Yosemite, CA

With the addition of Sequoia to our itinerary, we passed through Fresno on our way to Yosemite. This was lucky as the hiking shoes I thought were in decent condition had been ground flat over the past few weeks and I was able to order new ones to an Amazon pickup location (pro tip for extended travel, this works great). Fresno was hovering around 100° which gave us a preview of the next week of weather.

Backpacking Yosemite

We had initially planned a two night backpacking loop in the Hetch Hetchy area of the Yosemite wilderness, but when we arrived to pick up permits the ranger advised me that it would be “extremely hot and has a problem bear” and suggested some alternatives. We ended up doing two single night trips, the first of which was Ten Lakes Basin. This was a very hot slog uphill over stone, but then dropped into a pretty lake basin. Most people were camping at the lower lake, so we followed the stream up to some of the higher lakes and ended up completely by ourselves.

We hiked out of Ten Lakes at 4am to beat the heat and go get permits for our next spot, which was the Grand Canyon of the Tuolumne River. This was a beautiful trail along the Tuolumne River with multiple massive waterfalls. We found a great campsite up in the rocks in a little grove of trees overlooking the falls and canyon before hiking down to a lower falls.

Yosemite has been hard for us to plan in the past because it is either snowy (road closures) or the area has fires. In the little bit of time between, apparently the bugs get really bad –  a note in the wilderness office said “bugs are bountiful”.

On our way back from the lower falls and making dinner, we experienced mosquitoes worse than we have ever seen. Swarms of hundreds, to the point that we (mostly me) started running. These mosquitoes were so intense we weren’t thinking straight, and overshot our campsite by 1.5 miles – turning our 19 mile day into 22. I had enough bites to warrant an antihistamine. In the morning we hiked out in rain gear to avoid more biting. While this trail was beautiful, this was a miserable night for us. You can’t win them all!

Yosemite Valley

The next 3 nights we had a booking in Yosemite Valley, which was a great campground. We had a total of 9 nights of camping between Kings Canyon/Sequoia/Yosemite but Yosemite valley had free showers which made this much more tolerable.

The heat was unrelenting, so we did our hikes early in the morning, beating the sun up the switchbacks. We hikes Vernal and Nevada falls, and then to the top of Yosemite falls.

Yosemite falls is one of the tallest waterfalls in North America, and we were lucky to see it running as it dries out when the snowmelt concludes. This was a beautiful hike, and had us gripping a railing near the top as we overlooked the valley at the precipice of the falls.

In the afternoons, we stayed in the shade and checked out the museums in the valley. We also got some cold drinks from Starbucks (thanks Suzanne for the Christmas giftcards!) to help cool down.

Overall Yosemite was a great experience. We were concerned about crowding, and permits/reservations are hard to get, but the free shuttle helps a ton with congestion. I think we will return to the area for a longer backpacking loop and some additional valley hikes, but probably in a later month when the mosquitoes are not enough to send us sprinting.