Hiking Upper Yosemite Falls (Yosemite National Park)

Moonlight over Yosemite

So for the last three years, we've been doing one hike a year at Yosemite with our friends.

Two years ago (in 2007), we hiked Half-Dome. Well, we all hiked together to Quarter Dome and then the men made the final 400 feet ascent up the face of the rock holding onto only two steel cables (the ladies waited on Quarter Dome, which I consider to be still quite a feat!).

Then last year, the men did the 4-Mile Trail while the ladies leisurely took the bus to Glacier Point to meet them, and then we all hiked the Panorama Trail back down to Curry Village.

This year, we hiked the Upper Yosemite Falls trail this weekend.

Hike	Distance (in miles)	Elevation gain (in feet)	Year Completed
Half Dome	14.2	4,800	2007
4-Mile Trail	4.7	3,200	2008*
Panorama Trail	8.5	3,200	2008
Upper Yosemite Falls	9.4	2,969	2009

I like to hike. I find its a great form of exercise for me that keeps my "problem areas" in shape. Even after only a few hikes, I can already see a difference in my legs (thighs and calves). With that said, you can't go into a longer hike without doing some training. Two years ago when we did Half Dome, we did several hikes and kept building the distance before finishing our last "training" hike which was 9 miles long. Since most of Aug-Sept was taken up with fasting for Ramadan (which meant no exercise for me) I admit that I was pretty out of shape going into this hike. I also underestimated the difficulty of this hike. I apparently glossed over the text in the hike description that said:

Difficulty: High. It's a long, steep climb from the valley floor to the valley rim, and we rate it an 8 out of 10. Consider this question: would you climb the stairs all the way to the top of the Empire State Building? Well, in the course of your hike to Upper Yosemite Falls, you'll climb the equivalent of just over two Empire State Buildings.

"Trail" on Upper Yosemite Falls

The Upper Yosemite Falls hike was definitely challenging and difficult. At every point during the hike, the two men hardly appeared winded. In hindsight, I guess I might not have been so winded if I'd taken a break from talking to the rest of our hiking group.

I'll be the first to admit that I've also got a bit of a heights issue, and this hike challenged that. I prefer hikes that don't go along the side of cliffs and prefer dirt-based paths over rocky "step"-based paths. So when the start of this hike had rocky steps even from the very beginning, I hoped it was just the beginning portion and that the terrian would change once we got into it. The picture on the right is what most of the path was made up of. In my opinion, these are not easy to climb and require careful stepping. I carried my walking poles throughout the hike but hardly used them since I feel like there's nothing to secure the poles into when you're walking on the step-based kind of terrain (in contrast, dirt is a better terrain for digging the poles into).

Half-Dome

We made it to the Upper Yosemite Falls Overlook and then hiked roughly another 1.0 mile to Yosemite Point (for 4.2 miles total). As we started back down, we predicted that we could descend the trail back into Yosemite Valley faster than our ascent had been. It started to turn cold(ish) while we were already beginning the descent, and we hoped it wouldn't rain on us since we were still a couple of hours hike up the mountain.

7.5 hours later, we reached the trail head and were all ready to take a load off and eat some trail mix and granola bars decent food.

All in all, it was a great hike. It was tiring and difficult (hopefully I didn't complain too much!), but a good workout and a great outing with our friends. My entire lower body (thighs and calves) are sore tonight, but the soreness is temporary and should subside in a few days.

We're looking forward to the next hike. My husband is already thinking about which Yosemite trail we should hike in 2010 and also has a separate Grand Canyon hike already planned.