TR: Little Yosemite Valley - Merced Lake 6/21-6/24

[TxAggie]

Before I get into the trip report, I just want to thank this community for the input and feedback while I was planning this trip. In particular I want to give a shout out to Wandering Daisy who gave me some great insight in both of our Sierra/Yosemite backpacking trips.

Due to the snowfall, snow melt, flooding, road closures, previous fire damage, etc our plans seemed to be changing almost weekly until 2 weeks prior to the trip. I had initially booked permits for Yosemite Falls planning to hike the northern rim of El Capitain, but the Tioga Road closure made that all but impossible. Luckily I was able to change the permit to LYV Campground when permits were released at the 2 week point. At that point, we started final preparation looking closely at the snow reports for LYV and Clouds Rest.

6/21 Day 1: Yosemite Valley - Little Yosemite Valley Campground
My daughter and I arrived at the park just after 10. Thank goodness I wanted to start in the middle of the week in order to avoid the crowds, we got lucky and pulled up just as a car was leaving a spot in Curry Village, more on that on Day 4. We enjoyed a couple of tacos at the Curry Village taco stand, donned our packs, and headed up the initial climb of The Mist Trail. Due to the high snow melt, Merced River and Vernal Falls were much stronger than the typical “mist.” I had watched a few YT videos from the previous week showing hikers absolutely drenched hiking the full Mist Trail, so we opted to follow the JMT cutoff up to Clark Point. Taking the JMT provided some wonderful views of Yosemite Valley that you don’t get from the Mist Trail, including a view of Yosemite Falls.
The one closure we encountered was the JMT is closed between Clark Point to the Panorama Trail, so from Clark we descended down to Vernal falls, then continued along the Mist Trail until it again met up with the JMT at the top of Nevada Falls. From there we made our way up to the LYV Campground where we found a perfect spot for out hammocks. The weather was perfect the entire way staying below 75, and the overnight forecast called for a clear but chilly 38 degrees, so we both opted to keep our tarps rolled up and sleep exposed to the stars.

6/22 Day 2: LYV Campground - Merced Lake via Merced River
With weather and daylight in our favor, we took our time breaking camp and heading up the trail to lake Merced. I got to talking with a couple who came in the night before from Clouds Rest who had originally intended to stay at Merced that night, but changed their mind when they hit Echo Valley and Clark Canyon where they encountered “lots of mud” and decided to return to LYV Campground instead. They said there were lots of water and mud crossings coming down the river trail but said we would be fine when I told them we had hiking sandals for the water crossings. We hit the trail starting out in our shoes and eventually switched to sandals as we came to the first creek crossings just inside the burn area. Throughout the burn section we crossed numerous blow downs and water crossings, but none of the crossings were any deeper than ankle deep, and no thick mud was encountered on the north side of the river. After we crossed the two bridges onto the south side, the climb for the day began and provided with amazing views of the valley below. While on the upper slopes I encountered the only real “muddy” section when my foot got sucked into a bog about mid-calf deep. Thank goodness for Xero Z-trail, because I probably would’ve had a traditional shoe sucked right off my foot! No worries, a flat stream crossing just a few yards up the trail washed all the mud off and we were again on our way.
For some reason, my Garmin Fenix did NOT like tracking inside LYV, my guess is the granite walls on each side just made the GPS signals bounce off the rocks and kept throwing off the tracking, so I thought we were much farther along mileage wise than we actually were. By the time we arrived at the Echo. Alley cutoff for Merced Lake, we were both starting to feel tired. It was still early, so we decided to take a break and go ahead with our plans and continue up to the Merced hikers campground. We did hit a few water logged areas of the trail, but again nothing deeper than ankle deep, eventually arriving at our destination about an hour later. I’ll just say this: the trail up Clark Canyon was provided some of the most dramatic views of the river for the entire trip. There are sections of the trail where the rocks give way to flat area and the raging white water rapids are exposed almost waist high next to the trail. An amazing sight to behold. We set up our hammocks, then took a stroll through the High Sierra Camp. Unfortunately, the Merced camp was the only one that wasn’t still covered in snow, so all High Sierra Camp reservations had been cancelled for the summer, so what otherwise would have been a camp filled with other hikers was a ghost town. It was nice to have the solitude, but it would have been cool to see how the camp normally looks when running in the summer.
Four other hikers eventually joined us after deciding to push through the initial high water. The forecast called for another chilly night but with a bit more wind, so we opted to deploy our tarps for the night.

