Yosemite 2022

[Drunk Monk]

Then there was Thursday. This was the day that gave me the most trepidation. It was our second to last day out, and our longest and highest. The mission - a 10+ mile hike over Donahue Pass, the ridge that guards the border to Yosemite. It's 11K+ feet above sea level, adjacent to Yosemite's highest mountain, Donahue Peak. It was a climb of over 2K feet in altitude within about 3-4 miles, then a sharp descent down the other side, returning to a more reasonable altitude of just under 9K. 

If I was going to fail, this would be the day. 

But I felt good. My spinal pain had subsided significantly, perhaps overwhelmed by the massive endorphin dose, or maybe it was the qigong on the pristine mountaintops and the pure mountain lakes. I had been worrying about this day since I saw Stacy's trip plan. The fear, the pain, the endurance, all at the end when I was most spent. 

The rains let up and the panoramic vistas were simply gorgeous. It was sunny, with occassional cloud cover, and cool fresh mountain breezes. Stacy took off early. I wasn't far behind. The 20s lagged later. The trail was my favorite sort of path - not too steep, skipping back and forth over a winding creek, light tree cover giving way to golden meadows, simply inspiring from every angle. Such views, like no where else on earth. This is what I came for. This nature. This God's country. California uber alles.

The 20s caught up to me eventually, and I regretted not doing my bear growl when Alex came around a rock where I was sitting because my greeting had him nearly jump out of his skin. We continued on to meet up with Stacy who had taken out all her gear, spread it out upon the sun-drenched granite, and dried most everything. The 20s pressed onward and upward. Stacy was ahead of me but everyone was more or less in sight because we crossed the treeline again. We had crossed other ridges previously that cleared the treeline, including that slag field just prior to the thunderstorm but this was the longest and highest.

I'm guessing it was around 10.5 K when the oxygen was too scarce for me to take a breath. I was sucking wind so bad that my lips, mouth, and throat were chappend and raw. I could only take about a half dozen steps before I had to rest again. Then the dizziness set in. It was only my drunken kung fu skills that kept me from faceplanting on the roughly hewn granite slab steps. 

But I made it obviously. And it was glorious.

[Greg]

Woo-hoo. I admit I was worried when I didn't see any posts from you on Friday afternoon.

[Drunk Monk]

I was avoiding coming back online Friday. I came back to 200+ personal emails, 200+ KFM emails, and 180+ YMAA emails, plus a lot of odd texts and direct messages. Hard to say how I even function with this much e-noise. I was only gone for 6 feckin days!

Donahue pass marks our entrance into Yosemite. There's one harder way in, I'm told, coming off a trail from Tahoe, but this was pretty freaking challenging compared to every other time I've entered the park by driving. 

The trail down from Donahue pass was rigorous too - would've hated to climb up that. It was beautiful as the foliage returned. We stopped at a small mountain pond guarded by a feisty marmot who seemed to be saying 'don't even come up here.' We noticed an odd odor and we each secretly wondered if we had stepped in mule poop. More on this in the next paragraph. We rested there for a while, enjoying the view, the marmot, and the panorama.

We crossed paths with a ranger who checked our wilderness permits and warned us of a 'problem bear' in the valley where we were headed. Another park worker gave us a bear talk further down the trail. She told us that the bear was last sighted back from where we had just come, munching on a deer carcass. 'You might've noticed the smell' she said. Wait...what? You mean where we took that long break? The bear was likely just over the marmot guarded rise munching away. Perhaps that's what the marmot was trying to tell us. 

No more rain. Just beautiful clouds and sun. The weather was perfect.

The rest of the descent was uneventful. We saw more wildlife - deer, a hawk, birds, so many rodents - and enjoyed our hike. We set up our last camp at Ireland lakes, near to where Greg and I camped on our first backpacking trip together. We nearly froze that night but woke to the most magical frost covered field. Stacy and I recounted that tale to the 20s. Tara had heard it before and was amused to hear of her friend's suffering once more because they had a falling out when his jealous gf blacklisted her from his friends list. 

This time it was quite warm and there were plenty of other backpackers (I had to go quite aways to find a good cat hole spot). We gorged ourselves on all our remaining food (we only cooked half of our dinners during the previous rainstorm because it was raining).

[Greg]

I was thinking you would be camping in that same spot. But weren't you still pretty far from Ireland Lake?

[Greg]

When I learned there was a trail to the top of Mt. Watkins, I knew I had to take that trail. The jealousy from seeing DM's Yosemite photos only made this more imperative. According to All Trails, the hike was only about 6.2 miles out and back with a 500' elevation gain. You had to climb up and down two domes to get to Mt. Watkins so you had to climb the 500' twice. But it seemed very doable for the Queen and I. I figured we could get to the trail by 7ish and be done by noonish.

