The Yosemite Stairmaster

It has only been sevenish months… No sooner than we had completed our trek down from Half Dome last year (ok, well, the following day, it was late when we returned to the trailhead…) that we began planning our next foray to Yosemite National Park. There was only one thing to do, one trail that was perfect for early May, one that coincided with a term called “peak flow.”

Yosemite Falls is the tallest waterfall in North America (14.5 times taller than Niagara, if not in breadth), and one of the 20 tallest in the world. It is fully fed by snowmelt, and as such it is fully seasonal, flowing with gusto in the spring and often disappearing fully by the fall (ironically, punnically). Three separate parts make up the falls, adding spectacular visual interest along with its spectacular height. And yes, May is around peak flow time, with some 9000 litres of water going over the falls every minute (!).

The hike up to the top of the falls is an interesting one. For one, it is “short” — only 3.2 miles from the floor to the top, which may make it seem paltry compared to Half Dome’s 8.5 miles — BUT, the trail starts at a climb and never, ever, lets up. From the base to the top it is one continuous set of inclines. Half Dome at 4800′ elevation gain over 8.5 miles is some 564′ per mile rise; Yosemite Falls is 843′ per mile rise. We’re talking 66% steeper average grade, friends!

So endeth the math lesson.

We got a good pretty early start. The water was definitively flowing, and from our parking spot literally right smack before the falls we could hear the roar of its many tiers. We skirted the Lower Yosemite Falls trailhead, heading for the big one. Along the way we passed some climbing groups, already out top roping and trad climbing along the base of the famous Yosemite granite (note: be prepared to climb lots of crack if you want to climb in Yosemite). Soon we found the starting point, identifiable by the way the trail started to shoot skyward.

My legs, they quickly made their uncertainly known — can legs whine in protest? — but as we hit the first set of many switchbacks, and they began to get into the rhythm, they calmed down soon enough they just felt great. We continued at a jaunty pace, passing a few people on the way up, wending our way past Columbia rock and traversing the across the cliff fact to finally turn the corner that presented the first of many, ever changing and ever interesting tableau of the falls.

It wasn’t before long before we hit what I call Deception Point — so named from my first hike up near the falls (in 2001) when I looked up and said “oh, hey, we’re almost there, shouldn’t take us long now!” We didn’t make it to the top that day, as it turned out… but we did the following day, and, of course, we did on this day, reaching the top of the falls before noon and marvelling at the awesome display of water churning its way through the narrow outlet to begin its dive to the valley floor.

Pause here for a moment (both in time and in this story): for this trip, I bought a new digital camera (the old one had stopped recognizing memory cards). There is lots of good on this camera, but best of all is that the selector dial is nicely placed to avoid accidentally going into Killarney Mode. I had one concern, though, and that is simply that the megapixel creep of modern point-and-shoots crams so many photosites onto the sensor chip that the sensitivity between low-light and blown-out is very small. This translates to decreasing dynamic ranges — anytime that there is high contrast between the lightest and darkest parts in the image the cameras simply cannot handle it well. (This almost seems ironic given the overexposed oops of said Killarney Mode) So this trip was as much an experiment with the camera for me, trying out various modes and methods of shooting to see how far I could push the camera and what it could and could not do.

With all that in mind I took it all in stride, taking some 434 images and 4 videos along the whole of the hike. A lot of those images are ‘duplicates’, that is, taking the same image with different modes on the camera (mainly playing with white balance, -EV compensation, and trying to meter the shutter speed and f-stop by pointing the camera at different points of the surrounding area). I got quite handy with quick adjustments, which left me free to be present to spotting great compositions, framing and re-framing different shots, and really I was having a lot of fun with it (I so do enjoy taking pictures, I rediscovered). Back to the recap…

After we explored the top of the falls, our plan was to head out and see if we could hit the top of El Capitan. During my last hike up this way in 2001 our group didn’t make it that far, but here we had the advantage of time. Not a problem! Off we went… and soon we were walking in amongst patches of snow (!). We had seen some snow covered areas of the surrounding cliff sides (and even a little bonnet on Half Dome) but here we were walking in amongst the snow, yet warm. I thought this was awesome. This was going to be one novel hike.

