A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to experience Yosemite National Park for the first time. My dear friend, Chelsea Borowski, was able to come along for the adventure.
After a 5(ish) hour drive, we arrived in the town of Lee Vining hoping to cross Tioga Pass, which was the most direct route into Yosemite. Unfortunately, by the time we arrived, Tioga Pass was closed due to bad weather (including four feet of snow). After talking with some locals, it sounded like the chances of the pass opening by morning were pretty good, so we decided to camp out at the visitor center for the night. At this point, it was pouring rain and there were not very many places to pitch a tent, so we decided to sleep in my car for the night.
Fortunately, we were able to easily fit all of our gear in the two front seats and then fold down the rear seats of my Nissan Rogue so we had a fairly spacious sleeping space.
It was still pretty early in the evening by the time we got everything set up, so we stayed up playing cards until we got tired.
There wasn’t quite enough room to sit up all the way, but we made the most of it and as you can see from this picture ^^, we still had an enjoyable evening.
This was the view we woke up to in the morning.
Mona Lake is quite stunning, but this was only the beginning of the breathtaking beauty we were to encounter this weekend.
After eating breakfast, we hopefully made our way to see if the pass had opened around 8:00 AM. Much to our dismay, it had not. We eventually talked to a ranger who sounded like he knew what he was talking about (up until this point, we still weren’t able to get a concrete yes or no from anyone). Much to our dismay, he informed us that the pass would not be opening up again for at least another two days. He also showed us a few more passes, the next one was about two hours away but he said it definitely wouldn’t be open anytime soon either, the one after that was about four hours away and MIGHT be open, and the one after that was open for sure but was SIX hours away – almost taking us all the way back to Lake Tahoe. Needless to say, we were a bit discouraged. However, we both decided we would rather be driving than sitting around longer waiting for the pass to open, so we set out again.
Two hours later, we arrived at the first pass. It was open. After talking with the ranger, we were both pretty skeptical, so we stopped and asked some more locals if it was open. The first few were pretty clueless, but the second guy looked it up on his phone for us and read that it was indeed open. So we headed over to the pass to see for ourselves. On the way, we passed a patrol car, so we pulled over to check again that it was really open. The officer not only informed us that the pass was definitely open, but that Tioga Pass had also been opened about 30 minutes earlier. Despite being slightly annoyed that we had driven two hours out of our way to cross a different pass when the original one had opened up anyway, we were thankful that we didn’t end up needing to drive an additional FOUR or SIX hours out of our way. We also thought it would be a good opportunity to see more scenery, since we would probably be taking Tioga Pass on the way back home. Almost immediately after entering the pass, we were greeted with spectacular views.
A little while later, we finally entered Yosemite.
After we arrived at our campsite in Tamarack Flats, we set up our tent. The fog was thick and made everything look mysteriously beautiful.
This was our backyard.
Yep. Beautiful.
After setting up camp, we decided to do a little bit of exploring in the famous Yosemite Valley before going to bed.
Even with the fog, God’s handiwork was unmistakable.
The next morning, we decided to hike Half Dome. For those of you who don’t know, this is a “bucket list” kind of hike. 17 miles, almost 5,000 foot elevation gain.
There are a limited number of people allowed to hike all the way up the Half Dome cables (50/day), which are at the very top of Half Dome. In order to do so, you need to obtain a permit, which are given out via a lottery system. Because the chances of winning the lottery are normally not very high (on one of the same days we applied for, there were 5,000 applications last year), both Chelsea and I applied for permits to hike the cables for Saturday and Sunday. We also applied for two different days because the weather forecast was not very good throughout the weekend – we thought it would be a good idea to keep our options open. Somehow, we won the lottery for both days. Unfortunately, this wasn’t very helpful in our decision on which day to do the hike, but we finally decided on Saturday.
On our drive to the valley (and our trail head), we stumbled across this spectacular view.
We couldn’t resist this opportunity to take a selfie.
Then we we were off to tackle Half Dome.
The first few miles were relatively mild. Early on, we decided we were going to be very intentional about pacing ourselves as it is fairly common for Half Dome hikers to become fatigued and dehydrated. We were super excited to try out our new LifeStraw water bottles (shout out to Ted Borowski), which allowed us to drink water from any stream, waterfall, or lake we happened to come across. Both of us were so thankful for these specialized filtration bottles – without them, we would’ve looked like pack mules with all that water we would have had to lug up with us.
Our first waterfall.
The scenery was constantly changing throughout the hike, but always, it was so beautiful.
