Yosemite - Day 2
Tunnel View Sunrise
Wednesday, October 30
Tunnel View at sunrise. What an experience. Watching the sun peak over into the valley and catch the top of Bridalveil Fall was something I’ll never forget. Partly because of the beauty it offered and partly because it was literally the longest sunrise of our lives. Being from the flatlands, we did not realize how much of a time difference there was for sunrise in Texas and sunrise in the mountains. Thanks for the lesson, mother nature.
Pro tip: if you want to catch the valley with the light in the image above, go about an hour and a half after “sunrise”, grab your coffee, sit back, and enjoy the next 30min.
After the sunrise, we texted Ian and set a rendezvous point to get the group together and head to Mt. Hoffman for the rest of the day. I’m going to keep this post pretty short and sweet because Ian has a great write up already on his blog, here.
This hike was very challenging for me from a mental standpoint. I definitely deal with vertigo but mostly when I am on terrain that is foreign to me. Send me up in a plane to jump out of, I’m good. Send me up a building I’m supposed to be in walking around in, I’m good. Send me up the side of a mountain with an unmarked trail, I’m not good.
I pushed myself to the absolute limit and eventually found myself dizzy looking up and dizzy looking down, and staring at the rock in front of you isn’t much good when you need to move in one direction or the other. Nearly at the top, I called it quits and the rest of the group marched on. I took some time to rest, absorb the situation and try to overcome some of my fear, and hopefully improve my mindset for the next hike where I’m scrambling up to a peak. Kelly came back down shortly after saying she was dunzo, too. Part of me thinks she did this just to come back and make sure I was ok, because that’s who she is and what she does. She’s the best, love you.
We ate a snack, drank some water, and started our march back down to Mary Lake. We ended up taking a different way down than we did up, for better or worse, and found ourselves trailblazing again. Making it back to the trail, we took some time to play around in the woods and on the edge of the lake while we waited for the others to arrive, looking at all the small details the area had to offer…and taking the obligatory selfie.
The rest of the group made it down just before sunset, which provided a very cool purple glow as we hiked the last mile to our cars. This was the second of three big hiking days in a row. More on that coming up.
