John Muir Trail, Day 5

Lower Cathedral Lake was probably our best campsite of the trip, amazing setting, close to water, and on nice flat, dry, ground, so we both woke up feeling pretty refreshed and ready to enter Yosemite valley itself, after which it would be all down hill.

But Cathedral Lake had one last trick up its sleeve, just as we were leaving, remarking on what a perfect location it was, what did we see walking between two trees, in front of the lake and framed by the mountain, was a two-week old fawn and the mother deer and their older sibling. The deers paused to look at us, and after a few seconds walked away. It really was a stunning moment, that we managed to catch a photo of just as they walked off towards the river.

After that we really had low expectations for the day, as that was a hard act to follow, but once again the landscape changed in dramatic ways.

It was still pretty hot, but we had more tree cover, so that gave us lovely shade as we walked through the last valley pass we were going to encounter.

But as we entered Yosemite Valley, we could see the impact of the forest fire that had gone through there a few years earlier, destroying acres of huge, hundred year old trees, removing the shade, but also causing an explosion of brush growth of amazing bushes and flowers.

We could also see (and smell) the fire still raging on the other side of the valley, far from us, but still significantly impacting air quality.

Here you can see how huge the trees were that were destroyed, but also how the forest was quickly recovering, with the ground covered in dense under growth now sunlight was not being blocked by the trees.

All the sun exposure was good for the plants, but between that and the smoke, not good for me and Ken, so we were glad when we got to Little Yosemite Valley, the first campground north of the main valley, a lot more crowded than what we were used too, but nice and shaded and our first pit toilets in over five days, so that felt like a treat!

Seeing half dome rock was our first sign we were getting close

And having a nice river to rinse off and fish in was a treat too!