Hike:
Yosemite
Date: 9/16/00
With whom: solo
Images 32-38
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Yosemite: Yosemite Valley to Half Dome via John Muir Trail return via Mist Trail
Distance: 16.4+ miles
Elevation: 4000' to 8836'
After walking back to Curry Village, I dropped off my gear in my tent cabin and then walked to the pizza place to eat an early dinner. After that, I took a shower and then a nap. I set my alarm for 6pm so I could catch the sunset over Yosemite from Inspiration Point (I decided to try the view from here because I had already seen the sunset from Glacier Pt. two weeks earlier and since there were no clouds this day, I didn't expect it to be as spectacular.. The view turned out to not be all that dramatic (picture at top of page), relatively speaking that is. I continued driving up to Glacier Pt. so I could catch the moonrise. On the way, I caught a view of the sun beginning to set so I had to find a place to turn around (not a very simple task on a twisty mountain road) so I could park and take a picture. I missed the sun setting, but have a couple pictures below just after it set.
I continued on my way up to Glacier Pt. which I reached at about 8pm. I still had quite a bit of time until moonrise, so I just laid down on a rock to look up at the stars as it got darker. It was incredible how clear the sky is and how stars I could see. It was also very easy to make out the band of the Milky Way. Since the moon didn't rise until about 9:40pm, I had a lot of time to look at the stars. I saw 4 shooting stars and a tracked a couple communication satellites (look as faint as a star, but moves in a straight line across the sky).
Before the moon rose, it was almost pitch black. It was difficult to see anything even in the immediate area. When the moon began to rise, it was very dramatic. It just appeared out of the black over the mountains over the horizon. My pictures didn't turn out to look like much other than a white dot on a completely black background, but after a lot of manipulation with the brightness and contrast, I extracted the two pictures below. In the one on the left, you can just make out the top part of Half Dome in silhouette as the moon is still rising.. The one on the right is after the moon has fully risen (camera was zoomed in which is why the moon appears so much larger). Because the moon was so bright in contrast to all of the darkness around, none of the features of the moon came out although they were very clearly visible (I need to figure out how to set the manual settings on my camera better). I began my drive back down at 10:00pm at which point I was completely exhausted.
These last two pictures below were taken on the drive out. This is one of my favorite shots of El Capitan (left) with the morning sun half lighting it and the clear blue sky in the background. The other picture was part of the meadow with the little dot of our friend the moon in the sky.
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