Tuolumne Meadows

Last weekend, Cindy, Karthik, and I spent again in the Yosemite National Park. The original plan was to hike Half Dome beginning in Tuolumne Meadows, but unfortunately we did not get the necessary wilderness permit on the first day. So we decided to do a day hike to North Dome. On our way there we made a small detour to Indian Rock, which is a unique rock formation. You can see all three of us sitting on the Indian Rock on the picture below.
After 4.4 miles we reached North Dome, which gave us gigantic views. Cindy remembered the tips she got last week in Hollywood and posed immediately at the right position on a pile of stones. In the back you can see the north side of Half Dome.


We walked on towards Yosemite Falls, where we saw a few climbers relaxing after their hard day. Below you can see a picture taken at the edge where Cindy stares down into the valley a wall which is about two thousand feet high.


We were pretty tired when we were back in our car as the whole hike was about 14 miles. We ate at the lodge and slept at the backpackers campground in Tuolumne Meadows. The next day, we dismissed our plans to hike Half Dome, because the public transport system is so poor that the original idea of getting from the valley floor back to Tuolumne Meadows turned out to be impossible. Instead we did another day hike to Coulds Rest parking our car at Tenaya Lake. Unfortunately we started pretty late, as we were tired from the day before and needed more sleep as expected... As we were not sure whether we would make it in one day or need to camp outside, we took our backpack with us. It was incredible hot although the average elevation was about 8500 feet. The heavy backpack with the tent and about 4 litres of water tied to it made going forward not much easier. Additionally, mosquitos were making the hike uncomfortable. While Cindy seemed to have no such problems, they liked me best. I ended up with 40+ mosquito bites. After 3.5 hours we reached the top of Clouds Rest (9926 feet = 3025 m). The view up there was fantastic... Below you can see the east side of Half Dome.


The summit seemed to be a crowded place in terms of animals. Karthik could take two nice shots with his new camera:



The following guy made a real show out of his photo shooting, posing in different positions for a few minutes. Cindy could learn from him!

Ah, I nearly forgot to mention that Cindy was very lazy that day. Perhaps it was also too hot for her, so I had to tie her to my backpack and carry her all the way up...

In the evening we managed to get back to the car at about 8 pm. So on that day we did 14.4 miles and about 3000 feet elevation difference with our backpacks. Instead of staying for another night, we decided to go back by car on the same day.