The bus dropped me off in the village around eleven in the morning.
I had been there, many, many times. I have watched it change and not change over the years. In national parks, the park service is the boss. What you can build, what you can sell, where you can sleep, wash, poop… These are all federally mandated.
I know a few park service people. “NPS” is the way you say it. In Yosemite, with a couple of exceptions, their worker morale is surprisingly low. The gun toting ones have a reputation for especially cold indifference.
The concessionaire du joir is Aramark Corporation. Of them all, they are known for being especially cheap. They have certain branches that will run 1:1 management:employee ratios! So they do not cheap out on giving their good buddies those jobs.
When I worked there , Yosemite Park and Curry Co. sold first to TWA, and then MCA.
None of these changes in ownership were of any benefit to anyone visiting the park. Arguably, things have been deteriorating ever since corporate ownership swapping intruded into any national park’s concession system.
No matter what they say in their advertising or to the people they hire, those Aramark guys don’t give a shit about you or anyone else. Cold and expensive, I saw not one slightest trace of creative pride or joy in any of their operations. They are grimly served.
Expanded, however, the Park Service’s museum and visitor’s centers were!
I did a whirlwind tour. I was looking for a particular art all, but i did not find it. I had my backpack on, of course, and that hampered my movements. I had in mind to make some camp so I could ditch the gear and walk around like a day tourist.
That was one plan, anyway.
My plans were soft. I had not committed. I needed more information to make decisions as to where to go. I had made that part of the plan hard.
A basic purpose of mine is to explore.
Simply that.
Any unknown. Any new locale. Any new route. Any new day. Any new person…
It is basic purpose.
However, my heavy, awkward backpack was interfering with that purpose.
Hauling twenty-six pounds around was ruining my fun, so I did not walk around that much yet. As always, tat pack tended to hang low and stick out back too far. The straps always had dug unto my chest muscles. But it was light, that pack. So long as the weight stayed low, it’s bad features were OK.
I did not want to walk aimlessly with it was the problem. i did not mind it on a long expedition. But for exploring the valley, iot was too cumbersome and heavy.
So I got on a bus is what I did.
The shuttles were free, and at that time of day were not busy. I could sit down and my pack could take a seat too.
I thought it might be fun to ride the whole valley loop.
I did not do that; instead, I got as far as the droppoff for Bridal Veil Falls about 3/4 of the way around the whole seven mile loop. From the bus, I had seen so many lovely beaches, and when I saw the road was goasing far from them again, I got off. I had never, in all my years working there before, ever explored those beaches!
I decided to get out. Yes, there were a lot of people!
That is why I never came to this part of the river with these beaches when I worked here. On my time off, I went where there were no tourists, and, it seems, save for one or two times at the beginning of my internment during that period, I did that unfailingly.
At this time of year on gorgeous weekend days like that, that part of the valley was full of tourists.
I was delighted to be one and to be among them.
What a change.
I was different in my boots and clothes with my pack and and walking stick than the typically much more lightly garbed and burdened tourists.
As backpacks go, mine was not huge. The bus driver let me carry it aboard. With a little smashing, it will stuff into an overhead compartment. Not bad for something that had everything — except water — I might need to live outside for nine days. Getting that down to that size and weight was… pretty good!
I have been trending toward less weight and bulk for longer distances through more difficult weather and terrain my whole life.
There is a secret.
If you ask, I will tell you.
Maybe.
It always seemed there was some precise threshold for pack weight comfort.
At the light end, you could forget you were wearing a pack. for me, that is about fifteen pounds. At sixteen pounds, for me, at my physique level at this writing, the irritating nagging begins. By the time we get to twenty-five, my spine bones will not stop signalling threat and danger. At twenty-six, I feel heavy, thick, slow, and burdened.
I left with a pack weight like that. People always seem to fudge that number, I notice. One way or another, they want to impress you? So you will get different weighing systems. That 26 pounds was with my food, umbrella, and 24 oz water. It did not include the clothes I was wearing or my walking stick. It did not include my hip pack either that had a charging pack, phone, coins, and knife in it as the heavy items. So add another pound, maybe two.
The whole trip, though I liked the protection, my boots felt like weights tied to my feet, and I did not like them.
I figured I would lose the food weight fast. Running extra heavy for one day or two days was fine. I was not planning on any long, strenous stuff. Quite the opposite.
However, I found I simply was not hungry.
I hardly ate for two days!
I had not planned to fast. I had planned to eat a lot. It was a strange surprise.
