The first week of October I had a conference in San Francisco, and Mrs. Caminante agreed to let me fly out early and do some backpacking in Yosemite. I was also able to convince a buddy to join me for the Yosemite portion of the trip. I actually had to start planning back in April since backcountry permits are issues by lottery six months in advance. From a logistical perspective and being a newbie to Yosemite, it seemed easiest to shoot for a loop from Happy Isles and spend a little time in the valley before and after. Ultimately, it was no problem getting this permit, perhaps due to the lateness of the season and some of the NPS services shutting down the week before.
There are a ton of details to a successful trip in Yosemite and I spent hours on their website - they don't make it easy, but it's not the worst I've seen, either. We flew into Oakland, rented a car, and hit Yosemite right at nightfall. Finding the backpackers' campground was a bit of an adventure, and figuring out how and where to pay was even more so. While setting up my hammock, the camp volunteer informed me that I needed to "pad the trees with a t-shirt or something". !!#$! Not a single line about this anywhere on the website amongst the 80,000 other regulations, but I was tired and complied.
The next morning we picked up our permit at the wilderness office in Yosemite Village - the ranger reiterated the "padding the tree" rule, but mentioned that chocking the straps with twigs would be fine. No problem. We also had our first (and really only) wildlife encounter from inside the office.
The first few miles to Little Yosemite Valley are pretty brutal, lots of elevation. My buddy wanted to take the granite steps as the JMT is ~0.8 miles longer (but graded). By the time we got to the Emerald Pool I was pretty tired, but my DIY HyperD300 pack The Lorax was performing very well, and very comfortable.
At the permit office, we had tweaked our permit from HI -> LYV to a LYV pass through to Merced/Sunset. We hiked through LYV and continued toward Merced Lake by the Merced River through the valley. One thing I had not researched was the so-called Meadow Fire from 2014. This valley is pretty much burnt to a crisp from LYV to Bunnell Falls due to lightning.
We were getting concerned about finding a suitable site with daylight, but once we reached Bunnell Point the burn stopped and my buddy found a fantastic site w/fire ring and benches a few hundred feet off the trail. Here is Camp Ripstop by the Roll (diy hammock, tarp, quilts, and pack).
My buddy's Notch:
The next day we continued up the river toward Echo Valley, gaining a little more elevation now and even encountering some fall color. Not exactly of the same nature as my home Smokies, but beautiful and welcome, nonetheless.
We had, of course, wanted to incorporate Clouds Rest into our itinerary. However, the forecast before we left showed a sharp drop in temperature coming in as well as some snow. Somewhat reluctantly, we decided to climb Echo Valley and loop back towards LYV and save CR for another trip where temps were forecast to be in the teens. Cruising above the valley on the big granite was a bit kick for this east coast guy.
After a night in LYV (really embarrassing how thoroughly "backpackers" had trashed that camp and the vault toilets), we were soon rounding the Liberty Cap and headed back to the valley proper for another night in the backpackers' camp (which we had by now mastered) and some adult beverages and shower at Housekeeping Camp.
The next day we hiked to Mirror Lake (totally dry), checked out Yosemite Falls (totally dry), and watched some climbers on El Capitan (totally terrifying). Dropped the car in Oakland and BART'ed into SF for some beers with a friend at Toronado and then back to work.
Thanks for looking.
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Originally Posted by johnspenn
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