Re: Snow Creek Falls up close

Some of you may recall the abandoned trail that leads to the base of Snow Creek Falls.
see: http://yosemitenews.info/forum/read.php?3,64970



My hiking buddy has always wanted to get close to the cascade itself. On Thursday he was up on the Snow Creek Trail by himself. It was a nice day to look over at the face of Half Dome, with an especially good view of the north buttress adjacent to the face. Usually, the lighting is such that you can't see how far it juts out from the main face.



Anyway, he was up there to get to the cascade itself. Here is an old photo of Snow Creek Falls from the top of Half Dome:



You can see the switchback closest to the falls. Roper says that it is an easy scramble up and left from the cascade to the trail, and he is correct. Getting down there is somewhat harder, especially if you go left instead of right on the way down. My buddy rappelled the middle 1/3 of the left route. The right route would have avoided the rappel, but care and caution are still needed, and having a rope is a great precaution. In any case, it's not something that I would do, but then he is an actual climber...

Alas, the lighting did not make for a good photo of the cascade, which was not running very full anyway.



But one more item got checked off my buddy's bucket list.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 03/31/2014 08:30AM by wherever.

Thanks for posting. Your comment about Roper reminds me of a friend of ours. Many years ago a group of us were hiking to the top of Sentinel Dome by the usual easy way. Our friend decided that the guys should go up the steeper side and started up first. He made it to the top and yelled down that it was not a problem that there were a lot of hand and foot holds. It was no problem for him because he is over 6'4" and has quite a span and the other guys were under 6 feet and couldn't reach.

Physical considerations like that one aside, I have a friend who puts it like this: "Anyone who will attempt stuff that I won't is crazy and anyone who won't attempt stuff that I will is a lightweight!"

My personal mantra is to always trust my own intuition over anybody else's assessment of how easy something is. I've probably missed out on a couple of things that I could have managed but I'm still here to go back and try again when conditions (mine, the rock's or the weather's) are different!

Quote
parklover
Thanks for posting. Your comment about Roper reminds me of a friend of ours. Many years ago a group of us were hiking to the top of Sentinel Dome by the usual easy way. Our friend decided that the guys should go up the steeper side and started up first. He made it to the top and yelled down that it was not a problem that there were a lot of hand and foot holds. It was no problem for him because he is over 6'4" and has quite a span and the other guys were under 6 feet and couldn't reach.

Alas, I had to edit the original post. I had misunderstood my buddy's quote from Roper's book. But the statement is generally true: If you aren't a real climber, don't assume that scrambles are easy, just because the guidebook says so.