Dear friends and family,

A quick story:

About Mid-May, when I was still hanging around Mesa Verde National Park, I stayed one night at a hostel in Mancos, Colorado (the number of affordably-priced hostels I’ve been able to stay in on this trip is astonishing and some day I’ll write a post all.of that). I was checked in by a friendly old lady named Diane, who lived in town and watched after the hostel in the evenings while the owner was out of town. Mancos is a sleepy town, and I arrived at a sleepy time of night, and so not much was going on in the hostel as I threw my day bag on the bunkbed, went up to the kitchen, and started fixing dinner (Zatarain’s red beans and rice, my constant companion).

Diane didn’t have much to do either at the front desk, so while I was working on dinner, she came over and we struck up a conversation. And what a wonderful conversation it was! We talked for well over 2 hours swapping stories about our lives and what we were up to. Diane was originally from New York City, had been an art dealer for some time in the area of Greenwhich Village, and told me a lot about what the old gayborhood used to be like and how she’s been at some of the first pride marches in that city!

Diane eventually moved out west and opened an art gallery near Mancos; it was nicer living, and that was where her east coast clientele were spending their vacations anyways. I told her about my ramblings, and my website, and how I planned to wander into California in a few weeks. At that time, I was concerned about the record snowfalls in the Sierras and that I wouldn’t be able to reach Yosemite National Park. Most of the park outside the valley was already closed, and the road I had planned on taking from Death Valley into the park (Tioga Road) was likewise shuttered and buried 30+ feet deep in snow. I already had to change my route to go south towards Kernsville, and I was strongly considering skipping Yosemite entirelty and driving the PCH instead.

And in telling Diane this, she had just this (summarized) thing to say: “you can’t miss Yosemite for the life of you! It’s the most beautiful place in the entire world! If you’ve ever seen the beauty of an Ansel Adam photograph, you’ve seen barely a tenth of the beauty of the valley, and I would know: I was a guide in the valley for a decade AND I met Ansel Adams!”

Well Diane, please consider this blog post a personal thank you, because I took your advice to go to Yosemite, and I haven’t regretted it, not one bit!

After leaving Death Valley and the newly reincarnated Owens Lake to the west, I did have to divert south, but it was only a few extra hours’s drive fo finally reach a part of the Sierras not yards deep in shreddable pow:

The valley of the Kern River, not under snow but definitely underwater in some places. Both roads leading west to Bakersfield were wiped out by flooding, and the only way out of town ended up being a rarely-used road with switcbacks so tight you could see your taillights through the turns.

Seemingly miraculously, I made it out of town and managed to snag an actual campsite in Yosemite NP itself, at Wawona Campground, about 45 minutes south of the valley. Even the drive in and out every day was incredibly scenic:

But the valley itself? Stunning:

Yosemite is a high alpine valley, where the Sierra snowmelt causes the Merced River to gush and overflow through its meadow past legendary cliff-mountains like Half Dome and El Capitan. The high snowfall and snowmelt this year also means that the Merced is at its highest level since 1997, and if shows:

The valley is well and truly full of water, and where it is not inundated if is criss-crossed by deep meadows with muck that will rise well up over your boots if you step in by mistake. But the immense volume of this water really makes itself known in one place in particular:

Yosemite Falls, 2400′ high end-to-end (the upper falls, seen here, are a 1500′ straight drop).

You can read about Yosemite Falls, and you can tell that it’s big. You can see it from the parking lot, and say “wow that sure is a big waterfall up there!” But nothing really prepares you for just how much you feel the size of this waterfall as you round the a corner about halfway up the hike towards the top:

The falls takes up your entire field of vision while you look at it; you try and track the globs of water spilling over the top, but they all explode into mist before they reach the bottom. You hear it, and it sounds like a cannonade; it sounds like a constant drone of thunder way behind the horizon, the kind of thunder that makes you say “Jesus Christ that storm sounds big! Kids, get in the basement and turn on WXYZ Local 4!” And I mean it when I say you feel this waterfall. You feel it rumbling through the Earth and into your shoes, you feel the pulses of the acre-feet as they crash and batter the rocks below, you feel the wick of the mists spray and chill your face and wet your hair and soak every stitch of fabric on you. You experience Yosemite Falls like you experience a cliff dive: in every sense, all over, all at once.

Oh! And there are rainbows everywhere! All that mist being thrown up means you will see at least a dozen rainbows on the hike to the top and back. And often as doubles and triples as well:

The hike to the top of the falls is pretty brutal, admittedly:

Yup, there’s a trail in there somewhere!

But the views from the top?

Worth every footfall 💙

The river, about to plunge 1500′ directly into oblivion.

There’s plenty of wildlife too in the valley. On the way back down from the falls, me and a dozen other hikers or so had to wait up the trail while a ranger tried to scare off a black bear with a mace-filled paintball gun. I didn’t get to see the bear, but judging by some of the bear boxes along the way, they appear to mean business:

Above: the much-feared, much-maligned, greater coifed floofy squirrelioni.

But for all its thundering and drama, Yosemite has small, tender corners too:

Do you see it? Look directly in the middle of the picture in front of the rock; maybe adjust your screen’s brightness to see it better.

It’s the world’s tiniest rainbow! I was coming down one of the switchbacks on Yosemite Falls when I saw this adorable guy in the mist blowing off of the falls. It was barely 5′ across and felt like it was 3′ ahead of me. I tried to reach out and touch it and I almost feel like I succeeded! What a precious and ephemeral (sorry, wrong post) tiny and beautiful creature! Mother nature will sound her trumpets and cannons all over, but sometimes she just wants to reach out and give you a hug 💙

I spent another day meandering through Yosemite; most of the upper valley way closed due to heavy snow, but some parts of the lower valley were still accessible:

Mirror Lake

Some distant trails and streams

Half Dome in the distance

El Capitan

Some hoser

Towards the evening, I had the delight of video calling back to Virginia to remotely attend a Late Morning Hiker’s Happy Hour. They were hanging out at Quincy Bar, and I was hanging out around here:

Said my dear friend Eric Weyer: “Where are you calling from? It looks like you’re in Frickin’ Narnia!”

Narnia indeed 🙂 Purnima, Maria, Eric, it was lovely talking to you guys! I miss you much, stay well and give me a call some time 💙

But eventually, it was time to keep on keepin’ on. I don’t have any real way to sum up Yosemite; it’s too big, it’s too deep, it’s too thundering and raucous and cozy and tender to sum up in any meaningful way. It’s an exclamation point in the wide and beautiful sentence of the Sierras, and it is well worth reading from end to end.

Stay well everyone 💙

Evan