Our favorite time to hike the Four Mile Trail is when the Glacier Point road is closed, so my wife and I decided to do this hike last Sunday. Despite the road being closed, a few dozen people or so took advantage of the mild November day and walked up to GP and back down. Most of the day was clear and sunny with just a slight breeze, although fog-like clouds rolled into the valley in the afternoon. When we didn't have all of Glacier Point to ourselves, there were at most only a handful of people there. Portions of the trail above Union Point were icy, and our Kathoola Micro-Spikes made all the difference--highly recommended.
This trip was my first chance to test a new camera "in the wild". In the past I've lugged around a Hasselblad--great Zeiss optics, but heavy. I later downsized to a Contax G, and eventually a Rollei 35, but when I jumped to digital I left all the Zeiss glass behind. My 3 lb. workhorse Canon rig does a great job, but it's the heaviest single item in my backpacking kit. When I found out that I could use the excellent Contax G lenses on the small Sony NEX cameras I couldn't resist. So far, I like the kit: the manual focus experience reminds me a bit of focusing on the 'Blad with the waist-level finder and pop-up magnifier. I took the chance to play with some of the "fun" features of the camera such as sweep panorama mode and built-in HDR.
Glacier Point Panorama:
In-camera HDR of El Cap:
The old section of the Four Mile Trail below the "traverse" that's west of GP had footprints along its entire length. (Anyone here? Actually, I suspect bear...) I followed the trail westward a bit, but the first steep drop--which could not have been fun for those hiking up the trail--was holding a lot of snow, so I turned back.
Since it's becoming the popular spot, I took the obligatory detour along the old segment of the FMT below Union Point to see Agassiz Column up close (see this thread (Oh, and thanks, Chick-On!):
The beginning and end of this segment are over-grown as advertised, but the middle portion contains well-preserved switchbacks with intricate rockwork. This section of trail is in many ways more interesting that the current one. I also saw signs of an old telegraph (?) line both here and along the old traverse.
Towards the bottom of the trail, the sun was hitting El Cap in a way that created a "firefall"-type effect:
All in all, a wonderful late-season day-hike... we'll be returning for our 23rd Thanksgiving spent in Yosemite Valley in a week or so.
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