Glacier Point

The first time I went up to Glacier Point we were doing a big survey push...trying to cover as many meadows as we possible. The road wasn't officially opened so we were the only ones up there (one of the benefits of this job). At that point there was still a lot of snow and only one "lane" of the road had been plowed. I say "lane" because it wove all over the actual paved road and every once in a while ran off the pavement. We were pretty walled in by snow...there was certainly a lot of it. Nothing like 7 hours of snowshoeing in the middle of the night. It was awesome and extremely tiring. We ended up getting home somewhere around 4am. Oh, and we found bear tracks! Some of the first ones of the season (with many more to come I'm sure).



On a later occasion we went up to Glacier Point during daylight hours to set up some recording devices. The snow had melted significantly and for a brief moment we thought it might be possible to fore go the snowshoes. This turned out not to be the case though. After 10 meters of post-holing through the snow we back-tracked to get the snowshoes. It made traveling through the meadows a million times easier. After the work portion of the day was done, we drove down to the point as a little reward. The view (or views) is (/are) amazing. The sun wasn't terribly cooperative and kept hiding behind the clouds but it was fabulous all the same. So there you have it...the infamous Half Dome.

The waterfalls were, as some would say, "Going off". With the continued snow melt the waterfalls around the valley are still going strong right now. There are all kinds of little falls popping up in addition to the bigger mainstays. It's hard to believe so many of them will disappear in the near future.

Upper Yosemite Falls

Vernal and Nevada Fall (but don't ask me which one is which)

Just as we were getting ready to leave there was a rock slide at the base of Half Dome. See the dust cloud? That gets bigger and spreads out into the valley? Pretty crazy.