Yosemites Valley

Yosemite (Saturday, Sept 25)

We drove for 1 ½ hours through the park until we reached what they call “lower Yosemite”.  It is at an elevation of a mere 4,000 ft, much like the upper hills of the Okanagan.  In what you call the Yosemite valley you find what everyone believes to be the true Yosemite.  There is a very large valley about 5 km long and ½ mile wide at the widest spot.  Within the valley are beautiful treeless meadows, a small river, and the many amenities that make it the playpen for 10 million people from Los Angeles, Sacramento, and San Francisco.

Surrounding the Yosemite valley are the famous peaks such as ½ dome and El Capitan, a granite wall that rises 1 km from the valley floor.  On one of my scooter rides, I stopped to watch a couple of climbers ¼ way up El Capitan.

In the next picture, if you look carefully, you will see a couple of dots between the trees on the rock face.  They are climbers who have already spent one day on the mountain.

It takes anywhere from 3 days (for a reasonably experienced climber) to 7 days, with an average of 4 to 5 days for a team of climbers to make the ascent.  It is amazing to watch the climbers move slowly up the vertical face.  When I was watching, the valley temperature was 90 degrees.  With the sun beating down on them, I could imagine the temperature to be well over 100 degrees—a tad draining!

Also in the Yosemite valley you find the 3 main hotels, a great store, lots of camping spots, and a well stocked sports shop for hikers and climbers.  The river that runs through the valley meanders at a leisurely pace now, but in spring often floods much of the area.  Yosemite is famous for extreme mountains and waterfalls, but at this time of year, the falls are still flowing, though at a much reduced rate.  Still when you see “Bridal Veil Falls” dropping 100’s of feet with only a fraction of the usual water, it is very, very impressive.

In order to get a camping spot in the “valley”, we had to leave the meadow location, at 9,500 ft and drive 1.5 hours to the valley, and line up at 7:00 am IN THE MORNING to get a spot.  We did luck out and get the 5^th to last spot in the entire park!  That spot was only good for ONE NIGHT!

The first evening we lucked out and were entertained for an hour or so by a live band—older hippies right out of the 1960’s, hair and all.  However, they were great with all the tunes from the 60’s and 70’s.  After that we viewed a great climbing movie for an hour of so, with a following discussion and q&a led by Ron Kauk, the climber, and then took the bus back to the campsite.

Transportation throughout Yosemite, is like Zion.  They have countless numbers of free busses that drive you all throughout the valley with frequent stops where you can get off and start hiking, browse the stores, galleries and museums or take you back to your campsite.