Early June Hiking in Yosemite Valley
Early June hiking in Yosemite Valley, timed for the snowmelt. Yosemite Falls was the first stop, and it was running hard — 2,425 feet top to bottom, the highest waterfall in North America, and from the meadow you can watch the whole drop at once. The morning started gray and low over the rim, then burned off by the time we walked the Lower Yosemite Fall trail, where the spray reaches you well before the boulder field at the base does. The creek coming off the falls was loud enough that people were half-shouting on the bridge.
From there we went up-valley to Mirror Lake, which in early June is more marsh than lake — grass standing in a few inches of clear water, Tenaya Creek moving through it, Half Dome straight overhead. The valley floor sits around 4,000 feet, so even with the June sun out it never got past comfortable. Seven miles of valley and we covered most of the length of it, one end to the other, waterfall to creek. Feet in the water at Mirror Lake before turning back.
