Hetch Hetchy

So, we just got back from our Yosemite adventure. We went to Hetch Hetchy (4 hour drive from San Jose), which is one of the less known and therefore less crowded parts of Yosemite. We got a wilderness permit for the Rancharia Falls for the next day and therefore were allowed to stay one night at the backpackers campground (4000 feet). As a warm-up, we decided to go up to Smith Peak (7751 feet). So, let me introduce the third one in our company. Karthik (rightmost on the picture below) is my Indian appartment comrade. He also currently works as an intern for Sun Microsystems in the Maxine project.


So we went off with light backpacks, leaving our stuff in the car. However, we needed to put all the food in bear-proof lockers. Well, I'd like to apologize for the weather. As you can see on the picture below, it was not very sunny. On the upper right of the picture you can see the Hetch Hetchy reservoir, which is a source for San Francisco water.


As it started raining more heavily, we moved on quickly and got up to Smith Meadows (6500 feet). In the forest you can see burned trees. Cindy had some problems getting over all the obstacles as you can see on the picture below.


After some additional elevation gains, it started snowing. The trail was not marked and hard to follow, because we seemed to be the first one to get so far on this day on the way to the peak. The Garmin navigation system was not useful either (on the contrary), because the way point coordinates were simply wrong, probably they refer to an old forgotten path. Well, as going up through the wood without a trail was very difficult, we had to resign about 500 feet below the top. Below you can see me and Cindy during a snowball fight.


Well, our shoes were pretty wet by now anyway, so we were glad when we reached the backpackers campground. We set up our tent and then realized that our gas cooker was leaking, so about half of our food was useless as it required boiled water. So we decided to feed ourselfs from peanuts and energy bars only.


The next day we went off with good cheer, but heay backpacks, and wet shoes. We went for a few miles when it started raining again.


After 6 miles we reached the lower part of the Rancharia falls. There we saw some good campsites, but despite the rain we decided to try to go on to Tilltill Valley.


However, the path turned out to be difficult (see the picture below for a sample). When some other hikers told us that Tilltill valley was rather flooded with water, we made a turn and went back to the Rancharia falls to set up our tent there.

As it rained without break we had to set up our tent in pretty wet conditions. We were also quite exhausted from 6 hour non-stop hiking with heavy backpacks, so we were glad when we could get inside our small (and at least partly dry) home as you can see on the picture below.


The night was cold even in the tent, because the outside temperature was at about 30 F. You don't care about style, when you wake up after a night in the wilderness, so please take my apologizes for the picture below.


The backpack felt quite heavy on the last day, perhaps because all the clothes and the tent were quite wet. We went on quickly and reached our car (6,5 miles) in 2,5 hours. Driving home was not easy, because of all kinds of Memorial day delays. Fortunately, we made a stop at a restaurant, where I nearly managed to eat a medium size American pizza ;-)