Funny thing about snow though — it has this obscuring effect. Whatever is underneath the snow, well, you can’t really see it. Like, for example, the trail. Hmm. At first this was not much of an issue, for the snow patches were small, but as we proceeded onward and upward, the patches turned more into regions of snow. We actually got pretty good at spotting where the path went by looking for some tell-tale signs, such as not-occuring-in-nature aligned rocks, depressions in the ground and especially cut logs (where a tree had fallen, sections cut out by the park staff to allow passage). Given the footprints in the snow, and those, we continued aplomb.

By the second time we had lost the trail and finding it only after some searching, we amended our aim to forgo El Cap and try to hit up Eagle Point. Adventure was the game here: we would go and explore until we hit our desired turn-around time (though we all had lights this time, finding a hidden trail in the dark did not really appeal to us!). A bit later we met up with a family heading back, who gave us some advice (”Don’t do what we did — turn left where we turned right!” he said as he pointed to a map). We continued along and despite the increasing snow field managed to maintain ourselves along the trail quite nicely (ie, finding every so often those trail indicators or where someone (the rangers?) had, very nicely, arranged sticks into arrows to show the trail direction). We met up with another fellow who joined us, and we continued along… until we were absolutely sure we must have missed a turn somewhere and the trail was no where to be seen. Thus we ended our hike at nice babbling set of falls (we christened them Rev’s Falls), and paused to soak in the landscape.

An aside: With all the runoff and snowmelt, the theme of the day truly was water and waterfalls, of every size. We passed little streams (even a few that soaked the path), we passed areas where the rocks seemed to be weeping in wide bands off wetness (but no great flow), there was of course the big daddy, and we ended our day at one of the smaller but very pretty falls.

With that we turned around and headed back, finding our way without too much difficulty (you can’t not leave yourself a trail to follow in snow!). Soon we were back on the trail down from the main Falls, and something I hadn’t considered.: the light had all changed (being late afternoon rather than mid-morning)! Ecstatic, out came my camera and I took another whack of photos along the way down, often probably duplicating the location/framing of shots on the way up, but with very different light quality (I imagine some will have worked better one way vs the other). Further, some of the haze that obscured the further reaches of the valley (which REALLY shows up well on camera, alas — I used to think it was mostly forest fires but this wasn’t forest fire season, and I think, given what we saw at our campground, this actually is a lot influenced by camp fires, which is disconcerting to me) had disappeared, allowing for crisper long-distance shots.

Once at the bottom we headed along the trail towards Lower Yosemite Falls. The wind had picked up at this point and the spray coming off was intense. Not to mention somewhat bone-chilling after a warm day of intense hiking. I snapped a few more photos, and we called it a day, heading back to the campsite in search of food.

And that was our Yosemite Falls trek! Very peaceful and fun, I was really present the whole time, and it was really cool to make it up as we went along. The hike up was a good workout, and we certainly got our ‘money’s worth’ in terms of the Falls showing us their best side, with the valley caught in mid shift from green and snow to its drier late-summer self. We camped in nice crisp 0~C temperatures the first night, and my sleeping bag worked like a charm to keep me warm (overwarm, actually). We sent email from the top of the falls (uber geekitude). We sat about and ate simple hearty camp food.

So, yeah, great trip. We will be going again soon.

Pictures! They will be posted soon at my ever-expanding Yosemite gallery (if they are not already there, depending when you are reading this) just as soon as I play my digital-darkroom games with them. Maybe even a couple of videos too. Most fun will be to compare the photos to my previous hike along the path, the trip which I dubbed Yosemite Dry…  and if you have Google Earth, you can download this pointer file to see our trek:  click here.