Summer 2009 Day 5-6

We camped in the medows on the north entrance to the park. We didnt arive until real late. First thing the next moring we stopped at a visitor center and found out the valley was going to have a high of 101 that day. So we decided to spend the hotest part of the day in the meadows on the north east part of the park. The high here was in the 70s. We did a hike to soda springs which was interesting to see this type of thing outside of the yellowstone area.

From there we headed the the valley didnt get their until 5 so it wasnt too bad. We went up bridalfalls hike only a .5 mile nice and easy. We then headed to yosemite falls but got side tracked by a bear hanging in a tree near one of the turns so we stopped to check him out.
Briadal and Yosemite falls are huge falls the water is starting to tapor off but still impresive. Did the whole camping thing that night with a fire and everything.

The next day Joe Quinn and I took a one way bus ride up to Glacier Point. The views were amazing. The hike we did was the Panoramic trail it was an 8 mile hike from the top to the bottom with an elevation change of 3200 ft. It turned out to be quite a hike. The first 1.9 was a gradual down hill not too bad but it was a burn area so shade was limited. As we started going down we noticed the trail had to climb on the other side back up to that ridge. Yikes. The first falles illilouette falls was in a crevis the view of it hiking up was nice but once you got close it was a bit of a cliff to see it. We did get to stop at the pools at the top of the falls and cool off before the next 1.9 miles up hill. By the time we reached the 4 mile mark we were looking over the ridge at where we had started. From there it was back down hill to Nevada falls. Not too bad. Nevada falls was impressive allot of water. Again we rested near the pools of water. The next part of the hike is where it got interesting. it was all down hill via rocks made into steps, sorta. A very quick way to go down hill. We made it to vernal falls the last part of our journey. Again another impressive falls with tons of water. The desent from vernal falls was stairs again but next to the waterfall so it was very misty. Very cool stair stepping. The last mile although paved was steap down hill we took our time and ended up making the trip in a little under 7 hours. Not sure Id do that again any time soon. Now we are in San Francisco off to see the sites.