20240710 Red's Meadow to Yosemite Valley (mile 948)
Yosemite Valley is simply the grandest example of vertical granite cliff faces to be found anywhere on earth. It is home to both Half Dome and El Capitan, iconic and instantly recognisable features, as well as innumerable other climbing objectives, hiking trails, and waterfalls. It is incised by the Merced River, and it has been made famous by outdoorsmen as varied as John Muir and Alex Honnold. Most pertinently for me, it has been appearing as one of Google's stock images on our smart TV for the past year. A stock image I was lucky enough to visit in real life this summer.
The valley itself is more of an amusement park than other grand sites we had visited on the trip this far. The valley receives over 4 million visitors a year, making it by far the most popular national park in America, and with nearly 50% of those visitors coming between June and August we expected a bit of a crush, especially as we were heading in on a Saturday.
However, anyone who has read Kafka, or attempted to interact with a multi-layered bureaucratic organization, particularly during the COVID years, will be familiar with the process of trying to get into the valley as a PCT hiker. America is a society of drivers, run for drivers. We knew that the number of visitors was limited by the local park authority, but this was the case in many places we had been - and we assumed that there would be some kind of allowance for the nomadic PCT hikers travelling on foot, carrying very little in the way of 'stuff', and with an overall minimal footprint on the land compared to the many holidaymakers in their RVs. This was not really the case.
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After a brief resupply in Mammoth via the achingly slow shuttle down from Red's Meadow (longer than Toy Story, quicker than LOTR) we got back on trail with Bristol Jasper. We walked past Devil's Postpile and discussed our plans for Yosemite.
We had agreed that a side quest into the valley was in order. As Brits abroad, there was no question of missing it. I had also vowed to not miss another of England's Euro 2024 games after painfully waiting for satellite updates on the penalty knockout a few days previous, and was pretty confident I would be able to find access to WiFi and a VPN to stream the match.
It felt in some ways like we were on our way out of the High Sierra, even though we were still crossing mountain passes well about 10,000ft on a daily basis. The highest of them were all behind us now, and the landscape was becoming greener, more alive.
The night before we had planned to head into the valley we camped around four miles away from the Tuolumne Meadows Rangers' Office. From the spotty internet access we had been able to scrape together between the three of us over the recent days, we concluded that we would need to get to the Rangers' Office as soon as it opened at 8am to get a separate permit. We would then catch the bus half an hour later (which conveniently stopped at the Rangers' Office). However, there had been a lot of conflicting advice online - not wanting to leave anything to chance we got up as early as possible for the walk down to Tuolumne Meadows.
The reason we had camped so far away from where we needed to be that morning was that a camping ban had been put in place either side of Tuolumne Meadows. Previously there had been a backpackers campsite allocated for PCTers but this was out of use for the foreseeable for some reason. The small general store was also closed for the summer (the roof had fallen in last year) and the post office had been temporarily rehoused and only recently opened for the season.
At the Rangers' Office we waited on the decking with a worrying number of others, also all seemingly looking for clarification and/or permits. Many people were looking to summit half-dome, for which a special permit was required unless booked well in advance.
At 8am a young man dressed in the finery of the Parks Service marched out and began to triage the waiting visitors into some kind of order.
"Are you PCT hikers?"
"Yes."
"Is anyone picking up pre-booked permits?"
And to this a small number of days hikers who had driven into the car park raised their hands.
Worryingly, he then stated matter-of-factly that the Rangers Office was not issuing walk-in day permits for hikers, and when we tried to ask if we needed another permit at all just to visit the valley, he held up a finger and told us to wait. He then brought out a bear can, which he stood upon and began to provide a short lecture on Leave No Trace principles while we sat listening attentively, conscious that we were meant to be catching the bus soon - which came twice per day and had to be pre-booked at a not insignificant cost.
After this he asked a random selection of us to come up to the desk inside to sort out permits, while another Ranger came out to pick up where he left off, providing more detail, and contradicting several of the things he had initially said in the process.
"You can't get a permit for the valley now, because the temporary post office in Tuolumne Meadows is open. You see, before you could do that, but now you can't."
"But we had heard that it was fine for us to just pop down into the valley for one night, with our PCT permit?"
"Oh yes, you could do that a week ago. But not any more."
I had never felt so confused, and it seemed to be impossible to get a straight answer for whether or not we were allowed to take the bus into the valley. On mentioning the pre-booked bus tickets, the Ranger perked up.
"Oh - well, I shouldn't mention this really, but you actually are entitled to one night at the backpackers campground if you show your bus ticket to the officer there."
This secret rule was good enough for us, and we limped through the rest of the conversation as best we could, in silent telepathic agreement with one another that that confirmation had been good enough for our limited purposes and that we should get away from this strange, rule-bound log cabin in the middle of the woods as soon as possible.
"Did you say you're taking the bus from here at 8:30am?"
"Yes?"
"The bus doesn't come here. This is the Ranger Station. It goes from the Visitor Centre.'
"Where is that?" I asked exasperatedly, wondering why this hadn't been mentioned sooner, and looking around at the deserted car park hopelessly.
"About half a mile away."
It was 8:25am.
In the end we missed the bus. Despite jogging with all of our stuff the full way to the visitor centre, we were greeted with a cryptic sign stating that it had also been moved for the summer, and which provided no indication of where it had been moved to. This turned out to be the greatest blessing, as we immediately hitched a ride with Joe, a "good Christian" in his words, and his charming young family. We rode in the back of the truck while his many sons, with names like Malachi and Titus, peered out at us through the window.
Coming through the tunnel and getting our first sight of the valley it was impossible not to feel overwhelmed. The scale of it is breathtaking, and in the seven mile drive through the valley we gawped at the 360 degree panorama all around us.
John Muir said of it that "No temple made with human hands can compete with Yosemite." His work in the 19th century led to the creation of Yosemite National Park in 1890. And humanity is all the richer for it.
Saying a rushed and earnest goodbye to Joe and his family, thanking him profusely for giving us such an amazing opportunity to see the valley from such an open-top surrounding, we headed off to find the backpackers campground. Thankfully there were no further bureaucratic barriers and we soon got set up in the shadow of Half Dome.
England ended up beating the Netherlands with a last minute winner, which we watched on a painfully lagging laptop in a bustling deli with a pair of Dutch fans. It had been a great day, but now we were in the final. And I wasn't going to risk a dodgy stream again. We would need to find a way to a proper sports bar for the England vs Spain game in less than a week. Logistically, I observed, it would have been easier if we'd lost.
