday before the summer crowds descended, we avoided the need for reservations as well as swarms of people (though not necessarily mosquitoes–the price of being there during peak run-off).
Initially, we hoped to recreate a glorious hike we took 15-20 years ago, when we took the bus up to Glacier Point, then descended into the Valley on the long and scenic Panorama Trail. But since the bus hadn’t started running yet, we decided we would be the bus, using leg power to propel ourselves 3,200′ up the Four-Mile Trail (which is actually 4.7 miles each way) to Glacier Point from the Valley floor, then down again the same way.
As Google’s AI describes the hike, “it’s not for the faint of heart.” More enticing and poetic, the human who presumably wrote the park’s website notes that the Four-Mile Trail is where “Yosemite Falls gives you the full monty.”
It also offers “great views of most of the landmarks that Yosemite Valley’s famous for, and all from angles you’re not used to seeing on postcards.” These promises, unlike the mileage implied by the trail’s name, turned out to be true:
My husband and I met 40 years ago on a 15-mile hike, and have hit the trails together ever since. Which is to say that even though we’ve slowed down, we tackled the well-graded switchbacks with relative ease. After tooling around Glacier Point for a while and eating our lunch, we had the crazy thought: Why not go down to the Valley via the 8.5-mile Panorama Trail? Sure, it was twice as long as going back the way we came, but we had enough food and water, plus it was the hike we’d intended to do all along. Besides, wasn’t it all down hill?
Well, sort of. We forgot about the 1,000′ climb after descending to Illilouette Falls. But we were high on our spontaneity, and kept saying to one another that even though we probably shouldn’t have done it, we were glad we did. It’s easy to see why:
And so we happily proceeded to the top of Nevada Falls. Which is not the same as the bottom of Nevada Falls.
Or, for that matter, Vernal Falls, descended via the Mist Trail. Since it was early June–peak water!–it was more like the Carwash Trail. So we descended very slowly down hundreds of often-slippery granite steps, our feet feeling not quite as fresh as when we had started out eight hours earlier. Still, a rainbow is a sign of hope:
Eventually we made it to less vertical ground, the falls behind us, an hour to go on easy terrain to the Valley, our spirits and even our knees more or less intact, just in time for dinner.
That’s when we learned that the free shuttle wasn’t running at this particular stop until the next day. We ate our leftover lunch, then trudged endlessly to Curry Village, which looked like a tent-cabin refugee camp. But at least there was a shuttle stop, and then a shuttle bus, and then a short walk across the meadow back to our car, the golden light yielding to dusk. We had been gone eleven hours, and proudly sent a photo of our accomplishment to our daughters:
They were impressed, and jealous. Mission accomplished, we drove 2.5 hours to our hotel in Oakdale as the sky turned from orange to black, then tumbled into bed, exhausted but happy.
