Firefall in Yosemite

[Drew Wiley]

Then you should see some of the other 92% of Yosemite Park besides Yosemite Valley! Better have a big bucket. There are entire sections you can walk for a week with only a 50/50 chance of seeing another person; and it only gets better south of the Park itself.

[SergeyT]

We should probably ask what "the full Yosemite experience" is

[John Kasaian]

We should probably ask what "the full Yosemite experience" is

It probably has something to do with bears.
That and driving around looking for a parking space in order to catch the tram, LOL!.

[aaronnate]

We should probably ask what "the full Yosemite experience" is

Start at one end and go to the other with my cameras in each season. Photograph the big walls, climb a little of the big walls just to say I had my hands and feet on them, sleep a few nights in camp 4, be at the top to watch and photograph someone summit each, since I never will. Photograph the falls and the valley in each season. Photograph mirror lake, Tenya lake, upper cathedral lake, and Mono Lake. Etc... Want more?

Most of these are a younger man's dreams when I was wanting to and working toward summiting El' Capitan with a friend, even though we had not seen it in person. A wrist injury took my climbing dreams, and age is chipping away at the rest. I can dream and someday do some of it.

So yes, Firefall is on my bucket list.

Bears? 2005 while Lying flat on my stomach in a shallow bowl near the top of Wolf Creek Pass photographing some wild orchids I found, I smelled something bad, heard a big branch break followed by huffing. I looked up and a freaking bear was on its hind legs looking down at me. Biggest damned animal I have ever seen outside a zoo, and scared the crap out of me. Not a little black bear either, this thing was sandy brown,huge, humped back (I saw it as it walked away) and a massive head. Glad I did not look tasty. After that experience, yes, seeing a bear from the safety of my car sounds like the best way to do it.

[Drew Wiley]

What more ?????????? You've just described the tiny 2% of the area which I always avoid. And I mean 2% of Yosemite Park itself, and not of the considerably larger Sierra Nevada, which contains numerous spectacular glacial valleys, thousands of lakes and peaks, and thank goodness, no roads across the range south of Hwy 120 in Yosemite itself. Grizzlies have been extinct in Calif since the 1920's. I've run into them in Yellowstone. Had a lot of cute black bears (including cinnamon colored ones) around camp in Kings Canyon last year. They're opportunists; but the wild ones tend to mind their own business unless careless tempted with food, and are fairly small with sleek fur. The Yosemite Valley Yogi Bear types look obese (up to twice the wt of wild bears) and have scruffy fur - the sign of a junk food diet, which they teach their cubs. Same with coyotes; the trash eaters look mangy.

[photostockeditor]

This is Great!!!!!!

[John Kasaian]

Don't get me wrong, the Valley is a magical place and people from all over the world come to see it and I certainly hope aaronate gets his chance. Next week I heard a prediction for the weather to reach the 70s, so the waterfalls should be cooking, the skeeters still rare, and the crowds minimal (mid week anyway.)
But the enjoyable parts of Yosemite are well past the ends of the roads, and the Valley during the tourist season will be a massive frustration as it has been for at least the past four decades so I'd consider Sequoia and Kings Canyon as alternatives if you're in this neck of the woods May-October.

[Vaughn]

It is an interesting challenge photographing in Yosemite Valley -- to be at a well documented place with all the tripod holes to trip over, but yet make an image that is yours. I enjoy it. I posted this image recently, but here it is again.

Bryce and Calder. 2012
Yosemite Valley
Printed (Pt/pd) 2019

[Drew Wiley]

Ran into a nice fella working out with an ultralight pack a couple days ago. My own pack was in the opposite category. He said he wanted to do the Muir Trail south to north in June. I told him it would be suicide. Six people died last year early season at the South Fork of the Kings crossing alone, where the bridge is still out. The degree of runoff depends not only on extant snowpack, but just how fast it gets hot in June, and by how much. Public flooding downstream is more a matter of foolhardy development on the flood plains and riverbeds in the San Joaquin Valley. I've seen entire subdivisions swept away in "once in a thousand year floods" - which came five years in a row in my lifetime, plus several other times, which would logically make me 10,000 years old.

[John Kasaian]

Ran into a nice fella working out with an ultralight pack a couple days ago. My own pack was in the opposite category. He said he wanted to do the Muir Trail south to north in June. I told him it would be suicide. Six people died last year early season at the South Fork of the Kings crossing alone, where the bridge is still out. The degree of runoff depends not only on extant snowpack, but just how fast it gets hot in June, and by how much. Public flooding downstream is more a matter of foolhardy development on the flood plains and riverbeds in the San Joaquin Valley. I've seen entire subdivisions swept away in "once in a thousand year floods" - which came five years in a row in my lifetime, plus several other times, which would logically make me 10,000 years old.

Yeah, that early run off will suck a guy under and there's no rescue possible once that happens. Sadly, it happens every year.