Inca Trail Prep....Yosemite!

Over the past five days, Amy had a medical conference at the Tenaya Lodge, in beautiful downtown Fishcamp, a couple of miles from the south entrance of Yosemite National Park. This was a great opportunity to do a little pre-Inca trail preperation, since where we were going to hike was between 6,000 and 8000 feet. Not exactly the 9,000 to 13,000 + feet of the Inca Trail, but a good start nontheless.

Just a couple of miles from the south entrance of Yosemite is the wonderful Mariposa Grove of sequoias. There are actually two different groves, an upper and a lower, of these great trees. It's a wonderful hike of about 6 miles and about 1200 feet gain to go from the parking lot to the top at Wawona Point and back. The biggest tree in the park, the "Grizzly Giant", is in the lower grove. It is about 220 high and 31 feet across at the base! Its biggest branch is almost 7 feet in diameter, bigger than any other tree (besides sequoias) in the entire grove. The Grizzly Giant is estimated to be between 2500 and 3000 years old.



There are many strange sequoias, such as the Clothespin Tree, a tree which has been ravaged by fire over the centuries to the point that it's base has been hollowed out to look like a clothespin.



There is also the famous tunnel tree. In the 1890s, this sequoia was tunneled through so you could drive a stagecoach through it. When I was a kid I remember driving through it with my parents. Unfortunately, it keeled over in the winter of 1969.

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The next day we did a hike up at Glacier Point, 3000 feet above Yosemite Valley. We hiked up to Sentinal Dome and on to Taft Point. Sentinal Dome is about an 800 foot climb from the main trail and from here you have a great 360 view of all of Yosemite. Here's a picture of us (Amy and me and some doctor friends, Ron, Becky, Jon and Julie) with Half Dome in the background.



Yosemite Falls, one of the tallest water falls in the world, was completely dry. In June, when we were in Yosemite Valley last, it was a rushing torrent that sent mist hundreds of yards from the base of the falls. Even Nevada and Vernal Falls were just a trickle this late in the year.

From Sentinal Dome, we hiked over to the Fissures and Taft Point. This is atop a granite ledge that falls straight to the valley floor, some 3000 feet. There are no gaurd rails, so you better watch where you're walking...



Over the next couple of days I did the hike in the Mariposa Grove three times, Amy once. I think this has given us a bit of a boost for Peru, hopefully we'll be ready for the Inca Trail trek, which starts on Holloween.