We must've been extra tired from the hiking the day before, because we all slept in until about 8:30 am. Our tent/cabin was quite cozy and we didn't want to face the cold morning. We failed to take pictures of the tent before our stuff exploded all over the place, but here's what it looked like on the inside. We had two twin beds for the kids and a double bed for us.
The nice thing about Curry Village is that you open your tent door and amazing views of North Dome and Washington Column are right there.
Everywhere in Yosemite Valley was strikingly beautiful, and you would sometimes get glimpses of Yosemite Falls in the distance.
We had to walk about a mile and half from our tent to even get to the official trail head on the other side of the Merced River.
Zac stands next to the Merced River with North Dome in the background. Simon called it "Egg Top Mountain."
We started the ascent to Vernal Falls and enjoyed the spectacular views along the way. I had to focus on the scenery, and not the fact that we were part of a hoard of tourists walking up a paved sidewalk.
Nevertheless, we made decent time for an uphill climb and could see Vernal Falls in the distance after about an hour.
At this spot just past the first bridge there were restrooms with flush toilets (!!!) and the path forked. One way, the longer way, was labeled "Vernal Falls Winter Route." Since it wasn't winter, we saw no need to take the longer path. Also, shortly after this point, some hikers coming down from the way we were headed stopped us to say, "It's really icy up there! Be careful with your kids! It's really slippery!"
A little while later, another group of hikers gave us the same warning. As we got closer to the falls, were overheard a hiker coming down exalt, "Dry land at last!" And that, folks, is what's known as foreshadowing. Because we had hiked in snow yesterday and we were confident in our abilities to deal with a little ice, we weren't worried about a thing as we naively marched onward to our doom.
As we neared the waterfall, we started to understand the situation a little better. The mist from the falls blew onto the rocks that never saw the sun, and glazed them with black ice.
But we were so close, and we were having fun, so we kept climbing higher. On the path, people followed the basic pattern of road traffic, so that going up we walked on the right side, closer to the big rocks that we could sort of lean against for some stability on the icy steps. Going down, you were on the outside, with nothing to hold on to.
The views of the waterfall were great!
It was when we turned the corner that our fate was sealed. We could either proceed upward on icy steps or go back down on icy steps. I felt like Macbeth when he reflected, "I am in blood / Stepped in so far, that, should I wade no more, / Returning were as tedious as go o'er" (3.4.136–8) except trade the word "ice" for "blood."
We ultimately decided to go forward for the same reasons Macbeth decided to keep killing people. It was pretty scary though, as we had no sense of how much longer these icy steps of doom would continue. Luckily, there were two hikers ahead of us who used the points on their hiking sticks to break up the ice a bit, revealing just a couple of inches of rock, from which would could get enough of a grip with the toes of our shoes to feel like we had a chance of staying upright.
It was very slow going. It took nearly an hour for our small group to go a distance that would normally take 5-10 minutes. The kids sensed the danger, and so they were having a great time. For one part of the trail, it was like being in an ice-maker because balls of ice (broken icicles) would fall off the cliffs above us.
We got to see the rainbow in the mist though!
The mist that made the rainbow and the ice also made us very damp and cold.
Behind us was a Chinese family with parents, two kids, and a grandma who was wearing Crocs (pictured below in the red jacket). That was part of what motivated us to keep going: if she could do it, we could do it!
I mean, look at her. She's not even fazed. She's probably telling her son, "What are you all complaining about? I walked up steps like this to school every day as a kid, both ways. We didn't even have Crocs back then--had to do it barefoot."
We finally started to see dry land ahead, and it was the most welcome sight.
Once we got out of the ice, we all took a breather and I profusely thanked the two ice-chippers who blazed the path for us. "Knowing you all were behind us kept us motivated!" they said. Funny, the brief bonds you can make with total strangers in a stressful situation.
There was one more icy corner to traverse, but this section was easy-peasy because they'd had the sense to install a railing.
Here is a view looking back down at the path we took on the dark side of the mountain. We saw only a few souls coming up the icy steps behind our group; most everyone turned back at the corner where the sunlight ends.
To give you the scale, here is the same photo from above zoomed in and I circled the hikers.
Once at the top, it was a different world: sunny, warm, dry, safe. You could go right to the edge of the waterfall and look down, safely restrained by a railing.
Everybody picnicked at the top, celebrating their survival (although perhaps most hikers up here had heeded the warning and taken the "Winter Route" and did not come up the steps of doom like we had). It was here that I finally calmed down enough that I didn't feel like I was going to throw up anymore. My fear along the way was that we would come to an ice-covered open rock face like this and have to truly risk our lives to cross. Luckily, no such peril appeared, and it turns out we were only at risk for serious injury, not sudden death, the whole time.
We rested and relaxed for a bit. By now it was nearly 2:30 pm and we'd been hiking for three hours. True to form, we'd only gone about 3 miles so far.
Zac and I looked at trail maps and distances and decided that, sadly, we probably didn't have enough daylight or energy left to make it all the way up to Nevada Falls, and then still take the longer, winter route back down, because there was no way on earth we were taking those icy steps down. We wanted to stay on the sunny side of life. Luckily, we could catch some views of Nevada Falls in the distance without hiking all the way up there.
Both kids got splinters in their hands from this bridge, so just as we were getting going again, we had to stop for triage. Zac did some extraction operations with the tweezers from his Swiss Army knife, then I patched them up with some Neosporin and a Band-Aid.
This "Winter Route" sign had all new meaning for us now! We took the winter route down, and it was a wonderful trail. The hike continued to produce stunning views, and I was so glad to be away from the crowds and the paved path.
This is what hiking trail should look like!
As we got to higher elevation, we got better views of Nevada Falls behind us.
We could also see Vernal Falls below us.
I always joke that our family's version of hiking would more accurately be described as "Eating in different places outside" since we stop for so many snack breaks. But this method was quite nice because each snack break is a chance to just pause and take it all in. I mean, how many times in my life am I going to be gazing at one of the tallest waterfalls in the world while I eat a granola bar?
Our winter route eventually connected back to the main path we'd started on, so we found ourselves back on the bridge from the beginning, but we were different people now, having in the intervening four hours undergone a legendary hike that would surely surpass the horse-poop trail in our family folklore.
Once we got back down to the trailhead, we walked the easy mile or so back to our camp. The kids still had energy to summit small boulders along the way.
For supper, we drove to a different restaurant in the park, since our dining pavilion served the same two dishes every night (cheesy, saucy penne with meatballs or baked chicken with mashed potatoes and zucchini). While we enjoyed the food, we wanted to mix it up a bit since we didn't think we'd want to eat the exact same thing three nights in a row. We drove to the only other restaurant that was open: The "Base Camp Eatery," which turned out to be a disaster. We ended up having to wait in line for an hour just to get some burgers and chicken tenders. Luckily, we told the kids to hold a table for us, so they played around out of sight getting into who knows what mischief but at least we didn't have to wait in line with them. Instead, we befriended a British guy just ahead of us and compared notes from our hikes that day. He too had embarked on the Mist Trail, but had turned around at the first viewpoint and didn't go to the dark side.
It was 7pm when we finally got to the serving counter.
We finally finished supper by 7:30 pm, and drove back to the parking lot near our tent. Some people were straight up camping in normal tents on these freezing nights, so we were very grateful to have at least a heated tent to return to with proper beds and blankets. We had hiked over 7 miles that day and we were very tired.
