On August 18th, 2016, after a long day of work, I was chatting with my friends sharing links as we usually do. I shared a photo of the Perseid meteor shower taken in Yosemite Valley. My friend Justin, who currently lives in the bay area, suggested a trip to the park during Labour Day long weekend.
After firing up all my favorite travel websites, I managed to get a flight to San Fransisco and back with points and $195 CAD. The trip was on…except we still had to book camping at the third most popular national park in America on the second most popular weekend of the year.
Time to get to work. I fired up Reddit, TripAdvisor, a couple of hiking websites, a few blogs on Yosemite, YouTube, and the National Parks website. After six hours of research, and successfully booking two wilderness sites around the valley, I learned the following:
- Regular camping sites in the valley are booked months in advance
- First-come first-serve camps in the valley exist, but you risk not getting a spot unless you show up a few hours before the ranger cabin opens. During the most popular weekend of the year, your chances of getting a spot is close to zero.
- Other than a few popular trail heads, booking a trail head spot for wilderness camping around the valley is fairly easy, even during the second most popular weekend of the year.
Day 1 — September 3rd, 2016
After a three hour and thirty minutes drive from SFO to Yosemite Valley, we arrived at Tunnel View at around 3:00 am. We both napped, but after two hours, I woke up to soak in the magnificent view of the site.
After taking far too many shots then climbing up to soak in the sunrise view, Justin woke up and we decided to drive to the village for breakfast.
Yosemite Village is small but has the essentials for all visitors. After picking up our wilderness permits and having some breakfast at the deli, we were off to explore the valley floor.
We started at camp 4, a site famous for its climbing history. Since I started rock climbing, I always had it in my bucket list to visit the camp.
We then headed to El Capitan meadow. Situated right in between El Capitan and Cathedral Spires, this meadow is situated in one of the narrowest parts of the valley, allowing to really capture the grandeur of these rock faces.
At noon, we headed to McGurk Meadow, on the south side of the valley. McGurk Meadow is a fairly unknown easy trail that leads to the Pohono trail, the trail that connects Tunnel View to Glacier Point. Justin and I arrived at our parking spot and decided to bushwhack it to the trail. After 45 minutes of tracking using our compass we found the trail. After 3.3 kilometers of hiking, we found a site just east of Bridalveil Creek bridge.
After eating lunch, we decided to head to Taft Point, right on the south cliff of the valley. This 3.05 kilometer hike is moderately uphill, but not necessarily hard. We arrived at the point at 5:20 pm, just in time for the sunset.
Taft Point is a cliff that rises 1,200 meters from the valley floor. Standing on the edge gets your heart racing and your hands sweaty. Taft Point is also known as the place were Dean Potter, a famous free solo climber, jumped to his death.
We stayed two more hours until sunset. We made some friends and saw some guys really test our adrenaline limits. Justin faced his fear of heights and stood very near to the edge. I climbed some boulders to get better vantage points. After the sun went down we were off to our camp in the dark.
We made it back to camp, cooked dinner and drank wine. The night was cold and quiet for the most part, and I had trouble sleeping.
Day 2 — September 4th, 2016
We woke up, cleaned, and hiked back to the car on our way back to the deli for breakfast. We couldn’t wait to tackle the hardest part of our trip: the hike to the top of Yosemite Falls.
We began hiking up the trail shortly after 1:00 pm. This is a 5.7 kilometer hike that rises 790 meters from the bottom. With roughly 50 pounds each on our backs, this was by far the hardest hike of our lives.
“I feel like Frodo climbing up the stairs to Mordor”
I agreed with Justin: this staircase of numerous switchbacks felt like it was never going to end. The weight added to the gruesomeness. After two hours and forty-five minutes, we had reached the top.
We rested at the top of the falls for about an hour. After eating and hydrating ourselves, we headed up to Eagle Peak, a 2.9 kilometer hike with a 360 meter elevation gain. It took us roughly three hours to get to a camp site.
We ate, drank a beer, and clothed ourselves for a cold night at 2,350 meters. After resting for a bit, I decided to attempt to photograph the night sky, one of my favorite parts of the trip. It took me an hour to finally capture the following shot with my Nikon camera. I was sound asleep shortly after that.
Day 4 — September 5th, 2016
We woke up early to go catch the sunrise from the true summit of Eagle Peak, about 30 meters higher than our camp.
We drank some coffee and celebrated our accomplishment. Less than 15 days before it would have never crossed my mind that I would be sitting at one of the highest points of Yosemite Valley enjoying one of the most beautiful sunrises I’ve ever seen.
It was time to go. We had a 9.6 kilometer hike down to the valley followed by a five hour drive back to Justin’s place.
It took us just under three hours to get to the bus stop that would take us to the car. After a quick dip in the Merced river and a greasy lunch at the village, we headed home.
Although short, I could not have wished for a better Labour day weekend. I got to spend it in nature, with one of my best friends, in one of the most beautiful places in North America.
