White Wolf
Trip Start
Aug 04, 2008
1
22
90
Trip End
Ongoing
Yosemite National Park, California
Monday, September 1, 2008
Well, a bottle of Gatorade later and I felt good enough to continue - still carefully - and things got better after that. But if I hadn't felt better, I would have stopped. You need to listen to those feelings when you're riding.
I got to Yosemite in the late afternoon, and decided that the valley - the main attraction - would most likely be booked solid, so I headed up the ridge on Tioga Road, to White Wolf campground.
First sign of trouble: a roadside sign that read, Elevation: 8000 ft. Well, I had sent my real sleeping bag home, and only had my 'tropics' bag with me, and it got down to freezing that night, and I was pretty unhappy all night, bundled up in many layers of clothes with the bag pulled over my head and still freezing. When I woke up, there was ice in my water bottle. As in, most of it. Now I know why they call that campground White Wolf - the wolf was freaking frozen!
But a hot breakfast at the lodge got me moving in the morning, and I did a great hike in the Yosemite Valley that day (up to Nevada Falls on the Mist Trail, then back down on the Muir Trail), and spent the night in a platform tent in the valley. This was a cool set-up.
Yosemite a valley that is surrounded by very steep cliffs and waterfalls - very scenic. Not so much water right now, as California is in the midst of a terrible drought. There's also a lot of additional wilderness, etc. But it seems that mational parks are generaly based around geological curiosities, the more scenic the better. This is how everday nature is preserved: it's marketed based on its most photogenic elements. The rest of the animals and forestes are just along for the ride.
