Yosemite Stoke/Photo Thread

Yeah I thought I was clever escaping the Bay Area fires, then not so much.

Permits were kind of weird; definitely not self-issue. This year you have to get them through recreation.gov, and when I looked there was nothing available for saddlebag lake which didn’t make sense since there’s no quota. So I called up the always personable Stan J Kot at the white ranger station in Bishop and he did something on the back-end to make the permit show reservable on the web site. Even then you have to request them two days in advance to get them e-mailed. I was able to have a hard copy left for me at the mono lake station after-hours box which was super convenient since I was coming via 395 anyways. Ended up just sleeping in my car in the lot since my go-to blm camping has been closed down.

I’m also a late planner. I decided on this trip a couple days before.

Great post, jorion! We camped near North Peak last year and hiked up to the saddle overlooking McCabe. Very cool area and I’m told the fishing is great.

evdog: That sounds scary. Like jorion, we got hit with thick smoke and a ton of ash last weekend in the park. We knew nothing of the Creek Fire, but there were a couple smaller fires in Yosemite. It was a little concerning not knowing what was going on.

Here’s my own Yosemite update . . . .

Early August: Just before the calamitous lightning storm hit California, I day-tripped Yosemite, parking at Tenaya Lake. The wife and kids hiked Clouds Rest (exceeded the hype). I "ran" a fun loop run from Tenaya to Clouds Rest to the JMT to the Valley to Snow Creek to Tenaya.

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Reminder: Yosemite is magic.
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A couple weekends ago: I did another run that looped Twin Lakes, Peeler Lake, and Buckeye. I was mostly outside Yosemite except for a two-mile stretch between Peeler Lake and Buckeye Pass. I’d really like to explore that northeastern quadrant of the park more in the future.

Peeler from the Yosemite border (I chose this route because it was the most smoke-free area of the Sierra that day):
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Yosemite's rusted trail signs bring me joy.
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Buckeye canyon (not Yosemite):
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Labor Day Weekend: We went on our annual three-family three-day backpacking trip, this year to the Ten Lakes Basin in Yosemite.

The weather started off very promising, if a little hot.
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But just after arriving at our lake-adjacent campsite, the smoke arrived. Within a few hours, the temperature dropped by 20-30 degrees so that we were wearing puffies by 4 p.m.
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It basically rained very fine ash for the next two days, although Saturday afternoon/evening was the worst. I made the mistake of not putting the fly on my tent until the evening. (Again, it was hot and sunny when we arrived.) As a result, everything in my mesh-based tent was covered in silty ash, which was gross. Imagine sleeping inside an old bbq pit.
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The ash collected in parts of our lake.
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We woke up to the same eerie half light that the Bay Area has recently experience.
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But, you know what, we still had fun.
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The kids both got fish (rainbow and brookies).
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The view into the Grand Canyon of the Tuolumne (which I definitely want to do someday) was great.
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I could have done without the ash and consequent grime, but Yosemite still delivered an excellent time.
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I have no idea why some of the photos are flipped. They are orientated normally on my iPhone.

Sweet AKBruin, I never considered going up to Yosemite to trail run but that’s a great idea. We did a family camping trip to King’s Canyon in August and it was nice to do a longish fast run/hike in the morning and then have the afternoon/evening to cook a semi-elaborate meal and go for a mellow walk. Or just run all day as I assume you did, haha.

My earlier Yosemite trip this year also went through Cloud’s Rest and yeah, definitely lives up to the hype. I came across multiple bears that trip too which was a treat. I haven’t seen them in Yosemite before which I assume is because I usually am in the high country.

As for McCabe Lake, the big party camped there caught a bunch of trout so at least that night they were biting or whatever the fishing terminology is. I love eating trout so I guess I should figure out what I need to do to integrate that into backpacking.

As weird as the light was last weekend, Wednesday here in the city was even stranger.

Your photos are flipped because the way that iPhones (and maybe others?) specify the orientation of pics in the metadata is not recognized by the tgr forum, so you have to open them up in an editor and save them as another format, I think png? And then post. It’s very annoying.

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Young goat on North Dome.

Nice. North Dome is on my list, although I still need to do Snake Dike first.

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Originally Posted by AKbruin

Nice. North Dome is on my list, although I still need to do Snake Dike first.

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Snake Dike was one of my son's first Yosemite climbs--between the long approach and the long class 3 runout it sounded like a real slog. But it beats the cables.

I can't believe I have never sen this thread. Yosemite (Touloumne inparticular) is my happy place. I have been going there and photographing it for nearly fifty years. Unfortunately nearly all of my photo archive was lost in the fire. Still, I am loving all the memories brought up by this thread as I have seen, done climbed a good portion. I have done Cathedral, but not Eichorn, hiked Half Dome, but not done Snake Dike (still hope to some day as it has always been on my tick list.)

Good onya Frank for getting the kids out there. I loved taking mine, and all of our exchange students to Yosemite and sharing a little bit of its magic.

I will have to look around as I must have some Yosemite pics worth sharing. To be honest my whole attitude about photograph changed after the fire and I have not replaced any gear. I barely use a point and shoot, and often don't bother to take my phone out. I have lots of mental photos though.

https://i.imgur.com/oEHYLy3.jpgin honor of Hutash here's some stoke from "touring" Dewey Point last winter with a few buddies

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