Yosemite day trip- Vernal falls

The day trip was to see the Firefalls... but before we got to that, we spent the day hiking Vernal falls (as far as we could go safely)..

As long as this girl is next to me.. I seem to be going places.. at least one place a week! 

We saw some amazing landscapes on the way! Here is the day in pictures.. mostly selfies! We started early and were at the park by 9AM.. we took our time taking photos at every vista point...

walking on snow is easier than walking on ice.. especially when it is patchy and you cannot see it! we were all slipping and sliding during many a stretch..

so far it was mostly selfies.. then it got tricky enough that we gave our phones to others to keep the line going and the pictures coming..

There are plenty of nature shots..will post them separately..

Firefalls viewing at Yosemite - a breathtaking experience

Our hiking group has long longed for a trip to Yosemite to see the Firefalls. For those of you not familiar with this, the Horsetail falls in Yosemite gets frozen and when the setting sun falls on this ice and mist, for a few minutes, the falls glows like lava and is called the Firefalls.  It happens over a 15-20 day window in February when most of the other park trails are closed because of ice. It is also a luck of the draw as it has to have rained the previous day and there should be no clouds in the path of the sun on the actual day. 

Many of our friends have made multiple attempts and are yet to see the firefalls.. we took our chances this year and were not disappointed.. we spent a day hiking partly up to Vernal falls till the ice made it too risky for us. Had a nice packed lunch.. then rushed to watch the display that nature put on for us! THis photo is from an iPhone 11 with some editing..

Here are five shots taken with the SLR as the sun went down.. the first one is what the frozen falls looks like before the magic begins..

These pictures don't do justice to what our eyes saw.. every pocket of ice reflects the sun like a diamond and the whole thing shimmers as the sun moves.. something that has to be seen live to experience!

There is also an iPhone photo for comparison that was taking toward the end. The iPhone automatically edits the photo.. for all I know, Apple knowing my location, is running some AI to make the falls look better.. 

and a selfie of a beaming me capturing this..

We took a lot of "Firefies"...

Will do a separate posts on our hike to Vernal falls with pictures!

This whole event lasts 4 to 12 mintues depending on when you go, if you get lucky! For us it was closer to 12 minutes and we got an amazing light show! The previous day was only 4 minute window, per the ranger we spoke to.

Advice to folks who are not pro photographers trying to get a shot.. go an hour early with some blankets and set up! It is a mile and a half walk on icy slippery roads. So expect that to take some time. By the time we got there 30 mintues before, there was no room to put a tripod. So I went behind the crowds into the bushy area and got cut up by thorns in my legs. Could have avoided that if we had been early. 

Also we were lucky that our dinner was in the car. So while a few thousand people all rushed to the parking lots and tried to drive out and gridlocked the whole place, we calmly ate our dinner and then drove out. From 5AM to 11PM, it was a day trip. It was tiring but exhilarating!

This one gets checked off the bucket list!

More in the next post..

Pedro point and a Pacifica sunset

This weekend saw yet another hike. This one turned out to me more interesting than we had planned.

There were no benches on this one but a small cut log which made for a great view point.. We could sit there for hours and enjoy the breeze!

The idea was to drive to the Devil's slide parking lot and hike to Pedro's point and get a scenic view of the bay and the sunset and come back. The one word in that previous sentence that did not work our way ? "PARKING"

It took us an hour to get there because of the traffic. It was 80 degrees in Cupertino and a nice 71 in the coast. So the entire bay area decided to go there! There was no parking. We tried four different lots around the area and after 50 minutes, we decided to start from the beach by walking along the road to a different trail head. 

Parked outside a strip mall opposite to the beach (there was no beach parking either and there were plenty of bad and irate drivers to make it dangerous to just wait in the parking lot!). That added another mile to the plan each way.. and given we had lost an hour to find parking.. we hiked like never before. 

Amazing views from all sides!

took this picture as we were running down.. 

Things were going great till we went to the top of the view point and realized we were very late. So we decided to take a "private trail" that showed up on Alltrails map that would go directly from the top to Devils slide. This thing turned out to be not much of a trail and was downright dangerous. We were slipping and almost fell. So we decided to climb back up, double up our speed to make it to Devils slide. 

We did get 15 minutes to watch the sun and drink chai before racing back!

It was a pretty steep hike right at the start but the views made up for it. We barely made it to Devils slide as the sun was setting. So we rushed back to the parking (it was all downhill but we had to be careful) and caught the post sunset hues in the beach before driving back!

On a normal day when we would have had an extra hour and parked at the right place, this would have been easy and pleasant. Think we should revisit it on a working day by taking leave just to get parking! 

The sunset experience was refreshing as usual.. 

Strongly recommend this (minus the private trail) on a non busy day!