The Big Outside Ultimate Guide to The Best, First Backpacking Trip to Take in Yosemite National Park © 2018 Michael Lanza All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying or other electronic, digital, or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, contact the publisher at the address below. Michael Lanza/The Big Outside 921 W. Resseguie St. Boise, ID 83702 TheBigOutside.com Hiking and backpacking is a personal choice and requires that YOU understand that you are personally responsible for any actions you may take based on the information in this e-guide. Using any information in this e-guide is your own personal responsibility. Hiking and associated trail activities can be dangerous and can result in injury and/or death. Hiking exposes you to risks, especially in the wilderness, including but not limited to: • Weather conditions such as flash floods, wind, rain, snow and lightning; • Hazardous plants or wild animals; • Your own physical condition, or your own acts or omissions; • Conditions of roads, trails, or terrain; • Accidents and injuries occurring while traveling to or from the hiking areas; • The remoteness of the hiking areas, which may delay rescue and medical treatment; • The distance of the hiking areas from emergency medical facilities and law enforcement personnel. LIMITATION OF LIABILITY: TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMISSIBLE PURSUANT TO APPLICABLE LAW, NEITHER MICHAEL LANZA NOR THE BIG OUTSIDE, THEIR AFFILIATES, FAMILY AND FORMER AND CURRENT EMPLOYERS, NOR ANY OTHER PARTY INVOLVED IN CREATING, PRODUCING OR DELIVERING THIS E-GUIDE IS LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INCIDENTAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, INDIRECT, EXEMPLARY, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF A USER’S ACCESS TO, OR USE OF THIS E-GUIDE. Cover photo: Todd Arndt hiking the cable route up Half Dome in Yosemite. Frontispiece photo: Half Dome, Liberty Cap, and Nevada Fall (L-R) seen from the John Muir Trail. Dear Reader, Congratulations, you have just downloaded the most helpful guide you’ll find to backpacking in the core of Yosemite National Park—the trails and backcountry located between Yosemite Valley and Tuolumne Meadows. This area not only includes some of the park’s iconic natural features—Half Dome, the Mist Trail, Vernal and Nevada Falls, and a section of the John Muir Trail—but it’s also the most accessible and least remote. (This photo of me was taken on the summit of Clouds Rest, with Yosemite Valley in the background.) While some stretches of trail entail significant elevation gain—and climbing the cable route up Half Dome is an adventure in steepness and exposure—multi-day hikes in Yosemite’s core rarely take you more than a day’s hike from the nearest road. And both Yosemite Valley and Tuolumne Meadows are served by park shuttle buses—with the Tuolumne shuttle buses serving several trailheads. Those factors become important in an emergency, and convenient if your group simply needs to end a trip earlier than planned. That makes this a beginner-friendly area to take a first backpacking trip in Yosemite. But the scenery makes it one of the most desirable areas to backpack in this flagship park. In that regard, the abundance of trailheads accessing the trail system between The Valley and Tuolumne translates to multiple options for hiking itineraries, possibly improving your chances of getting a coveted backcountry permit. I’ll delve more into that below. Having backpacked through this area several times, and throughout the park, I confidently predict that this trip will give you an excellent first taste of Yosemite. In responding to innumerable questions from readers planning a trip they read about at my blog—and through many years of planning my own trips—I’ve learned that you simply want to know what a trip is like, and how to pull it off successfully and safely in a way that allows you to customize the trip to suit your party’s style of backcountry travel. Whether a family outing or a group of friends, complete beginners or hard-core experts, this e-guide will clarify what you must do to properly prepare for this trip. In the pages that follow, I will describe this trip’s character and highlights, and provide details on its total distance and elevation gain and loss, difficulty, and the degree of solitude you can expect to find along it during the peak season. I give you extensive advice in Section 1 on how to plan this trip, including tips about seasons, getting a permit, travel logistics, gear, and what you need to know regarding safety and other issues