www.arareko.net

Our weekend in Yosemite was really great. We arrived on Thursday night after a 4-hour drive from Sunnyvale and stayed in a tent at the Camp Curry. Around 6 a.m. on Friday, Gina & Güero headed to Camp 4 to reserve a camping spot for the rest of the weekend, just to find out that there was already a long line of people waiting to do the same thing. A couple of hours later the ranger arrived to the camp kiosk to announce that there were only a few spots available to those who arrived first.

We opted to hang around in the Valley for the rest of the day and figure out the camping issue later in the afternoon. After having breakfast we headed for a short hike around the base of El Capitan. We hiked all the way up to the South Seas (A4 5.8) amphitheater, where a couple of folks were doing a giant pendulum with some rope fixed at the top of the first pitch. We stayed there for a while, enjoyed the view, shoot some pictures and hiked down back to the car. We had some lunch at the visitor center then headed to the Curry Village to see if there was any tent available for the night. After paying for another night, we got back to the car and drove all the way up the highway 140 towards Glacier Point. We arrived just before sunset and were able to enjoy the beautiful views of Yosemite Valley and the still-snowy High Sierra.

After a late wake up on Saturday morning, we visited our long-time friend Bernardo at the mountain store then had some breakfast at the Yosemite Lodge. The park was getting really crowded by then and we thought of visiting Tuolumne Meadows to avoid the hordes of people. But, while we were driving towards highway 120 we spotted a giant line of rope fixed from the top of El Cap. As usual, we couldn’t help but park the car at the meadow and hike to the base of the cliff to see what was going on. It turned out to be a gang of speleologists performing a giant rappel off from the summit. Once we knew what was going on, we continued the hike towards the base of South Seas, Güero couldn’t let pass the opportunity to try the giant pendulum by himself, using some slings and carabiners we found on our hike down the previous day.

It got a little late for driving to Tuolumne so we went back to the Curry in the afternoon, paid for another night and headed for another short hike towards Mirror Lake. We had a blast of a hike, shooting pictures along the way and happy of doing it just before sunset, when most of the people is back to their camping spots. Around 9 p.m. we got back to the camp and enjoyed a couple of pizzas along with some good dark beers. Gina and Güero went to the tent to sleep while Odi and I hiked to the Curry meadow to do some astrophotography and enjoy the beautiful night.

Sunday was about having breakfast at the Lodge then doing some bouldering around Camp 4 for the rest of the morning. We bought some food and drove towards Tuolumne. The High Sierra highway had just been opened and we were able to enjoy the beautiful views all along the way. Tuolumne was really beautiful, still with lots of snow but melting really fast due to the weather warming up during this week. Around 5 p.m. we turned back and drove West to the park exit. We had a fabulous dinner at the Evergreen Lodge at the Hetch Hetchy entrance just before our final drive to the Bay area. Another great weekend had just ended

All of the photos are here.