New Yosemite Pictures
Uploaded some pictures to Flickr from a quick trip to Yosemite earlier this month. Here are a couple of my favorites:
This picture was taken near the top of Snow Creek Falls, which is on the north side of Tenaya Canyon. With a 200mm lens, I could see the hikers climbing up the cables on Half Dome.
This picture was taken in Yosemite Valley. This is a baby bear cub with his mom. The cub is an excellent tree climber and covered virtually every limb of this oak tree while I was watching.
More Wyoming Pictures
More Wyoming Pictures are now on my Flickr account.
So far, I think this one is my favorite:
This was taken a few miles into the Death Canyon hike, just before you reach the pass that enters the canyon.
I’ve grouped all the photos from last week into a set on Flickr.
Grand Teton National Park Picture[s]
Just returned late last night from Jackson, Wyoming and Grand Teton National Park. I’ve got about 3.6 gigs of photos to process and upload, but not much time to do it. I’ll be posting the photos to my flickr account as I have time to do it (probably about one per day for the next year). In the mean time, here’s a teaser:
Check back on my flickr page frequently for updates.
Cloudland Canyon State Park Hiking
On Saturday I drove up to Cloudland Canyon State Park. Cloudland Canyon is a very popular park about two hours north of Atlanta. The park features backcountry camping, and drive-in camping, as well as several lodges for large group activities.
According to the website, “hardy visitors” can hike down to the bottom of the canyon. Down at the bottom, you’ll see two waterfalls. I think they’re called waterfall 1 and waterfall 2. On Saturday, the coolest thing I saw was a hawk who was flying in circles above me while I ate lunch on the the north rim of the canyon.
Here are some pictures.
Update: Here’s a panorama view of the canyon that I stitched together from four separate pictures.
Fall Pictures
Here are some pictures from a hike I took with a friend Wednesday in the Cohutta Wilderness in North Georgia. The hike included part of the Benton Mackaye Trail, the Penitentiary Loop and Jacks River Trail. Enjoy!
Yosemite Trip: Day 5
After a relaxing morning in the Valley shopping for souvenirs, we checked out of the Lodge and hopped in the Kia for the scenic drive up to Glacier Point. The views from Glacier Point are outstanding. Some people have said it is the finest view in all of North America. Visiting Glacier Point after the Wednesday Half Dome hike was nice because from GP, you can see almost all of the area covered in the Half Dome hike.
After snapping a few dozen pictures from GP, we headed down California 41 to Wawona, an historic hotel at the south end of Yosemite. If you ever visit Yosemite, we highly recommend planning an extra night to stay in Wawona. The hotel is straight outta the 1800s. The “cottage” we stayed in was built in 1876! No TVs. No telephones. Some of the rooms even share a bathroom. The food was great. But perhaps the best part was this great ragtime piano player who plays in the lounge each night. A MUST SEE!
While in Wawona, we drove down to the Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias. Lemme tell you, those are some big trees. You may think you’ve seen big trees, but these are really big trees. There’s this one tree called the “Grizzly Giant.” This twig’s got enough timber to build forty 3-bedroom houses. It’s estimated to be about 2000 years old. There’s also a tree that you can walk through.
At the Mariposa Grove, you can walk around on your own, or take an open-air tram tour. Our legs weren’t working too well after Wednesday’s hike, so we opted for the tram. Kelly and I both agree that’s a good way to get to see the Grove.
All of today’s pictures are here.
Tomorrow we leave the park and head over to Santa Cruz.
Yosemite Trip: Day 4
This was a day worth traveling across the country for.
The hike up to the top of Half Dome takes around 11 hours or so, and this time of year, there is only about 12 hours of daylight. Therefore it is critical that you get an early start. So, Kelly and I woke up early, quickly threw on our hiking gear and had a quick breakfast, then boarded the Valley Shuttle to the Happy Isles (don’t ask me what that means) stop. We began our day-long journey at about 8:30 AM.
Nearly every step of the first two or three miles is uphill, but there are a lot of nice views of Nevada Falls and Liberty Cap, which alone would make the trip worth it. After that the trail levels out for a couple of miles as you wind your way around the mountain, through a thick forest to the base of Half Dome.