specific to this trip. And, in Section 2, I give you my expert guidance on how to execute this trip, including primary and alternative hiking itineraries. A few points: • I don’t rate trips for quality or scenery. Instead of a dry, numerical rating, this e- guide will describe for you the trip’s unique character. Plus, every trip that I’ve created an e-guide for is excellent and highly recommendable. • I don’t provide GPS waypoints or tell you precisely where to take photos or pitch your tent every night, because I believe that excessive hand-holding sucks the mystery out of the wilderness and robs you of the joy of discovery. Instead, this e- guide suggests itineraries and, in general, the best camping areas and other highlights, with enough specific tips on how to maximize enjoyment and safety. • I’m a big believer that much of the success of any outdoor adventure is determined before you leave home, so you’ll find abundant information in Section 1: Planning the Trip. • Please be aware of and follow low-impact backpacking guidelines; learn about them at lnt.org. They ensure that we all have as pristine a wilderness experience as possible. Also, respect park regulations, they also exist for good reasons. • Hold down your keyboard’s Control key when clicking on hyperlinks in this e- guide, and the link will open in a new window. Alternatively, open this e-guide twice, to have one copy constantly open while clicking on hyperlinks in the second copy to view them, and using the browser’s back arrow to return to this e- guide and open other links in the second window. • If you find any inaccuracies in this e-guide, I hope you will contact me afterward so that I can correct it. • Lastly, you have purchased one electronic copy of this e-guide for your personal use only. I retain all rights to its content, and I ask you to respect my legal rights and not distribute it by any means or for any purpose, including for profit. Thanks again for purchasing this e-guide. I hope it helps make your backpacking trip in Yosemite’s core very special—whether or not it’s actually your first in Yosemite. If you would like a more personalized trip-planning service, and have many questions about how to safely and successfully pull off any trip, I would be happy to talk to you on the phone or communicate via email about this or any trip I’ve written about at my blog. See my blog’s Ask Me page for more details. I believe this trip will excite you to explore more deeply into the park. When you are ready to do that, visit my E-Guides page at The Big Outside and read about my downloadable digital e-guides to two other, longer backpacking trips in more-remote sections of the park: its southeastern quadrant south of Tuolumne Meadows, and the park’s vast wilderness north of Tuolumne. Please be sure to follow my stories about my adventures at The Big Outside. Have fun and be safe out there, Michael Lanza Creator of The Big Outside Mark Fenton hiking the summit ridge of Clouds Rest in Yosemite. The Best, First Backpacking Trip in Yosemite Location: South of Tuolumne Meadows and the Tioga Road and east and north of Yosemite Valley and the Merced River in Yosemite National Park, California. Primary Route: 37.2 miles/59.9 km. Approximate Cumulative Elevation Gain and Loss (primary route): 9,300 feet/2,835m gained and lost. Difficulty for the primary route, on a scale of 1 (easiest) to 5 (hardest) 3—Sections vary from strenuous to moderately strenuous hiking on good trails, with the possibility of severe weather (mainly afternoon thunderstorms) and extreme temperatures (especially hot summer afternoons), and sporadic drinking-water sources, but no extraordinary navigational or other challenges. Good fitness and beginner- to intermediate-level backpacking skills and experience recommended. See the Need to Know section below for specific details. Overview The core of Yosemite—from Yosemite Valley and the Merced River north to Tuolumne Meadows and the Tioga Road—has drawn me back several times. My first backpacking trip in the park took place more than a quarter-century ago, when two friends and I hiked a four-day loop from the Happy Isles Trailhead at the east end of The Valley. Absolutely clueless beginner backpackers carrying too much stuff, we nonetheless had a memorable trip, hiking up the aptly named Mist Trail past 317-foot Vernal Fall and 594-foot Nevada Fall, following the JMT to Sunrise, and looping back over Clouds Rest—certainly one of the finest summits reached by trail in Yosemite, a narrow crest of clean granite above a dizzying drop-off of thousands of feet into Tenaya Canyon.