Yosemite Falls - and I don’t
After two sunny days, today was more cloudy. Indeed it was snowing all day - just flurries, and nothing sticking. It didn’t seem to me to be cold enough for snow, but maybe I’m becoming acclimatised to Scotland. Certainly Yosemite Creek was full of slush formed from the spray from the fall, though with the water running underneath and occasionally bubbling to the surface.
I had a guided tour of the new displays in the Yosemite Visitor Centre from Tom and Vicky of the Park Service. The display only opened last Friday (13th - good choice!). Muir gets a section to himself, and there’s a bronze statue of him seated looking up at a reconstruction of his Yosemite ‘hang nest‘. Children climb all over him, and everyone (including me) gets photographed with him. Mind you, not everyone knows it’s John Muir. I overheard one visitor asking her companion, “Do you want to be photographed with Ansel Adams?”
After that I thought I’d take another walk. Plan A was to just walk to the bottom of Yosemite Falls. But despite the snow it was a nice day, so I thought I’d make the journey to Columbia Rock, a viewpoint on the Yosemite Falls trail that I had struggled to last year. This year though it only took me just over an hour to get there, so I decided to walk on to the viewpoint for the upper falls. I didn’t have the time (or to be honest the energy, and my knees were getting very sore) to go to the top of the falls.
Everything in Yosemite is uphill once you get away from the shuttle bus route and the valley floor - sometimes very steep. Although the paths and trails are well maintained, they are often still rough and full of granite rocks of sizes varying from pebbles to ones the size of a small house. Maybe next time.
As ever, it was much easier and quicker going down than up. I mentioned this to someone I met on the path, and they pointed out that there were many very quick ways to reach the valley floor. Indeed.