It was like a newly made vampire in an Anne Rice novel. They had to vomit, urinate, and defecate a lot in the first part of the transformation.
I was, however, not vomiting, not yet.
Feeling fine if not zoomy strong, for I had not slept that night, I got off the buss and found a path to the river through the meadow there and wandered a bit until I saw a big bar of a beach in the shade, and there I spent an afternoon.
Though I did not sleep, my body had many chances on te journey up to sit still. I did nap on that beach. It was one of the more luxurious experiences of my life. I lay back, looked at the upside down cliffs all around, listeed to the river whispering by, and dropped off.
I had the place to myself for a while before a group of three young people, a man and two women, took up the upstream end.
I will often try to find fallen trees to sit next to. I look for backrests and soft seats! I had found both on that beach in that spot. Also some all day shade with minimal moving.
I did the first of many unpack, organize, repack cycles. My pack is a basic bag. The stuff you need first you put on the top. The stuff you need last, you put on the bottom. In the morning, you pack for your first break. That might be lunch, that might be a swimming hole like I was at. At lunch, you pack for dinner; at dinner, you pack for bed.
If you look at backpackers and watch videos, you my wonder why they have those big awkward pads so out and visible?
It is because those are so nice to sit on and lay one at every rest stop. That is often once an hour. So you want your pad easy to unship and restow. For this trip, I had a three millimeter/one-eighth inch foam pad of the lightest kind of closed cell foam.
I had been trending towards lighter and lighter pads my whole life too. I liked this one. It was feather light. It proved to be rather delicate though. I did not know that about that kind of light foam.
Part of going ultra light is that you use rather delicate equipment that is rather delicate instead of tough. This equipment, if cared for, is reliable, but it has to be cared for in order to be reliable. I learned about that type of light, thin foam on this trip even though I had used that pad a lot already before.
But I did not know how easily ripped or holed that foam was then. In my first load style, I had a redundant pad. This was what had been one side of a neoprene laptop case. One side was purple, the other green. I kept it green up so the purple was always the side in te dirt, and I’d fold it inward so the green — actually a cyan green — was always clean. That was my butt seat. Sometimes I would put my pack on it if the ground was wet.
I kept that on top under the red straps. I could whip it out in a flash.
Often, while hiking, my shorts or trousers are of thin material. I go back and forth on the underwear thing. But especially if I have no extra layer there, that little pad is important. It also protects my rather expensive garments.
I do not like to have much, but what I do have does tend to be nice. I was just, in fact, researching how to remove pine pitch from the light synthetics beset by it. Neither fabric is a dirt magnet otherwise, as have been some “outdoor” fabrics I have tried. i say, “in fact” because I like to take care of my nice cloths rather than buy new when they become stained or even torn.
Again, the pad. Nothing like tearing a hole in the butt of your thin hiking pants at the beginning of the trip. It is anti-social to go underwearless on busy trails then, but that has happened to me.
Hence, both the pad and always some backup for modesty’s sake.
So accustomed I was to my seat pad as an item of essential gear therefore, it was some days before I noticed it was redundant. i already had that thin pad. (By the way, I said it was “1/8” inch? No. more like 3/32. It is thin!
Worked fine with good site selection. I ill continue with the type. But this trip was hard on my piece. Ripped, torn, and holed it got. I use my pad under everything as my first line of defense. This foam needs more tlc than I gave it. Now I know. I will continue to use it, most likely. The foam of my exercise pad is too heavy.
On that beach I found, I also found, on the far side, trees and rocks I recognized from books on photography by Ansel Adams. He used to teach some classes in the valley. His late work from those shoots was intimate. Having been there now, I see where the students would go for the grand scene, but he set up his camera on the tail, more interested in the patterns of light and shade on a big boulder than Half Dome.
It was quite the warm rush to find those spots!
There were no easy fords there, up or down. I tried to find one.
Nope.
Finally, I put my phone in a plastic bag and side-swam a fast, deep part. I held the phone up for that technique. It is evolved from lifesaving where you keep one arm for the person you are rescuing, but you still swim hard with the other three limbs. Laughingly, I heard a dad from the shore going, “He’s swimming it!”
I “swam it” back too. Not one drop got on the phone. And I got the shots to prove I was at those spots in books by Ansel Adams I still own.
This became a theme for the whole trip. I found all these spots from where famous photos had been taken.
As afternoon waned into early evening, I looked up at El Capitan behind me. “Hmmm…. Where do they get those ‘Dawn Wall’ shots?”
I packed up. From there, I walked. No more buses until I boarded the one home.