Yosemite, 2004

Half Dome with the sun going down in late August 2004.

We took a trip to CA a few years back. Truth be told, it was back in the single digit days of 2004. San Francisco to see the friend who’d gifted us a previous stay at a small inn at the outskirts of Mendocino. Agate Cove was cool as its name, a precious stone overlooking the Pacific with a laid back house kitty who stayed the night with us at the end of the bed–she was a very polite, left coast kitties are like that. The entire town is laid back. Something to do with the agricultural products in that part of California.

Mendocino was where we had wedding bands made–mine was 3-gold in a subtle pattern picked from a showcase, and we asked Barry, the jeweler if he’d do a cool design for D’s engagement ring. Which he did. All on the first trip to Mendocino, courtesy of our dude in San Francisco.

This was a return trip to meet up with him for dinner and catch up on days when we all belonged to the same gym back in Northern Virginia. We flew to Frisco, hung out a couple days, asked if he still drove his motorcycle, he said ‘yes,’ then we rented a car and headed east on Route 120 to that place of dreams–Yosemite.

Yosemite is named for a grizzly bear in the Miwok language. The first recorded Europeans literally stumbled across the Yosemite gorge in 1833 while making a grim, barely-survivable passage across the Sierra Nevada. Though they only saw it from the heights above; they couldn’t find a trail leading down, and the Indians weren’t telling. The first Europeans to enter Yosemite came in 1852. A sad apostrophe to the valley’s early history is that during the time the valley remained unexplored by the Europeans, Native American tribes had longed lived in the deep creviced paradise called Yosemite. A long time before the tour buses.

“From a distance there is no way to indicate the valley’s existence on the Sierra’s predominantly forested west side.  Set nearly a mile deep in the range’s solid granite flank, it is so well hidden in the rugged wilderness that white men did not find a way into it for nearly twenty years after Joe Walker’s discovery.” from Yosemite, Its Discoveries, Its Wonders and Its People by Margaret Sanborn.  Published in 1981, so perhaps we should forgive the “white men” reference, being a person of her place and time.

What she says.

Tolkien describes an elvish river paradise in Lord of the Rings. Rivendell–riven by water and dell meaning meadow or valley. Was Tolkien familiar with Yosemite? Wikipedia suggests Switzerland. Close enough for rock and roll.

In the Sierra Nevada the basic geography was carved by water, Ice Age glaciers continued since by the erosion of the Tuolumne and Merced Rivers. The Merced flowing through Yosemite is today’s subject. The Tuolumne involves the Hetch Hetchy valley, a day’s hike north of Yosemite, a beautiful twin to Yosemite that was drowned in the early 1900s to create a water reservoir for San Francisco. We hiked through the upper (not drowned) part of Hetch Hetchy on the same trip–that’s next week’s story.

Coming into wonderland by automobile. By tour bus or car–the only way to reach Yosemite’s valley floor. Would there were less intrusive means of arrival. It’s not snobbish to think how much more precious this place would be if it were void of diesel and gasoline pollution. Like allowing idling vehicles inside Notre Dame Cathedral for any whose religion is connected to the earth’s spiritual places.

As we first drove alongside the wending Merced, what surprised us was how little water was coming into the valley from the waterfalls either side. Bridal Veil Falls was missing its veil, the massive cloud of spray that normally can be photographed. it was August and the spigot was closed to a slow leak.

“Fire the damn travel agents.” “Yeah but you picked them.”

Yosemite Falls was another disappointment . A park ranger told us the upper Yosemite Falls was scarcely a trickle, hardly worth the climbing involved, so we skipped it. However, had we passed on Vernal Falls, I’d never have seen the like again. The Vernal Falls were a highlight.

Vernal Falls to Nevada Falls

For those with bad knees, the uphill is easier than going back down.  I ain’t lying.  Particularly if you start at the bottom. When you reach Vernal Falls, breathing heavily, it feels like you’ve arrived in a special place. Once reaching Nevada Falls after another hard climb, you’re certain of it. It’s only when you reach Nevada Falls when you’re finally on top of the world—of the Sierra Nevada.

Here’s a YouTube video if you’re curious.  Give those parents extra points.

But the photos from our endeavor were worth something.

Notes on the Photos

The Yosemite gallery photos are shown in rough sequence of when they were taken. The SquareSpace gallery format doesn’t allow for captions. Next week I’ll put this into a format that does.

Shooting at a slower speed allowed the waterfalls’ action to be best shown.

I mainly used a 35mm-70mm zoom lens, and occasionally a 70mm-200mm telephoto. I can’t imagine what Ansel Adams went through lugging his Hasselblad and wood tripod up those granite rocks.

The original images were shot as digital RAW files saved down to jpegs to fit the website. I edited them for color corrections in Photoshop, a tedious process.

Vernal Falls—pooling at the bottom