Located in the Sierra Nevada mountains of north eastern California, Yosemite has so much beauty that I was only able to witness a small fraction. There are around 800 miles of trails throughout the park, and I saw roughly 30.
The trip began on a Friday morning, where my friends and I waited in line in the Touolumne meadows area to get a permit to backpack in the wilderness. The permit was free of charge. We made friends with some of the other people in line and waited for about two hours. We had a pretty good spot in line, maybe seventh. When it came time to pick a trailhead, we decided on rafferty creek. All of the options seemed good, but we knew we wanted to make it into yosemite valley, and we didn't want to take the most direct route, but didn't want to add on too many miles. I think it was a good compromise.
On Friday night, we camped in the backpacker's campground in toulumne meadows. It was a comfortable location, and cost $5 per person. We woke up at a decent time, and after we cooked breakfast, picked up some last minute items, and squared away our bear boxes (canisters we rented to keep bears away from human food), we got on the trail. It was still morning, and we were pretty excited to get moving.
The first few miles weren't too exciting, but we still snapped a few pictures. Our packs began to get quite heavy, and as we made our way to higher elevation, we took several breaks. There were 4 of us, and at one fork in the road we had a disagreemet on which way to go: the "easy" way or the "hard" way. I was interested in an adventure, but the voice of reason eventually stepped in and said that we had to go with the easier route. The views were still quite beautiful on the easy path, so no hard feelings now.
We spent the night in a meadow, not too off the trail. When it was time to get up in the morning, we were a bit slow- moving. It was quite cold, as the bear boxes had a considerable amount of frost on them. We cooked up some oatmeal and got on our way, what would eventually be around 11 miles of switchbacks and forest. We took at break near Merced lake, near where an established camp was set up. I remember filtering water and eating a lot of trail mix there. We moved along, and eventually found a great campsite in a wooded area. We had the best dinner of our time in the wilderness, burritos, that night. We also had a fire going for a while, which was easy to start with the abundance of dry sticks in the area.
The next day ended up being very relaxed. We walked a couple miles, and saw that the backpacker's campground for those that want to climb half dome was nearby. We were fortunate enough to get tickets for this when we picked up our wilderness permit, and we figured it would be much more comfortable to hike up to half dome from the campsite than from yosemite valley, an additional 4.7 miles from that point. We spent most of the day at a beach alongside the river and collecting wisdom from a variety of visitors.
After our rest day, we had what amounted to be the most painful (and most rewarding) day of our hike. We woke up early and made our way to half dome. Between where we camped and the top of half dome was about 2700 feet of elevation gain over 3.5 miles, so the trail was no joke. We made it to the top using the cables and enjoyed the views for a while. On our way down, it was starting to get a little busy, and I could see how accidents can happen there. We made our way back to camp and packed up. Next was the mist trail, which is appropriately named. We saw nevada falls and vernal falls on our way down into the valley, where we ended our trip.
Yosemite national park is definitely a beautiful place, so I can understand why so many people flock there each year. With that said, experiencing Yosemite by backpacking was a way to see the incredible sights and still (surprisingly) have solitude. I would recommend a trip to Yosemite for anyone up for a beautiful adventure.
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