If you don't know, Mt. Wakin is on the west end of the Mirror Lake canyon on the North Wall of the narrow canyon opposite Half Dome. It's named for Carleton Watkins one of the first photographers in Yosemite Valley. He supplied all the photographs to the Geology Guide to the Sierras put out by State Geologist Josiah Whitney, which is why he got a mountain named after him. Follow me for more Yosemite trivia.

Temperatures for Wednesday were going to peak at a lovely 70º. When we arrived at the trail head after our two and a half hour drive, it was in the low 40s. There were few cars on the road but the drive wasn't without a few hiccups. One, my iPhone wouldn't sync with the car so the Queen and I had to spend part of the drive actually talking to each other instead of listening to music. Also since the iPhone wouldn't sync to Google Maps, I kind of had to guess about the turn for the secret cutoff to bypass the town of Mariposa and save about twenty miles on the drive. Guess achievement:unlocked. But I did find they added another stop light on the 140 while they repair the road. Now, I get to stop twice for what seems like forever while opposing traffic comes through as the road goes down to one lane. Fun fact, no traffic came through while we waited at either light.

I had spent a lot of time looking at the map for the trail so I wouldn't have any problems finding it and navigating our way to Mt. Watkins. The trail head has a few parking spots and sits right next to the concrete mixing yard. For a good portion of the hike, we got to hear the dulcet tones of heavy equipment as the concrete trucks pulled in and loaded up and headed off again. There was also industrial size wood chipper in the yard working non-stop spewing out wood chips.

At first I thought we had to walk through the yard to get the trail, but no the trail head was right there opposite the gate to the yard. The first section was a gradual up hill through the trees. At the trail head was an old rock quarry that kind of shocked me. But then again, they had to get their stones from somewhere. One of the only clues I had about  the trail was that about .4 of a mile in there was going to be a left fork to take marked by a bunch of license plates on the trees. Other than that it was up and down and up and down to Mt. Watkins. There was never any sign to Mt. Watkins. The only sign was for the trail leading down into the valley via the snow trail. Yosemite: It's not for beginners. But I thought I was in good shape. I only had to find the one fork in the trail.

The license plate bit confused me. Why are they putting license plates on trees in Yosemite. Turns out they meant trail marker. Trail Markers are small metal plates affixed to trees to signify the trail. They look a little bit like license plates so I guess that's what they meant.

We were following the up and down trail profile I remembered as we eventually started to head down hill. And we kept heading downhill. And downhill. It was supposed to be 3.1 miles to the end of the trail. By my watch, I could see we had already walked that far downhill without an uphill. That sense that something was right filled me. Although, we did come to another trail. The other hint of information from All Trails was that when we crossed that trail, we would be close to Mt. Watkins. The only problem was there was no other trail on the other side. Our trail ended at this other trail. We could go left or right, not forward. There were signs here on the trail. One said the Valley was five miles down and Lake Tenaya was 7 miles up. I decided to head towards the valley a little bit to see if the trail to Mt. Watkins was up ahead. It wasn't. We turned around. I started looking for the trail to Mt. Watkins at the T-intersection.

I was about to take a break from my search and water the plants, when someone behind me asked what I was looking for. An older gentleman, who seemed much more in control of his situation stood there. I said I was looking for the trail to Mt. Watkins. The nice man asked me what I was using for a map. I mumbled that I was using Google Maps. He gave me that disgusted look as he pulled out his phone and told me he was using the Gaia App to show the trails. We needed to go left up the trail towards Tenaya Lake and look for an intersection on a flat part of the hill. I thanked him profusely for rescuing us. As we started to walk away, he called us back. He wanted to know if we also would like to know the shorter trail back to the parking lot. Yes, please. Basically, at the intersection at the flat spot in the trail, we just needed to in the opposite direction from Mt. Watkins to get back to our car. At the time, I was thinking this was some new trail not listed in All Trails. We thanked the nice man again.

If we hadn't have bumped into him, we would have just hiked back up the trail to the car park and not seen Mt. Watkins at all after hiking for six miles. He was a trail blessing.

Up to this point, the hike had been a very pleasant downhill ramble. That all changed on our trek to the flat spot. The fun ended, especially for the Queen. Taking a page from the DM playbook, she decided that a little altitude sickness was the order of the day. She started having headaches and dizziness. We climbed for about an hour to get to the flat area. There were a couple spots we hoped were the right area, but there was always bit more uphill after the false positives. The nice man said that if we started to go downhill, we had missed the turn.

