Vernal and Chilnualna Falls

I love my job.  I love my office.  I love weekends spent in my backyard.

I headed up to Vernal Falls last week for work.  One of the first views of the falls is from a bridge you cross.  Can you see the falls in the middle of the picture?

 The view looking down canyon wasn't too bad either.

 Vernal Falls!  The falls kick up a surprising amount of mist and it felt very refreshing.  There was also a lovely mist-created rainbow near the pool at the bottom.  

In the aerial photo below, the trail is in yellow.  The area between the trail and the river/falls is the mist zone.  The red lines are some of the many social trails visitors have created.  These trails are very detrimental to the vegetation and can be very slippery and very dangerous for visitors.  Our project is to determine a percent of visitors that use these social trails, their motivation for doing so, and then give the restoration team our findings so they can make restoration plans for the area.  However, there is one management hitch; some of these social trails are historic.  WHAT?!  In our meeting with the vegetation folks I needed them to repeat that for me.  Historic social trails.  Really?!  How do you manage an historic social trail?  (When I find out, I probably won't let you know because this probably doesn't interest you all that much...)

A few days later I went exploring for my weekend.  I've decided to try and hike as many miles of trail in Yosemite as I can.  Because I'm Kate, I'm taking a very systematic approach and started on the south end and decided to work my way north.  This last weekend I completed everything I wanted to do in the Wawona district of the park.

I was satisfied with my visit to the Mariposa Grove a few weeks ago and only needed a little 3.5 mile Meadow Loop.  I started this early in the morning and it was peaceful and lovely.  Then I headed up the trail toward Chilnualna Falls (it's ok, I don't know how to pronounce it either).  There was a nice loop from the falls further east that I decided needed to be seen.  My hiking routes are in red below.

There were quite a few fires burning in the area and the day started off really smokey.

By afternoon it had cleared nicely.  (Same hunk of rock, slightly different elevation.)

Along the way I startled a bear who took off.  I only saw his/her hindquarters.

The lower falls.  On the way down, that pool looked really inviting to my sore feet.

 The falls are hard to see mainly because California is so dry and there simply isn't a whole lot of water running off of anything.  It was a beautiful place to stop for a snack regardless.

I got home and tallied my miles: 19.3.  It was a long day and I was quite stiff when I tried to get out of my car after the hour and a half drive home.  I think I earned my chocolate milk that night!

Anyone wishing to take a tour of my backyard, I'm always looking for hiking buddies!