I know you hear this all the time, but it's seriously crazy how much great info and inspiration is housed in this site. Reading through the advice served up for others really helped our planning, but I’d appreciate a sanity check and any thoughts on our 5-day itinerary for May 27-31.
We have a wilderness permit for Glacier Point to Illilouette Falls with HD permits (they urged us to get a permit from a lower TH in case Tioga was still closed, but said we’d have no trouble getting out of TL or TM when we arrive—hope that’s true). Really want to do Clouds Rest, Quarter Domes, Half Dome, head up the Merced and get up to Cathedral Lakes.
It’s our first time backpacking at altitude, so I'm trying to stay reasonable (we’re from PA). I’m a distance runner, do ~6 weekend trips each year and spend a lot of time in the woods, but this is our first 5-day trip ( it's a last hoorah for my daughter before she heads off to college in August). She’s fit but has spent less time backpacking.
I saw several suggestions to keep the distance to <~10 miles per day and Schaeffer’s guide says to expect about a 2 mph pace plus one hour for every +1000 vertical. I understand YMMV, but I hoped those were good rules of thumb because I used them as a guide for our plan.
So here's the initial plan:
Day 1: Tenaya Lakes to CR then camp near QD
Day 2: Over to HD then down thru LYV to camping area near Moraine Dome or Bunnel Point (area near the “oo” in second
footbridge)
Day 3: Up to Merced to Echo Valley then head up Cathedral Fork toward either Echo Lake or Matthes Lake.
Day 4 Do some exploring up Matthes, Echo and/or Cathedral then head over to Cathedral Lakes (lower?)
Day 5 Explore Tressider, Tenaya, Medlicott and/or Mariuolumne then head down one of the “short cuts” to Tioga then TL
1) Sound reasonable? Any thoughts on camping near Moraine Dome v. Echo Lake? Echo Lake v. Matthes Lake?
2) Amy suggestions on class 3 or under scrambles (particularly days 4&5)—nothing too serious. Pretty sure I've seen pics of a feathered adventurer at all of the high spots I mentioned, but I'm not sure that means they're reasonable.
3) We're staying in Oakhurst Sunday night. Is the Wawona visitor's center the easiest/quickest way to pick-up our WP?
4) Please tell me our 30 degree bags on Neoair pads should be warm enough.
5) Any idea how bad the mosquitos should be?
Any input would be great. Thanks.