The explorer in ME - My first camping trip

On the way to Mariposa grove

I have been meaning to start a travel blog for a long time but never got down to writing one. But the last trip of mine made me so possessive of my memories, that I decided to put into writing all that I can about this place and the time I have spent here for the fear of losing it to the transient nature of human mind.

It is difficult to declare something “best” when nature is involved. There are so many heart thumping hikes, roaring waterfalls and mind blowing vitas to explore in Yosemite that its almost impossible to pick favorites. Even six weeks in Yosemite and you will see only maybe 1/4^th of the vastness of this valley. Sadly I had only a weekend planned for this paradise.

Midway to Vernal Fall hike

Over 800 miles (1,300 km) of trails are available to hikers—anything from the easy stroll, to the grueling hikes up several park mountains, to multiple-daybackpack trips.

The park can be divided into 5 sections for the day-user—Yosemite Valley, Wawona/Mariposa Grove/ Glacier Point, Tuolumne Meadows, Hetch Hetchy, and Crane Flat/White Wolf.

Yosemite Valley represents only one percent of the park area. 

Every view of the vast valley humbles you with the thought of how potent yet so peaceful is nature. Hopefully I will be able to justify the beauty with my words I jotted down here. Here I start my first hiking and camping trip to the magnificent Yosemite.

Yosemite trip was in the plan after 5 days of conference at San Francisco. San Francisco is also one beautiful city and definitely a strong contender for my most favorite cities in the world. This is my 3^rd visit to San Francisco but every time it is always a different experience and and there will be still so many things to see even after visiting so many times. Starting from the scenic bay area to exploring all the food this city has to offer - this city never lets you get bored. San Francisco will probably take a whole new blog but for now lets go camping!!

The Hikers

Hikers: Taplin, Lee gray and Me :)

Hiking and camping

Day 1: (Friday 8^th Nov) –

The visibility range that night

 We left from Palo Alto at around 7 pm after a pleasant day at the Monterey bay aquarium.  There was heavy traffic due owing to the weekend rush. We were already prepared for this with our XX flaming hot cheetos, bottle of coke and all the gossip about the IT giants “Facebook”, “Google” as we pass their palatial offices on our way. The drive was smooth but not very eye appealing as it was already dark when we left the city. We were very thrilled about the fact that the temperature was dropping on our car thermometer as we were driving up hill into the Yosemite valley. It was almost 11 pm when we reached the camping ground – Camp 4 campsite. This was my first real camping experience but I was not worried because I knew I was with the experts. However the darkness and the bear signs all along the way did make me a little nervous. The temperatures was in low 30s Farenhiet (close to 0 degree celcius) and I couldnot feel my hands as we were setting up our camp in the darkness. After all the camp setup and toilet trips to the nearest restroom, I settled in my sleeping bag and drifted off to sleep while thinking about the activities planned for the next day.

Opened my eyes to this view

Day 2 (Saturday 9^th Nov): When I opened my eyes in the morning and stepped out of our tent, I couldnot believe my eyes. Our tent was nested right at the bottom of a hill. The grey blue hill was standing like a wall and the sun behind trying hard to peek over and above the hill into the valley. With the fall colors all around me, I felt I am in a giant landscape painting.

Camp

Vernal falls

Only in the morning I realized there were tents all over the camp site. People around were chatting cheerfully enjoying their morning coffee by the fire while some busy packing their tents and preparing for the day’s activities. I quickly brushed my teeth, bundled up in my warm clothes and went walking exploring the place while looking for breakfast and most importantly coffee ( Me and my friends are practically in a state of mental numbness without our morning coffee). Luckily the Yosemite valley lodge was very close to the camp site and they had a menza which offered a pretty reasonable selection of hot breakfast and Peet’s coffee was  the cherry on top.  We walked back to our tent, packed all our stuff and headed to the visitor’s center of the valley to enquire about the possible hikes we could do that day. We stopped our car so many times on our way to capture the beautiful nature in our lenses. After a brief discussion with a park ranger, we decided to hike the vernal falls. Vernal falls (2.4 miles round trip, about 3 hours hike and 1000ft elevation) is one of the most popular falls in Yosemite. It sounds like a short hike but it is steep for most part of the hike which makes it strenuous and time consuming. 

Getting closer to the falls

When you reach closer to the falls, you can have the fall spray mist onto you in a playful way almost like gesturing a welcoming hug. The hike ends at the Emerald pool from where the fall starts. The last bit of the hike was very very steep but it was all worth it when you feel a sense of achievement when you are at the top of the fall. We rested by the serene emerald pool and had the food we packed for the hike while enjoying the beautiful reflections of the trees and mountains in the clear water of the pool. The walk back was quick and our next destination was Glacier point before sunset.

Glacier point

Glacier point gives a view of the Yosemite valley with the famous half dome, the Yosemite falls, the vernal fall (one we hiked in the morning), Nevada fall and cloud’s rest. Glacier point can be reached by hiking but we decided to drive to be able to reach before sunset and mostly because we (it was mostly me) were tired after all day hike at the vernal fall. There was a good number of people along with us at the point enjoying the breathtaking view and I am sure just like me, each one of them was trying to capture the beauty in their memory and in their cameras. I found a quite spot and my thoughts started wandering into philosophy and nature. We left the glacier point until it was dark enough that we could not get the view of the valley anymore. 

The famous Half dome

Camp fire

The most daunting task after Glacier point was to find a camp site to spend the night. Yosemite as we know is extremely popular with locals as well as tourists and camp sites were reserved months in advance and ofcourse we did not get any reservation. We had a little adventure of our own when we camped that night at a restricted campsite area. It was definitely not my idea and I was almost certain that by next day morning I will either be eaten by a Californian bear or be at the police station.  However my two enthusiast companions (criminal minds) convinced me and at the end of the day it is a good story to tell, thanks to them. We camped away from the crowd, built a bonfire and shared endless stories over beers until the fire died away.

