April 13, 1996: Yosemite National Park

From the day-use parking lot to Nevada Falls

Go from the day-use parking lot to the bridge below Vernal Falls as described in the hike of March 30, 1996.

When you've taken a drink from the water fountain on the south side of the bridge, and lounged around on the granite slab long enough (remember to keep out of the way of the Japanese girls taking each other's pictures there), continue on up the trail toward that travels upstream along the south side of the river toward Vernal Falls. Half a mile or less would bring you to the beginning of the Mist Trail (see below); according to a sign near the rest room, only a few steps will bring you to an excellent vista point for Vernal Falls. You won't get far enough for either one, now; you climb pass one or two house-sized granite boulders shaded by pine and fir, and in about a furlong you come to a trail branching off sharply back to the right. Rusted metal stencil-signs advise you that this is the John Muir Trail, leading to Nevada Falls, Merced Lake and points beyond. Take a deep breath and turn onto it.

The trail switchbacks fairly steeply up through the forest, toward a looming granite cliff in back of the woods. At the west end of many of the switchbacks, you emerge temporarily from the forest to ever widening views through the canyon down toward Yosemite Valley itself, where you can see Yosemite Falls plunging from the cliffs on the north side. If you look down, you can also see the trail between Happy Isles and the bridge far below you, with tiny people toiling along it like ants. Notice the pointy rock promontory far above that trail; this is Grizzly Peak, not terribly important otherwise (though I believe that several popular above-the-valley movie and commercial shots have been made there), but of some use to you in determining your altitude; it stands some 6100 feet above sea level, and somewhat more than 2000 feet above the valley floor.

Ultimately the trail turns at the base of the cliff into a long traversing climb toward the east. In a relatively short time, though, you'll began to switchback up again, this time along short, well-constructed zig-zags which appear to lead you up short of an impassable rocky nose covered with small trees and brush toward a notch very far above you. Watch for (in season) a spill of water coming down over the man-constructed granite retaining walls from above at one of the western zags; since the switchbacks generally trend toward the east, this water will not be passing over a trail above you, and, if you want to dare the danger of giardia, you may want to drink from it. I don't know whether this water flows later than spring, however; it may be strictly from snowmelt. (Incidentally, in April you'll be finding patches of snow, protected by the shadow of the north-facing cliff, along the trail by this time.)

Well short of the notch above you, the trail stops switchbacking and continues east, this time contouring around the edge of the nose mentioned above. By this time you can see the rounded white summit of Half-Dome looming across the Merced Valley from you, and to its right the quasiphallic shape of Liberty Cap, towering one thousand feet above the top of Nevada Falls, whose raging waters bow outward from their curved granite bed perhaps a mile away to the east. Between Half-Dome and Liberty Cap, the gibbous granite form of Mt. Broderick, which might be impressive elsewhere, looks remarkably puny.

Your emergence from this granite promontory may come as a surprise, but not an unwelcome one; you've come out onto a rather shallow slope dotted with boulders, trees, and granite slabs, next to one of which the trail splits. This is Clark Point. From here the view encompasses the landmarks mentioned above; you can also hear the roar of Vernal Falls from some hundreds of feet below you. That waterfall, unlike Nevada Falls further up the Merced, is not visible, but the Emerald Pool just above it can be seen through a screen of pines and cedars down in the valley of the Merced. Glancing back at Grizzly Peak you may notice that it doesn't seem as high above you as it once did. The path below the bridge, while technically in sight, is lost to view. This is a good spot to stop, have a snack and a drink, and try to decide whether you will take the left hand trail down into the valley between the two waterfalls or the right hand trail up to the top of Nevada Falls and the mouth of Little Yosemite Valley, the gateway to the back country. Ultimately, we got to try both.

Having decided for Nevada Falls -- theorizing that you can descend from there along the barely-visible trail switchbacking through scattered trees down the talus slope between the north side of the waterfall and the base of Liberty Cap (the trail was easily passable some 22 years ago, but who knows about today?) -- you now start up the right-hand trail, which leads southwest up the slope for a little distance, then turns back to the east again. You continue upslope in long contours, gradually trending east toward the waterfall. At one point you come to a blockage -- a rockfall has dropped a huge boulder into the middle of the trail (unless the park officials have cleared it by the time you get there), but, despite the sign on the gate that officially closed the trail when we took it -- a gate to which absolutely no one was paying any attention -- the boulder does not prevent anyone from continuing their journey.

