Thursday, July 15, 2010

Day 5 - Sentinel Dome (6/22/10)

Having passed this area on our way to Glacier Point the night before we decided we would go back and have a nice little hike to the top of Sentinel Dome. I had previously read up on this hike and knew it wouldn't be easy, but we gave it a go anyway and were handsomely rewarded for the profuse sweat streaming from our brows (and other places) by the time we made it to the top.

The hike starts out modest enough but when you reach the base of the dome it quickly turns into quite a challenging ascent. While we chose to take the route everyone else took, some guy decided to scale the steep side of it and as I was shooting close to the eastern side up comes this guy in just these floppy little tennis shoes. I was astounded. This dome was really impressive because you pretty much have a 360 degree view of the entire area...and what a view!!!

This is near the beginning of the trailhead...see, easy, right?!

Ahead is Sentinel Dome, we climbed the right side of it, the "easy" side - HA!

This is the last easy part before the hard part begins. As a reference, the dome is to the left of this picture.

This is looking up the dome from somewhere near the bottom using my 200mm zoom.


Yup, that's right, that is snow on that there hill!

Half Dome - somewhere lower than where I was standing and straight ahead is Glacier Point where we were the night before.

Aaahhhhh, the summit at last!!!


Yup we were at 8,117 feet...explains why I left my lung somewhere back on the trail!!

Looking East.


Looking West, that is Upper Yosemite Falls to the left.



I want to say this was looking east as well. This is what I was shooting when this guy comes walking up out of nowhere!







This is the full beauty of Yosemite Falls. You can see the trail we were on the day before.





This is looking down the side we climbed up to get to the top.

On the way back down I paused to shoot this tree.

This was some photographer perched on this rock shooting the falls.


Here is another hiker shooting the falls.

The big rock to the right is El Capitan.

Some little kids whose parents thought it was a good idea to let wander around unsupervised near the cliff! Really? Who did they think would watch him?!

A little lizard - there were quite a few up there!

This is what is left of Jeffrey Pine made famous by Ansel Adams. Apparently after a drought in the last 70s, despite peoples best efforts, it finally succumbed to the elements. It remained standing until the 80s or 90s.



These were some weird Hosta looking thing that grows all over the place in Yosemite.

A patch of phlox which also grow everywhere.

John next to a huge pine tree.

Moss - this stuff clings to EVERYTHING out there!

Man on the Mountain

Who is that handsome fella?!

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