We left our beautiful settings at Merced Lake to begin what would be our longest day of hiking - 15 miles. Knowing that it took us 6 hours to go 9 miles two days before, we wasted no time in getting off early. One more view of Merced Lake, and we headed out on what would be a very different day of hiking. Two mule deers greeted us as we picked up our trail beside the Merced River.
The vistas were spectacular. The sculpting of the massive granite valley was impressive. The last glacier in Yosemite (about 25,000 years ago) made the valley shine in the sunlight. This effect called “glacial polish” was produced as a result of fined grained material embedded in the glacier acting like sandpaper on the underlying surface. The Merced River cascaded over the smooth granite as it headed towards the lower valley. This would be our trail for the first 7 miles.
Two years ago a fire ravaged part of the trail from Merced Lake Camp to the lower valley of Yosemite. Although this is part of the evolution of the forests, the devastation was stark. The fire must have been so incredibly hot, as there is still very little vegetation growing two years later. The temperature through this forest was in the mid 80’s and with no shade this part of the hike was hard. I think I drank a whole litre of water over this stretch of the hike. Pictures below were from the 2014 fire.
Finally the green forest came back to us. Not only were we close to getting our first view of Yosemite Valley, it also became apparent that we were no longer in the wilderness camping area. The west side of the park is the side where the vast majority of the visitors come to experience Yosemite - the trails started to fill with people.
Nevada Falls
We got out first view of the valley from the top of Nevada Falls. What a glorious view. The river we had been following all day (Merced) went cascading down the side of the mountain to the valley below. With still another 5 miles to go, we joined the John Muir Trail to complete the hike to the valley floor. Dirty, tired and a bit beat up, we finished our 15 mile hike in 8 hours.
