Stupid hiking tricks

The latest in hiking footware:

Your picture reminds me of one of my favorite Yosemite Valley tourist moments.

I can't remember what specific climb/hike we were doing, but I remember an icy winter day in Yosemite Valley. We were walking back to the shuttle bus to get back to our campsite (only time of year I'll camp in the valley - bad winter conditions = no people) and decided to detour and check out Lower Yosemite Falls. This was before they redid the area. We had our crampons on. I know it was a really icy day, I just can't remember what we were doing before this point. It could have been a normal hike, with the crampons to help with the ice. In any case, we had our crampons strapped to our boots.

The whole paved trail to the lower falls was covered in a sheer layer of ice. At that short little steep section right before the falls we ran into a group of people who were walking to the falls from their tour bus. There was a woman there in strappy 4" high heels standing at the bottom of the small slope. She had fallen several times while attempting to walk up the ice in those shoes. After seeing us walking across the ice in our crampons, in broken english she asked if she could buy 'teeth for her shoes' (in the parking lot? I couldn't understand. We said something about the mountaineering shop at curry).

Every time my husband sees me in heels now he asks if I have crampons for them.

I had been thinking about times I've seen women in high heels at the Vernal Fall bridge just a bit before I took this shot. Now I'm wondering if I should have stuck around to see how her feet did going back down to Happy Isles.

We took the short walk up to Bridalveil on Saturday and on the way back down we passed a woman wearing slick-soled cowboy style boots that came up to just above her ankles. She was clinging to the pipe railings beside the walkway, bending forward at the waist, and shuffling her feet because the shoes were slipping.

Her partner said, with a British accent, "I think you might have considered some sensible shoes."

"Why didn't you tell me?" she replied.

"I've given up," he quipped.

So funny.

I went up yesterday to scope out the Diving Board route with a friend. We had a fine time wandering about for a while and started back down the Mist Trail (the trail crews redid a lot of the rockwork, very good job!). There were a number of 20-ish young men about, one of them hiked past us and later at the top of Vernal we saw him heading back up the trail - it was nearly sunset, and he didn't appear to have much with him. I said something like "going back to LYV?" and he said no, Camp 4. I said - Camp 4 isn't up there. It's that way. And he explained the trail ended (!) and he had to backtrack to go up the hill and then down.... I showed him where the top of the railing was and said, there's a trail there... when we found him again at the bottom bridge near the restroom, he thanked me for the help and pulled out his valley map and asked about hikes he could do tomorrow. I told him he should head for the wilderness center and buy himself a map that showed more trails.... Evidently he had been wandering around blindly following signs, and was doing a lot of backtracking as a result.

There were also people borrowing my filter at Nevada Falls. Not too many tourists but a lot of half prepared backpackers - one carrying a sleeping bag in front of him on his arm and a smallish pack overloaded with gear hanging off it, including two yoga mats. His girlfriend/female companion had a Jansport book bag. One of many victims of the bear canister surprise.... "we have to take what?"