Hiking Yosemite

Hiking Yosemite was a bucket list item for Aaron and me that we checked off this past weekend.

Yosemite National Park is made up of over 1,200 square miles of beauty. I took a lot of photos of our trip, but none of them do any justice to the beautiful scenery inside the park.

Yosemite has been closed due to COVID (along with most of CA), but one evening in early June I got an email that they were opening with limited capacity, and reservations were required. I jumped on the website to see how far out we had to book, and to my surprise, they had open weekends in July. I’m not even sure I talked to Aaron about going before I booked a trip there, I knew I wanted to go while the crowds were light.

The way the reservations work is you purchase a day pass for $35 per car. The person that buys the pass must be in the car with ID. You must arrive on the day you book your reservation, but the pass is good for seven days, so you can visit all week long. Our pass was for July 25th, so we could visit any day through July 31st.

Yosemite is around 4 hours East of San Francisco, so we left at 7am on Saturday morning. We stopped for breakfast and gas once we were out of the city, and made our way to the park. Traffic wasn’t bad at all, but I imagine it would have been this time last year.

I had done so much research before we left about what trails to hike, where to stop for photos, and what to bring. The first place we stopped (after the bathroom) to take photos was Tunnel View. This is one of the most iconic places to stop and take photos, so we expected crowds. We found a parking spot easily and jumped out of the car to take in the view.

Once we snapped a few photos we jumped back in the car and set our GPS to Mist Trail head. We planned to take the Mist Trail up to Vernal Falls, then to Nevada Falls and back down.

On Mist Trail you are met with 600 marble steps that lead you to the top of Vernal Falls. The steps were no joke.

It started to rain about half way up the steps, which was a real blessing. It was 90 degrees, and the rain felt so refreshing. We stopped to take a photo, eat a snack, cool down, then we continued up the steps.

Along the way we got some beautiful shots of Vernal Falls while we rested our legs and caught our breath.

Once you made it up the stairs you felt like you were on top of the world. We came off the last step and just stared out in awe of all the beautiful scenery.

After we rested our legs and ate a snack it was time to continue on. The path going up from here was a steep rock path that was slippery at times.

We took our time, stopped when we needed to, and took as many photos as we could.

Before we knew it we looked down and saw the top of Vernal Falls. The hike to the top of the falls seemed so hard, but the hike to this point seemed so much easier for some reason.

Once we got to the fork in the trail we could either head back to the trailhead or keep going up to the top of Nevada Falls. We could hear thunder in the distance, and it was getting into the late afternoon, so we decided to head back to the car.

The views on the way down were so beautiful. I will tell you I thought walking downhill would be way easier, but it was not. My knees were shaking by the time we got back to our car.

Once we walked back to our car we sat and took in the view on more time, then drove 45 minutes out of the park, and another hour to our hotel room for a shower and some sleep.

The stats from my watch say we hiked 6.95 miles in 4 hours and 9 minutes. We hiked up to 5,491 feet, and I burned 1,416 calories.

We took some notes of things we will do next time we go back. If you are planning a trip these could be helpful for you as well.

• Eat a full meal before you start the hike. We grabbed fast food breakfast on the way and it wasn’t enough food.
• Take more protein bars and other snacks than you think you need. We took some granola bars and dried fruit, but we didn’t eat enough calories.
• Take more water than you think you need. We didn’t drink nearly enough water. It was 90 degrees, and we worked our bodies hard. We needed way more water. They did have one water station to refill, but we needed twice the water we took.
• Bring layers. The photo above is what I brought. I took the jacket off and left it in the car, but if we would have continued to hike I would have been cold when the sun started to set.
• Don’t wear new shoes, but make sure they have good grip. I wore my running shoes and I did have some traction issues walking downhill.
• Stop along the way to look around. You get caught up in not falling that you forget to take in the scenery.
• Consider staying just outside the park. This was the best decision we made! We never would have made it home, we were so hungry and tired.
• The earlier you go in the summer the better chance you have to see the water falls. Everything I read said the water falls can dry up as it gets closer to fall.