Finally, after about 8 miles of hiking, the real work begins. There is about a quarter mile of granite steps that take you up to a clearing. Here, you can catch your breath, question your sanity, then ascend the 400-foot, 60-degree grade east side of the rock. While participating in the obligatory gut-check before ascending the cables, one fellow hiker noted that the rock should be called “Half Dumb” instead of “Half Dome,” since you’d have to be half-crazy to do this. (Since Kelly and I have now done this twice, I suppose that makes us fully crazy…)
There is really no way to describe standing on this slope while hanging on to two steel cables. During the trek up, Kelly and I opted not to look down at the valley floor 4000 feet below, and instead, kept our eyes firmly fixed on our feet, while using the cables to pull ourselves up.
At about 1:30, we finally reached the top of Half Dome. We spent a half hour with about 40 other brave folks up top enjoying the views and a nice snack.
Kelly says that “the trip down was scary, sheer terror, terrifying.” In fact, Kelly took so long on the cables, that she created a little bit of a traffic jam. Some people were even going on the outside of the cables to pass her. But all that’s okay, because we both made it down safely. After catching our breath at the clearing at the base, we descended the quarter-mile reverse stair-master to begin our 8-mile journey back to the valley floor. Finally, at about 6:30 PM, we happily hobbled past the trailhead sign where we began the day.
All of today’s pictures can be seen here.
Thursday will be a much more relaxing day. We’re planning a nice drive to the top of Glacier Point, then down to Wawona to look at some big old trees. (By “big,” I mean “the largest living organisms on earth,” and by “old,” I mean “planted before Cleopatra ruled Egypt.”)
I’m not sure if the hotel in Wawona has Internet access, so sadly, this may be our final post for the trip. If so, we’ll update the website when we get home on Saturday.
Yosemite Trip: Day 3
After sleeping in a little this morning, we enjoyed another tasty breakfast at the YL cafeteria. Then we spent the morning walking around Yosemite Village. After that, we took a neato open-air tram tour of the Valley.
Probably the coolest thing we saw during the tram tour was a few climbers on the face of El Capitan. El Capitan is the largest exposed granite face in the world. It shoots up about 3500 feet above the valley floor. Elite climbers from all around the world travel to Yosemite to spend a couple of weeks practicing chin-ups on this bad boy. If you look closely in this picture, you can see a few of these guys.
We were also able to get a better view of the mountain we hiked up yesterday. Yesterday morning, we started at the bottom left corner of this picture and hiked along a path up the wall to the top of the granite cliff on the right. In this picture, you can see Eagle Peak, which was our final destination yesterday.
See all of today’s pictures here.
After a few band-aids, some Advil liqui-gels, and a good rest day, we might just be ready to summit Half Dome tomorrow.
Yosemite Trip: Day 2
We’re going to go ahead and propagate the rumor that you’re supposed to break in your new hiking boots before going on any strenuous hikes. Not going to say any more about it. You just keep that in mind.
We woke up Monday morning to temperatures in the high 30s. After throwin’ down some hot coffee and a quick breakfast at the Yosemite Lodge foodcourt, we headed out on the trail to Upper Yosemite Falls. Problem was, however, we lost the trail about three minutes into the hike, and had to sort of improvise our own trail. It was a little frustrating, but we got to see some parts of the woods that most people don’t see.
Anyhoo, we finally did get on the real trail to Upper Yosemite Falls, and proceeded up the over 100 switchbacks to the top of the falls.
After a quick snack and some tremendous views, we decided to keep on hiking further into the woods to a place called Eagle Peak. From the top of Eagle Peak, you can see nearly all of Yosemite Park, as well as the Coastal Range mountains in the west. Looking down, you see the valley floor about 3700 feet below.
Finally at about 5:30 PM, over nine hours after our journey began, we limped back into the valley. All of the day’s photos can be seen here.
Tuesday will be a “rest day.” We’re planning on taking a tram tour around the valley, then possibly doing a short hike in the afternoon.