Today I made the effort to get up early so I could start my hike at a decent time. A 5:15am wake up call translated into a 7:30am start from Glacier Point, darned long commute!

There were few people about when I began my descent down the Panorama trail. I could hear the thundering of the waterfall across the valley, but as I was looking into the sun it was hard to discern just which one it was.

It took over 2 miles of fairly exposed descent to reach Illilouette Falls, well, the bridge over the creek, you couldn’t really see the falls themselves.

From the creek it was a mile, mile & a half up, up, up but oh, the views!

Finally, after 6.5 miles I descended down to Vernal Falls. I crossed the bridge in order to have a peek at the falls, not a great look but even with the railing there I couldn’t stay too long at the edge. I retreated to a little side creek for a rest on a rock and to soak my feet in the cold water.

And now the return. This is a Double-W hike: down-up-down, then up-down-up. Obviously I need to update my map reading skills as I thought it would be 10 miles and it turned out to be 13.9 miles all told. Can’t wait to see what the elevation +/- is.

Anyway, I stopped at the top of the up for lunch with a great view of Vernal Falls, then another break back at Illilouette Falls to soak my feet again, then the final hard 2.1 mile slog back up to G.P. Thankfully some light cloud cover rolled overhead giving relief from the hot burning sun. And, now the sun wasn’t in my eyes so I could take lots of stops to reshoot all my morning’s photographs!

An ice cream was my celebratory reward for managing such a strenuous hike, followed by a nice warm bucket shower, and a red wine and chili dinner to top off a great day!