Yosemite in 2023
This year has been a damp one for backpacking so far. Tioga road hasn’t opened yet. That’s the fourth time I’ve been unable to hike to North Dome for weather reasons.
All that snow meant Yosemite is full of water and visitors. A few weeks ago, a group of friends took a weekday off and hiked the upper Yosemite Falls trail. My first serious hike of the year. I carried my Katadyn gravity filter with me but didn’t test it this year (got cocky). It promptly failed. Frenetic searching on YouTube provided options to fix it on the trail. It marginally improved. I had changed the filter last year and it only has a few dozen liters on it. I was annoyed enough that I bought a Platypus gravity filter to replace it. Let me see how much longer before I give up and go the UV light route.
A few months before that, during one of those mad winter months with a lot of clouds, valley view provided us with this.
I’m lucky to live 3 hours from Yosemite door to door (if I leave at 4am), but this year has been tiring. Good year to visit the park on a Wednesday, I suppose.