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Yosemite National Park 2007

First Day On The Trail |

Soooooooo Cold. We woke up around 5am and got ready. I'm super excited to start our trip. More Later...

So... had a great first day. We hit the trail around 8am and hiked around 6.3 miles to Rancheria Falls. Along the way we saw a bunch of animals and a few awesome waterfalls. Wapama Falls was intense. Just standing in front of it on the foot bridges Chris and I got soaked. The falls also created wind that felt like 50mph.

Our packs our pretty heavy and even though we were the first people on the trail, we couldn't beat the heat. The water (hetch hetchy reservoir) was right next to a granite wall, with the trail in between. it was like being baked in an oven. We passed a few people heading back to their cars, likely they were just there for the weekend. Some were friendly and said hi, others were not.

We finally got to Rancheria Creek around 11:30 and set up camp. We are about 150 ft from the creek (I'm surprised its called a creek because its 50-75 feet wide). We hung out and dipped our feet in the freezing cold water for a while. Then, we ate some lunch (summer sausage, gouda and GORP). later, we hiked up to the falls and got some good pics. We then took a nap for about 30 minutes.

We want to get up at 5 am again tomorrow so we ate dinner early. We had mashed potatoes (pre-made with powdered milk and garlic powder), beef strogoanoff (from backpacker's pantry) and chocolate cheesecake (same). Everything was good. Not much of a sunset tonight as we are in the forest at the bottom of a valley surrounded by mountains on all sides. Hopefully I'll get to see one soon.

We were in bed by 9pm. Big day tomorrow. We hiked 800 vertical feet today and we have over 3100 feet to climb tomorrow. (Note: What I didn't realize when I wrote this on the trail was that our hike was, in fact, 3,400 feet up and over 1100 feet down, through snow, for something like 10.1 miles. More on that tomorrow.)

Locations Visited: Mather


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