Day 3 (Sunday 10^th Nov)

Good morning view

Camping away from the crowd

It is an amazing feeling to open your eyes to see the clear blue sky above you instead of a ceiling and waking up to lively chirpings of birds instead of your alarm clock. When we were setting up our camp, it was already dark and we could see only limited with our flash lights. Next day morning, like the previous day was again a beautiful surprise. I found we were camped just few yards from the river. I walked along the river in the morning while exploring the place which was all pitch dark the previous night. We packed our tent and made a move before we get into trouble and drove to our first stop in the morning – a coffee shop. At the coffee shop, my friend bought a Yosemite postcard for his girl friend who could not make it to the trip, we all signed his card and he posted it from there. This gesture made me think when was the last time I sent or received a postcard? But I certainly did remember the happiness and the good feeling you have when you receive one. I am a huge fan of handwritten cards, letters or postcards even when I live in a generation of fb and whatsapp. Today nobody has the time to write letters, even long emails are rare – when you can communicate in shorthands like hbd or hny!! And I should not be complaining because even I havnt written a letter in a long time – probably last time was in school. But now I am on a vacation. I have all the time. So I quickly picked up few postcards, filled it with all the words I could think of to put my feelings at that moment, signed and posted it knowing this would definitely give them the same warm and happy feeling that I was experiencing being in this absolute gorgeous place. I thanked my friend for reminding me of the postcard days! Most certainly one of the highlights of my trip!

Our POA for the day was to trek the Mariposa grove national park known for the magnificent sequoia trees. The Mariposa Grove, in the southernmost part of Yosemite National Park, contains about 500 mature giant sequoias. Giant sequoias are perhaps the largest living things on Earth. It is the largest grove of Giant Sequoias in the park, with several hundred mature trees.

California tunnel tree

Scientific info alert: (just because I was curious) Sequoiadendron giganteum (giant sequoia, giant redwood, Sierra redwood, Sierran redwood, orWellingtonia) is the sole living species in the genus Sequoiadendron. The common use of the name "sequoia" generally refers to Sequoiadendron giganteum which occurs naturally only in groves on the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California. It is named after Sequoyah (1767–1843), the inventor of the Cherokee syllabary. Giant sequoias are the world's largest single trees by volume. Giant sequoias grow to an average height of 50–85 m (164–279 ft) and 6–8 m (20–26 ft) in diameter. Record trees have been measured to be 94.8 m (311 ft) in height and over 17 m (56 ft) in diameter. The oldest known giant sequoia based on ring count is 3,500 years old. Sequoia bark is fibrous, furrowed, and may be 90 cm (3.0 ft) thick at the base of the columnar trunk. It provides significant fire protection for the trees. And they have giant seeds as well, I have never seen a seed so big. **(info from Wiki)

Some of the monumental trees of the mariposa grove that I had a chance to see are these.

The Giant Sequoia named Grizzly Giant is between probably 1900–2400 years old: the oldest tree in the grove. It has a volume of 34,010 cubic feet (963 m3), and is counted as the 25th largest tree in the world. 

The California Tunnel tree: Cut in 1895 to allow coaches to pass through it (and as a marketing scheme to attract visitors to the grove), this is the only living tree with a tunnel in it since the fall of the Wawona Tunnel Tree in 1969.

Giant trees

Comparision

Another tree, the Wawona Tree, had a tunnel cut through it in the nineteenth century that was wide enough for horse-drawn carriages and early automobiles to drive through. Weakened by the large opening at its base, the tree fell down in a storm in 1969

 And ofcourse there were a few other trees that are mentioned on the map, but we could not manage to visit those, as one of our hiking member got lost in the woods and we had quite an adventure looking for him ( mind you, without  phone signal in the forest) . Me and Lee-ray decided leave messages on the way, hoping he would see them and find us. After more than an hour long search and running our imagination loose to what could have happened to him,, we decided to give up  and return back to the car, hoping he would show up. When we returned back to the car, guess what Taplin was there happily eating and his explaination was he came back because he was hungry. BUT he actually came back because he lost his way in the woods and his male pride did not let him admit that a man can lose his way .  After all that adventure, we all agreed lets call it the end of Yosemite trip for now until we visit next time. We grabbed some Chinese food and were on our way back to humdrum of city life. All I could think of on the way back was what words I can use to record this trip and was hoping I would be able to do justice to paint a picture of all the beauty that I had photographed in my memory. 

Giant cones

When we reached home, I have to admit I had this weird “thank god I m back to civilization” feeling, having people around , getting your phone signal back,  having a hot shower after all the 2 days of hiking, your body soiled with camp dirt and travel dust and wearing clothes soaked with the bonfire smell. When I was in Yosemite valley, I was so sure I could spent more days here and then suddenly feeling “happy to be back to city”; I surprised myself. 

Never the less it was one heck of a trip and I discovered something about myself in this trip. I do enjoy camping and it didnot bother me at all that I was soaked in dirt and mud, not having bath for days (People who know me will know that this is an important discovery about myself). Yosemite - Thank you for the most wonderful experience. Parting words with a promise to see you again - " Down through the middle of the Valley flows the crystal Merced, River of Mercy, peacefully quiet, reflecting lilies and trees and the onlooking rocks; things frail and fleeting and types of endurance meeting here and blending in countless forms, as if into this one mountain mansion Nature had gathered her choicest treasures, to draw her lovers into close and confiding communion with her.”  - John Muir