Today before we departed for Lake Tahoe we were up early again – 6am and it was totally worth it to get up into Glacier Point mountain and get to a couple of trailheads I’d picked out the night before. Based on length (fairly short) and difficulty (moderately steep) and the pay off view at the end at the trails. The good thing about getting up there early was the coolness of the weather and the fact that we had the trails to ourselves mostly but as we were trekking back there were more and more people arriving. I’m not a people person when it comes to hiking I must admit. Less is more.

Tim and I did the first trail – Sentinel Dome which meant we could scramble up a granite monolith that gave us 360 degrees uninterrupted view of the Park. It was very much worth the effort 🙂 A round trip of around 3.5kms.

Half Dome doesn’t look nearly so huge from up here.

Nor does El Capitan.

The wildlife is pretty quick to size up any possible opportunity for extra food gathering.

This was part of a dead tree trunk up on top of the monolith. Who’d have thought dead wood could be so interesting?

How trees grow at all out of granite is a mystery to me but I do like how they grow in an unconventional way.

Tim hiked back to the car after Sentinel Dome and I went on to Taft Point. This was about a 3.5km round trip hike and it took the hiker right up to the top edge of a cliff face, Taft peak I assume. If you have an issue with heights this was NOT the place for you. I was able to confirm that I was still okay with heights – though I did like the pithy little railing section which guarded against would be fallers for about three meters of about a 50 meter section of edging.

7,500 ft above sea level which is a bit of a drop really, when I looked down I felt quite confident that whoever chose this as their option to depart the mortal coil would be safe in the assurance of success. Although the mess factor? Pretty high.

I bravely stuck my foot through the railing in the interest of photographic art or course. Those green bits down there? They look much further away when you’re standing on the edge.

And that’s El Capitan looking more like El Cadet from this perspective.

Oh and there’s the road we drove in on. What do you mean you can’t see it? It’s right there about 2mm long on the top left 😉

And then we drove out of Yosemite…which was a long and very winding road over 60 miles long. I’ve decided I’m much more a fan of kilometers. Mostly because they’re shorter. You’ve gotta add 600 meters onto every mile and that just seems like too much effort to me.

Coming soon…maybe….if we stay longer than five seconds LAKE TAHOE! Away!