Couldn’t get enough of those waterfalls.
We made sure we took time out of our busy schedule to hug a tree. It’s not every day you get to hug a Yosemite tree (or any tree at all, if you live in Nevada)!
Note the LifeStraw water bottle hanging from my backpack.
Lunchtime! Probably the fifth time we stopped to eat something. We read plenty of horror stories about people passing out (or worse) while hiking Half Dome because they hadn’t had enough to eat or drink.
A few hours, 10,000 enormous stone stairs, and a bunch of I-can’t-see-15-feet-in-front-of-me-I-hope-I’m-not-going-to-fall-off-a-ledge-I-can’t-see fog later, we finally made it to….
….the cables! This is how excited about it we were:
Unfortunately, it was a bit too treacherous to make it all the way up the cables. The rock was extremely slippery from the rain and our hands quickly became stiff from the cold and were unable to properly hold onto the cables for very long. However, we did make it up about half way, which is still a fairly decent feat.
There is usually a ranger stationed at the start of the section right before the cables to make sure only those who have permits are allowed to pass, but he was nowhere to be found. We found out later that he was apparently somewhere up at the top attempting to rescue two people who had gone up earlier in the day and gotten stuck because it started snowing and they couldn’t get back down safely. We think we chose wisely.
And as Chelsea put it: “Half Dome. 18 miles. 4,800 ft. elevation gain. Rain, cold, & intense fog. Thankful for the adventure with this girl!”
When we got back to the car, we were incredibly disgusting, hungry and exhausted. We decided our first priority would be a shower. After searching and asking around, we ended up paying $5 each for a hot shower. It was worth every cent.
Next on the list was food. It was raining, so the chances of being able to start a fire when we got back to our campsite were fairly slim, plus we were both so tired that we had zero desire to cook anyway. After driving around for quite a while (parking is limited in Yosemite), we finally found a parking spot at one of the lodges. It ended up being more of a cafeteria but at that point, we didn’t really care. We both got a burger and fries and topped it off with ice cream for dessert. Both were incredibly satisfying. I’m a little sad we didn’t take a picture, although that was the farthest thing from our minds at that point.
By the time we got back to the campsite, we were so exhausted we both went straight to bed (I don’t remember if I even brushed my teeth first, which is a BIG DEAL for me). Both of us slept like babies. Except better.
The next morning was beautiful and crystal clear. We both seriously debated hiking Half Dome AGAIN but finally decided our knees probably couldn’t take that again a second day in a row (in hindsight, we definitely made the right decision). After much debate, we decided we would just have to come back again later to enjoy the views from Half Dome (oh darn).
Instead, we settled for hiking the Upper Yosemite Falls. Even this hike had our knees and feet aching on the way back down. We decided not to go all the way to the top because there was a thunderstorm rolling in, and we were both doubly glad we didn’t because we are pretty sure our knees wouldn’t have made it. There were still some pretty spectacular views to enjoy on the way up.
We enjoyed it.
That night, after creating a roaring fire (of which we were rather proud), we had some fun.
It might have taken more than a few tries to get it right, ha ha (for those of you who still can’t quite make it out, it reads, “YOSEMITE”).
The next morning, we set off for Mariposa Grove to see the Giant Sequoias. It was the first time either of us had seen these enormous trees in person, so we were pretty excited.
Being among these magnificent trees, a verse found in Romans 1:20 came to mind (not for the first time while in Yosemite): “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities–His eternal power and divine nature–have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.”
Truly, His eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen.
After about an hour in the Sequoias, we started our trip back home.
There were still so many breathtaking views on our way out.
Like this one of Half Dome.
And Half Dome again, further in the distance.
And let’s not forget the baby black bear we saw walking across the road.
We stopped to fill our water bottles at this gorgeous lake.
Everywhere we turned. Just surrounded by so much beauty.
This was on our trek out to Bodie. Can’t get enough of those white capped mountains.
This is the Wild West ghost town of Bodie, a California State Historic Park. All sorts of old buildings preserved in time. It was a long, ten miles of unmaintained dirt road, but very cool and worth the trip.
After Bodie, our next stop was Winnemucca, Nevada (home).
I am so thankful to have been able to visit Yosemite before leaving Nevada for World Race. It is truly an unforgettable experience and I would highly recommend it to anyone. Being in the middle of such intense beauty of God’s creation made me that much more excited about going on World Race and seeing even more of it across three different continents.
I leave you with two of my favorite Yosemite views.