6/23 Day 3: Merced Lake - LYV via Merced Lake High Trail and JMT
Friday was the only day we planned for a hot breakfast. The elevation gain would be countered with a large descent so we figured we had plenty of time. The I spoke to at LYV said the burned area we would be going through was tough with lots of blowdowns, bushwhacking, and thistle bushes. After what I thought was an over exaggeration of the mud they encountered, I thought he might be exaggerating about this as well. He wasn’t.
The hike back to Echo Valley was pleasant and uneventful, and the climb up to the top of the valley was one of the more pleasant climbs of the trip: three relatively steep sections separated by easy gradual rises to gain our breath. Just before the burn area again, we were rewarded with amazing views of the south side of the valley as well as to the east where we could see the snow covered peaks of Mount Florensce and Forester Peak.
The. We hit the burn area. This section was definitely the most difficult of the trip. The blowdowns weren’t horrible, they happen. But the thistle bushes? Those were enough to really wear on one’s patience. Whole sections of the trail that were visible and should have been quick and easy hiking, were reduced to slow and mindful steps squeezing between and sometimes on top of knee-high bushes. I did get a couple of good photos, one in particular is one of my daughter surrounded by the burn with Clouds Rest and Hoalf Dome in the background. An amazing contrast of the green vegetation and white snow with the fire destruction scattered throughout.
Eventually we rejoined the JMT and emerged from the burn and into the forest. Originally we had thought to camp at the Clouds Rest intersection, but seeing how it was still early afternoon and we wanted to get an early start in the morning to beat the hikers coming up to climb Half Dome, we decided to go ahead and descend back down to the LYV Camoground where we were able to camp at the same location as the night before. The forecast called for another windless night so once again we decided to leave the tarps rolled up.

6/24 Day 4: LYV to Yosemite Valley via JMT and Mist Trail
The last day was the only day we set alarms planning to get down the trail early so as to not fight against the wave of Saturday visitors hiking up to Half Dome. Amazingly, we passed our first lone backpacker coming up the trail at around 7:30, we guessed she had to have left the valley floor around 5:30 to make it up this far by that time. After her were a scattering of day hikers until we reached Nevada Falls. Again, because of the JMT sectio closure we were forced to follow the Mist Trail back down to Vernal Falls. Normally a downhill is a good place to make decent time, but with all the hikers coming uphill (and our due diligence to make way for the ) and the narrowness of the trail, it was fairly slow going. We made it a point to stop at the Vernal overlook where we watched hikers getting drenched coming up Mist Trail. Again, we decided to detour Mist Trail both to avoid the uphill hikers and to remain dry for the drive home. Once on the valley floor around 10 am, we did the obligatory gift shop run for family and attempted to get some Peet’s coffee (my daughter’s favorite) but the line was insanely long. So we jumped in the truck ready for a “quick” getaway. Boy was I wrong. 10 am on a Saturday? The valley was mobbed, it took us an hour to make it back to Big Oak Flat road from Curry Village. Once we passed the ranger station, it was at least a 2.5-3 mile backup of cars waiting to get in.

Overall, another fantastic trip. My daughter and I had a great bonding experience and had a once in a lifetime experience in the park. Thank you again to all in the group who responded to my previous posts and who have provided information throughout the forum.

I’m not a YouTuber, so this is just a collection of some of the videos and photos from our trip, including the shot of my daughter in front of Clouds Rest and Half Dome.

[youtube_vid]https://youtu.be/vE4kMvAnglA[/youtube_vid]

[dbargaehr1]

nice TR and glad you had a good time!

[dbargaehr1]

did have one question - how were the mosquitos?

[TxAggie]

did have one question - how were the mosquitos?

Actually not bad. We encountered a few in the evening around Merced Lake but easily countered with Picaridin.

[Harlen]

Congratulations on such a fine trip. You saw it at its water-flowing best! We went that way with our young sons, and we were able to play in the water-slide of the Merced. Looked like a fatal flow on your trip!

IMAG0475.JPG

Young Ryan at the calm water's edge; compare this with your video of the same-- at 2:25 into the video. Yikes!


The video you put together is really nice. We loved the music too. Thanks.

[TxAggie]

Congratulations on such a fine trip. You saw it at its water-flowing best! We went that way with our young sons, and we were able to play in the water-slide of the Merced. Looked like a fatal flow on your trip!


IMAG0475.JPG Young Ryan at the calm water's edge; compare this with your video of the same-- at 2:25 into the video. Yikes!


The video you put together is really nice. We loved the music too. Thanks.

Definitely looks like the same spot, I remember looking at it thinking I’d lose a foot if I tried just getting my feet wet, lol.

As for the music, it’s a stock iMovie track titled, ironically, “Sierra.”

[balzaccom]

Lovely, There are few things that make me happy like seeing a young person enjoying herself/himself on a backpacking trip. Kudos to you both!