Since my vacations are minimally negotiable and scheduled a year in advance, one would imagine I'd be pretty good at planning them. But I've done really last minute planning these last few vacations. This week I wanted to go to Crater Lake, but it turns out (1) there was a snowstorm, and (2) most of the park roads are closed for the winter. Then I thought I'd go to Yosemite and drive up to Glacier Point, which remarkably is something I've never done. Of course, it turns out that the Glacier Point road is also closed for the winter. No problem! There is the Four Mile Trail, on the verge of winter closure - but still open! We'll hike to Glacier Point!
I did not share the trail parameters with Joanne. Sometimes it's better to just commit to a difficult plan, as long as the contingency plans are in place. So we drove to from San Francisco directly to the trailhead, and lugged the gear, a couple liters of water, and winter coats to the top of the trail just in time for sunset, and then came back down in darkness. We went home the next morning.
This plan was a photographic gamble because a storm was expected to arrive the next day and the skies were cloudy ahead of the storm. We were lucky in that there was a break in the clouds just before sunset, which gave us light beams into Yosemite Valley, and just a hint of color in the clouds after sunset.
For night photos, the moon was not scheduled to rise until 10 PM, and there was no way we were going to stay up there that long in darkness with a coming storm. The result is an unfortunate lack of foreground lighting and very, very noisy images.
On a more depressing note, there are a lot of dead pines in Yosemite Valley and the surrounding forests, apparently due to the western pine beetle. This is really striking, and is a rapidly evolving disaster. This SF Chronicle headline says it all: "California has 66 million dead trees but nowhere to put the wood."
