Since Derek moved out of the college dorms and into a house with a few of his friends, I need to take him down a few things that couldn’t fly with him like his bike. Mostly I wanted to check out the house.
I talked Jim Aga into sharing the drive with me and stopping by Yosemite for a day. Neither of us had been to Yosemite National Park.
We had beautiful sunny weather with a cold breezy to keep us from baking.
We started at Yosemite Valley. The big walls were everything we imagined them to be.
El Capitan is the first wall you see as you enter the park.
Then Yosemite wall with the upper and lower falls. It was unusal for the falls still to be flowing in last September.
Though Half Dome is outside the valley, there are still many views of it.
We also got to enjoy watching some climbers. Yosemite is famous for them.
After hiking around the valley floor, we decided to head up to the rim. Along the way, we stopped at the major tourist viewing platform of Tunnel View. Instead of fighting the crowds, we hiked up the hill a ways and enjoyed our own private viewing from Angle’s Tunnel.
El Capitan was especially impressive from here.
We hoped back in the car and climbed another 3000 feet to the rim of the valley. There were tons of hiking options on the rim. We decided on Sentinel Dome. It provided a 360 degree view of the National Park.
During the hike to the dome, Jim and I could not see how you could possibly climb it.
The closer we got, it still looked unclimbable.
Turns out there is an easily walkable ramp on the backside. The top of the dome looked like the moon.
We were able to see the Sierra Mountains from here including Mt Whitney.
The view of Half Dome from here was very unusual. You could almost see the hiking routes to the top.
We were told to watch sunset from Glacier Point at the end of the road. This point sits directly across from Half Dome. What a spectacular valley. Definately worth returning for some backpacking.
