07 Feb Yosemite, You Beauty
Yosemite is one of those places that somehow gets more beautiful every time you turn a corner. It’s like the light hits the rock at the perfect angle to make it seem as if it’s actually glowing, and then I turn around and there’s a giant waterfall with a rainbow forming in the mist. And when I think it can’t get anymore unreal, I drive on these windy roads through trees with the most perfect sun rays beaming through them until we get to an open snow-covered field with some bizarre cloud just floating there, 30 meters off the ground. And I look up and see El Capitan towering so high above us in all her glory. It’s actually breathtaking.
We ended up in Yosemite kind of as the result of a passing comment after watching one of those timelapse videos of Yosemite on youtube. It was one of those “We should totally go to Yosemite when you come!” kind of moments, turned into “Wait, why don’t we go to Yosemite when you come?”.
Eleven hour drive? Totally doable…so we made it happen.
We, in this case, references myself and my Northern Irish friend, Annie. Annie and I initially bonded in Belfast over our mutual love for huskies and affinity for climbing. I think it’s fair to say we pretty much bring out the kid in each other (in a ‘let’s eat s’mores for breakfast because we can‘ kind of way). So, having her spend a few weeks exploring Arizona – on her first trip to America – was pretty exciting, to say the least. After hitting up some local stuff, naturally, we embarked on a bit of a Southwest roadtrip… hence our kicking it off in Yosemite. Because Yosemite is beautiful.
As a bonus, Yosemite is pretty much a climbing mecca.
Just, maybe not in the winter.
The thing we discovered about climbing in the winter – aside from frozen fingers – is that ‘distinct climbers trails’ are actually more like ‘obscure paths further obscured by inches of snow’. Nonetheless, we had decided we wanted to climb some sport routes on the base of El Capitan, weren’t so deterred by the invisible trails, and just started heading up to the base via our own route. We had a few scary run ins with slippery boulders and falling trees (!), but managed to find the routes eventually…although we couldn’t climb due to ice and snow melt soaking the rock. Major bummer!
The view was totally worth it, though!
We ended up climbing a crack at Swan Slab near our campsite (the legendary Camp 4!) and felt a little less saddened after our hand/knee/foot/face jams got us to the top. (Note-to-self: work on crack climbing.)
There was also a nice surprise halfway through my rappel back down. The conversation went something like this:
Annie: “*Gasp* HURRY UP!”
Me: “…what?!”
Annie: “Eeeee! Go faster! Hurry up!”
Me: “WHAT? What did you -”
Annie: “There’s a DEER behind you!!!”
Clearly, our enthusiasm and priorities were in the right place!
Anyway, one thing I can say for sure: we are coming back for you, Yosemite!