On the second day we decided to pay Glacier Point a visit. There are two ways to get there: the easy way or the not-so-easy way. The easy way is by shuttle. The park offers a fee-based tour to Glacier Point every day. You can either buy a one-way trip and hike down to the valley or do a round-trip. Tickets can be bought at any tourist station. The not-so-easy way is by foot/hiking. The trail is called the Four Mile Trail, although the actual distance is closer to five miles (4.8 to be exact). The distance itself is not the problem, but the elevation gain makes the hike quite strenuous.
Here's the poster for the hike. 3,200 feet of elevation gain!!!
At first, I wanted to do the whole hike. A good challenge, right? But then I had a reality check. Do I really want to be hiking for that long up such a steep trail? I was still pretty exhausted from the hike the day before... So we decided to take the shuttle up and hike down instead. A one-way trip of the tour is $25 per person. Let me tell you, it was definitely a good decision. During the drive from the valley floor up to Glacier Point, we learned the history of Yosemite from our guide on the bus. It simply was fascinating! I haven't been on a tour in so long--and the last time that I had been I was too young to reap all the value a good guide could offer--that I had forgotten the wealth of knowledge you could learn from the experience. Did you know Yosemite was named after a revered Native American tribe that had originally lived in the area? It's not even really pronounced the way it's pronounced today. Then there was the myth behind Bridalveil Falls, and so on. I feel that whenever we travel to a certain place, we usually get distracted by the sights and sounds, forgetting about the intimate relationship between its history and its present. When we go about taking photographs, buying souvenirs, and doing the usual tourist bit everyone does, we enjoy ourselves. But we miss a chance to indulge in the deeper connection without seeing past the facade of normalcy painted for the nomad visitors. (And that will be all for my philosophical musing of the day, hahaha!) Did I mention the view was just gorgeous?
I can't believe I was there!
Here is a placard to identify what you're looking at. Compare with the picture of the view below.
Pretty cool how the view fits with the placard.
Half Dome in the background. It was also such a nice day.
The start of the trail.
In the first five minutes of hiking, we came across two young European women hiking up from the valley floor. Out of curiosity, we asked how long it took them to hike up. Either they had absolutely no sense of time or were just beastly fit, they said, "Oh, around two hours." O_O And they added, "You can probably get down in forty minutes." It took us an hour and a half to get all the way down, and we were going pretty fast considering it's all downhill. If they really made it up in two hours, they would have been moving up a steep trail pretty darn fast. The thing is they didn't even look tired when they passed us. So I came to the conclusion that they must live on a mountain where they are used to higher altitudes and trail run everyday, or something of that nature.
That could possibly be where we parked our car way down below.
Part of the trail and this beautiful mountain/rock formation.
Seriously, I'm looking through the pictures now, and let me say this: the pictures do the beauty that I saw no justice. Not in the slightest bit. The mountain/rock formation above, I got Tony to take a picture of because I thought it was one of the most awe inspiring scenes I've ever seen. But man, look at that picture. It's just a trail and some mountain. You really have to be there to experience the magnificence of it all.
Just look at that. What a view!
A sign at the valley floor not too far from the shuttle stop.
I gotta say though, it was a smart decision for us to take the tour up. My feet were essentially useless when we were done. So, of course, we took a dip in the pool and showered!
The pool was pretty crowded, and the water was pretty gross. Despite that, it was a nice little dip.
After that, we had some time to spare before the theater showing of the day, which was on search and rescue. So we walked around exploring the area.
There was a reconstructed Indian Village by the theater that we walked through.
This was a display by the Yosemite Museum.
That night, we also went stargazing and it was amazing! You could see the milky way and all. There were also a bunch of shooting stars! I saw a huge one race across the sky and that made my night.
We started our first day with a 6.3 miles round trip hike to Vernal and Nevada Falls. The trail starts at Happy Isles and continues on the Mist Trail to Vernal Fall then Nevada Fall. After that, there is an option to return via the Mist Trail again by Clark Point. We opted to return via the John Muir Trail, which is why the mileage is more than the poster's below.
Here's a visual info of the hike. The start of the trail is at Happy Isles, the bottom left corner of this poster.
Here's a closeup of the trail from the footbridge. Take note of the amount of water flowing down the waterfalls in this depiction.
The beginning of the hike was fairly easy, no real great climb. But then the trail starts getting steep and you hit the stairs, and I was starting to pant.
You know, the Mist Trail was so named because of the thick mist from the waterfall blanketing the trail and soaking hikers. There is so little water this year that the whole trail was dry.
The super dry stairways. It actually would get slippery and people have fallen down the steep slope to the left before.
Them mountain squirrels are everywhere!
There's Vernal Fall with, like, 1/4 of its regular flow.
A view from above (Vernal Fall).
After Vernal Fall, Nevada Fall wasn't too long of a hike to get to. But it was still a heck of a hike. I was getting pretty tired by that point, frequently stopping as we were climbing the stairs, making friends with other hikers I kept on passing who kept on passing me while I stopped. Hahaha!
Liberty Cap and Nevada Fall
A group of supply horses also passed us by on Nevada Fall. They were coming from the back country.
A view from atop Nevada Fall.
And back down to Happy Isles
The whole hike took us around four hours, which I am very proud of considering how the poster and guide book estimated it taking 5 - 6 hours on a strenuous trail. I'd say this trail is on the lower spectrum of strenuous.
The only reason I didn't choose to do Half Dome was because I didn't think I was prepared for that long of a hike. And I was probably right in making that decision because even though we finished this hike fast, I could barely walk without wincing in pain at Happy Isles. My feet were definitely not used to walking long distance!
Later that evening, we went to Yosemite Valley's nightly educational film at the theater. The film was on the making of short films for Yosemite Nature Notes, capturing the beauty around the national park. Here's an episode on frazil ice (which is a very cool phenomenon):
From the looks of it, Yosemite during the spring melt ain't so bad either!