We met our Waterloo, however, at a traverse across the face of a vertical north-facing granite cliff. The trail here appears to have been blasted out of sheer granite. It's all perfectly safe -- there is a rock retaining wall about two and a half or three feet high along the outside of the trail, all the way across -- but at this season much of the traverse was solid snow and much of the rest was solid ice. This did not seem to bother several parties of hikers we passed, going in both directions, and it would not have bothered me under other circumstances, but my five-year-old granddaughter seemed less than enthusiastic about continuing, especially since she couldn't keep her balance on the ice, so here we turned around and headed back. As far as I could tell, we were between a quarter and a half mile from Nevada Falls, and well above its top -- we were looking down on the people there -- and once past the cliff traverse, the trail should have been a fairly easy descending contour, with perhaps two or three crossings of seasonal streams that we could see draining over the granite bluffs to the southwest of Nevada Falls. By the way, a look back toward Grizzly Peak from here will show that summit sillhouetted against the north wall of Yosemite Valley, slightly below you -- which puts you some two thousand or more feet above the pier, the floor of Yosemite Valley.

Returning to Clark Point, you now descend for a bit more than half a mile and some 300 feet into the hanging valley above Vernal Falls. (Watch out for the sand on the granite rocks; it makes for tricky footing.) After switchbacking down brushy granite slopes, you enter the fir forest of the valley and proceed toward the river, perhaps taking a break at the primitive rest room that the National Park Service provides here. Reaching the river, you can stop and photograph the wide, shallow plunge of white water sweeping down a slanting granite slab -- this is the Silver Apron into the well-named waters of Emerald Pool. The water looks inviting, and you may wish to go for a swim. If you do, you'll be in for the ride of your life -- probably the last one -- since the Emerald Pool drains right into Vernal Falls, which plunges several hundred feet. Michael Douglas or Arnold Schwarzenegger may be able to survive such a ride in a movie, but don't try it at home, kids. The forest on the south side of the pool, however, is a delightful place to eat your lunch; and if you go upstream, cross the river on a bridge, and descend back down to the Emerald Pool again, you can find some nice sunny slabs on which to sun yourself.

When you've rested and eaten, get back on the trail -- or what passes for a trail in these open, human-infested woods -- and follow it downstream onto another set of granite slabs that slant up to the southwest. Follow the slabs along the edge of the river, staying behind the welded-pipe fence, until you reach the brink, over which you can peer to see Vernal Falls plunging into its receiving pool far, far below. You will have to fight for viewing space on any weekend day; the place is as busy as a Beijing bus stop!

Now follow the fence up the slab to the south, detouring away from it every now and then to avoid clusters of people taking the sun as near to the brink as they can get. In a few yards you reach the top of the slab and start down the Mist Trail, which descends steeply as a set of narrow granite steps along east face of a vertical cliff. You'll appreciate that welded-pipe fence here; this particular stretch of trail would cause a trapeze artist to suffer vertigo. The steps, again, are no more than a foot or so wide, and the trail descends at a particularly sharp angle. To make matters worse, there will be people coming up the trail, and a few behind you who want to descend faster than you or your granddaughter are ready to go.

You'll breath a sigh of relief as the trail turns sharp right and widens. The fence disappears, but it is not so absolutely necessary now; the steps are much wider, and somewhat away from the brink. Descend slowly; they remain steep, separated, and damp. Eventually, you reach a level space in a little grove of trees; you may wish to join others here, taking a break and catching your breath.

Beyond here the trail begins to descend again; though not as steep, it is much wetter. Spume from the waterfall will sweep over you, drenching you almost to the skin, and that is when the wind is in your favor; on bad days, it's like being in a thunderstorm. (Bridal Veil Falls, further down Yosemite Valley, is considerably worse, however.) You descend as quickly as possible, at one point passing through a short granite tunnel, then zigzagging down flights of granite steps -- until, finally, you reach the forest away from the falls and the trail turns into a normal, shallowly descending forest trail.

Shortly you'll come to a wide granite slab on your right that provides a good view back to the waterfall; it will probably have a fair number of people on it. Some yards beyond that you come to the point at which you turned onto the John Muir trail earlier in the day. And from there, simply retrace steps back down to Happy Isles -- where, in April (though not on March 30), you can find the refreshment kiosk open and buy yourself a hot dog or a double-scoop rainbow sherbet ice cream cone to celebrate your hike, and then either walk back to your car or catch the valley shuttle bus that will eventually get you there.

Don Harlow

For myself, I take some -- but few -- chances. I would not dip water out of the shallows of a Sierra lake and drink it unless I were dying of thirst, nor would I drink water in a creek downstream from a heavily-frequented lake. But there are plenty of streams that flow without the need of lakes upstream, and flows of snowmelt water coming down from the highlands; with these, I generally figure that the chances of absorbing an encysted parasite range from extremely slim to none. Sometimes, after all, you have to take chances.

Don Harlow <donh@netcom.com>