Eventually, I spotted a group of people on what I hoped was the trail to Mt. Watkins. The Queen greeted the news with less than enthusiasm. She was right on the edge of going back to the car. But the trail up to Mt. Watkins was far less steep than what we had been climbing. And she'd been listening on her Air Pods to a podcast to distract her from her misery. (Yes, this is an ad for Apple Products) But she agreed to go.  But only for one more mile. Then she was stopping and giving up.

Luckily, it was just under a mile to the top. And the hike up wasn't all that bad. Plus, we were suddenly rewarded with spectacular views which kept getting better the more we walked. Up to this point, we had been under the tree canopy. You couldn't see much of anything through them. But once we reached the top, the trees gave way and the views were spectacular. To the west, Clouds Rest loomed above us across Tenaya Canyon. Up ahead, we could see the backside of Half Dome, the cables for hikers faintly visible. To the West we could view down the Yosemite Vally to North Dome, Cathedral Rocks and just a bit of El Capitan. So many pictures.

The trail wasn't quite down. There was still another mile or so to get down to the point where you could get a better down Yosemite Valley and see Mirror Lake. I had come this far I was going down there despite my current level of exhaustion. I really shouldn't be able to feel my heart beating in my chest. The Queen had had enough. She went down the open expanse of rock about another hundred yards and stopped for lunch. She'd rest and wait for me until I got back.

Stupid me, I had set a goal and wanted to complete it. I was going to get to the point and be able to see Mirror Lake. Yes, I am not that bright. It was beautiful going down the granite sheet, but with every step I took I knew it wasn't going to be very much fun going back up. But the views were gorgeous. I went about a half mile down the rocks. I stopped at a point where I saw it was just going to get steeper. There were people sitting down among the rocks in front of me and I didn't feel like navigating around them. I could see into the valley but I couldn't quite see the lake. I was done. I was close enough.

The walk back up to the Queen took a long time. I was sucking in a lot of wind. My heart was beating really fast. I stopped about every twenty feet or so. Walking on granite is so much harder on your feet than walking on the dirt paths in the forest. My neuropathy was really starting to tell about my mistakes in life choices. I finally made it back to tQ. She was camped out next to a log ready for a nap. I was supposed to stop for a few minutes to grab a bite to eat but there was another group of hikers heading back. I wanted to follow them so I could make sure we found the right path on the other side of the intersection. We were slow and lost them but another group passed us and I was able to find the shortcut trail by following them.

I realized now that we were on the trail were originally supposed to take. This also meant that after we left the intersection at the flat spot, we had about a mile or more of uphill in front of us. According to the reviews of the trail, this was also the most miserable part of the trail. Guess what? The reviews were right. Lots of steeps ascents. There were a bunch of false ridge lines where I thought we would level out only to reach them and find more climbing up ahead of us. Sadly for the Queen, her phone died about half way through so she couldn't listen to her podcasts.

We made it though, after many stops. During the hike I kept thinking about where was this trail going to come out so I could see where I made my mistake. And find it we did. I had missed the trail because the trail where we were supposed to turn was blocked off by a row of branches. We had actually seen this when we first came through, but figured all the branches blocking the trail meant the trail was closed. So much anger.

Suddenly, we were back on the trail we knew. Here was the rock we passed. There is the quarry. So much anger. But we had finished the hike. For me, the 6.2 mile hike was 10.5 miles. The Queen's was a bit shorter by a mile because she hadn't climbed down to the point like a smart woman.

In the parking lot, we met a woman just starting the hike to Mt. Watkins. She asked if there were many bugs on the trail. I said no. Then I thought to ask if she had done this hike before. She had not. I gave her the directions to the right trail so she would not suffer the same fate we had.

We finished our day trip in the park on the shores of Tenaya Lake. We probably should have spent more time there but it was getting late and the puppies at home needed to be fed. We were lucky enough to get stuck behind a slow driving camper the forty miles to the valley. After passing him, I got trapped behind a slow moving audi the next thirty miles to the park gate.

[Dr. Ivor Yeti]

It's not a Yosemite Story unless someone is having a medical emergency. Or the threat of one.

[Greg]

Truth.

[Drunk Monk]

It's not a Yosemite Story unless someone is using a cat hole.

I never finished my Yose tale. I should do that. There is more…

[Greg]

Someone on this trip did use a cat hole, thank you very much.

[Drunk Monk]

[Drunk Monk]

71. Damn. I bow down to this dude. Totally raises the bar on bad ass.

[Greg]

Hats off.

[thatguy]

takeaway: you still have time...

--tg