For the 4th of July weekend, I went backpacking in Yosemite with Megan and Kenny. We had a really good time! It was a nice trail, the weather was warm, and though there were lots of mosquitoes and coming back out was all uphill I think we did pretty well for ourselves.

On Thursday I busted my butt and got off of work early. I also managed to save a Dublin survey for the last thing in the afternoon, and since I took my car to do it I was already on my way out of town at 2pm! Traffic was backed up anyway though, at least until I got to I-5. I was exhausted by the time I got to the campsite - probably about 6:30pm? I only stopped once, at the lookout to see Half Dome.

I couldn’t park at the campsite, I had to park at the wilderness center, load up my pack, and hike about half a mile in to the backpacker’s campground. It was on a hill above the RV campground, and a bit hard to find. I pitched my tent and dove inside to hide from the mozzies that were trying to eat me alive. Megan and Kenny showed up around dusk. We chatted for awhile before going to bed… I didn’t sleep though.

The next morning we re-loaded packs back at the cars, and then headed out to the trail. It was surprisingly un-crowded, it seemed as though everyone waited until Friday to leave home for the park. The hike was really pretty, along Tuolumne Meadows and Tuolumne River. It was fairly flat to begin, until we reached the canyon and it started heading downhill. I had neoprene braces on both knees, and didn’t have any problems (except that they were effing hot!). The river was gorgeous.. and huge.

Saw lots of pretty birdies on the way! We passed through some aspen, manzanita, and chinquipin - the birdies like these things. It was nice because they were being cooperative, and Megan and Kenny could actually see them too. Those two get a huge thumbs-up on the birding scale, they let me stop whenever I wanted and didn’t yell at me to hurry up!!! Happy Robin.

We hiked past the High Sierra Camp and down onto the flat area (Glen Aulin). There were lots of mosquitoes here, but it was also a perfect place to camp. There were lots of “campsites” people had made - flat areas cleared of leaves and rocks for tents, and little rock campfires with logs placed around them (these weren’t official sites by any means, just modified by other backpackers - we were totally in the backcountry). The site was right next to the river, and there was a nice waterfall around the corner.

Kenny caught us a huge trout for dinner. I had dehydrated food as well… I think I’m not so fond of that stuff. I’d rather just bring packaged soups and stuff from the grocery store. Though I’ll say the veggie ones are better than the meat ones.. the meat always tastes really funny. Western tanagers and other cool birds were foraging in our campsite at dusk, and there was a downy woodpecker nest in a snag right by our cooking circle (she didn’t like us very much). We went to bed pretty early, it was nice and warm and I didn’t even need to haul my rainfly. I slept a little… woke up a lot, but at least I got sleep.

The next morning after breakfast we headed farther down the trail. It was all downhill and followed the river, with huge waterfalls along the way. There were lots of little lizards on the rocks, and cool native plants, and mosquitoes. Not too many other hikers, but a good amount. We stopped at most of the falls for pictures, and to eat trail mix. It got really really hot after about noon, and when we finally reached Waterwheel falls I was pretty tired.

We hiked all the way to the bottom of Waterwheel Falls - I was getting a bit concerned that I wouldn’t make it back up if my asthma kicked in, but I actually did really well. We stopped at the bottom to pump water for drinking and dunk our sore feet in the frigid river water. Megan was funny and fell partway in, but given the temperature this wasn’t a bad thing. We finally started back up, stopping now and then, and we made it back to the campsite by around… oh, 4pm? I also ran into another birder on the way and exchanged bird sightings

Kenny failed to catch us a second trout, but that was ok. I made non-dehydrated soup and ate some other things to avoid the nasty food. The birds came back again, and we made a campfire at dusk. I fell asleep pretty early, but Megan and Kenny stayed up to stargaze. I slept a lot better this time, though I still woke up a lot.

On the last day I struck my tent early, cooked breakfast, and was ready to head out! Megan and Kenny took a bit longer (silly people stayed up late) but we were out of there pretty early. I went a bit slow up the hills, and it was a few hours of uphill before we got to the top of the canyon. It was pretty easy past that point, except that it was still gradual uphill and we’d just walked up a huge canyon, plus it was really really hot. We saw lots of deer in the meadows, and lots of backpackers hiking in. We even ran into a PCT-er walking from Mexico to Canada. We made it back to the parking lot at about 1pm, and I drove home - arrived back at about 6:30pm (traffic was really bad).

All in all a good trip! I’ve decided that I need a hiking buddy that I can share gear with, my pack was way heavy because I had to haul my own tent and cooking gear and such. I think I could also use an Ultralite for weekend trips… my pack is about 5 lbs and that’s quite a lot of weight that I don’t necessarily need. I did well with my other gear… tent, clothes, stove, etc. Megan and Kenny loaned me a bear canister, it was hard to open but I figured out that it worked if I sat on it ^_^

Oh, and what’s with the flying unicorn, you ask? Megan saw some random animal (a marmot), jokes were made that it wasn’t a bear, and it was theorized that it might be a unicorn. A flying unicorn, summoned telepathically to haul Megan and her pack out of the canyon and back to the car. He, he.