Lucrativ wrote:
> looks like a well-rounded visit .. sunnyside bench and sierra
> point ... nice !
It was nice, but we had our Sunnyside Bench effort (which was really an attempt at Fern Ledge) scuttled. After entering (I think) Sunnyside Bench, we became totally flummoxed as to how to proceed more than about 100 yards west of the rockslide - the trail such as it was, became completely obscured by deep, loose soil and rocks, at a steep angle toward the cliff, and across the slide there was no perceptible continuation of the trail. Our research indiocated that the trail was obvious and easy to follow, but we found no such animal.
I would certainly welcome a good discussion of how to proceed as one reaches the top of the rockslide and goes up along side the cliff to the bench - the only more or less detailed accounts I can find:
(Sorry, don't know how to make these active links - ?)
http://yosemiteexplorer.com/trails/fern-ledgeand this one:
http://www.summitpost.org/route/157954/yosemite-falls.html...are vague enough so that the key transition points are not clear. We could have stumbled along, I suppose, and found the trail, but as per the exhortations of the first article cited, we did not want to ruin vegetation and cause erosion. We like to tread lightly if at all possible.
In fact, if you go to his photo album of the excursion through a link on the page, the point between pictures 2 and 3 is not covered well enough. What happens between the top of the rockslide and the slabs of the trail (which we did not see)? We think we might have gotten to the "grapevine forest," as it looks like the stopping point we encountered, but he never mentions this textually.
Anyway, maybe next time...
Wilderness forever,
Bruce Jensen
