CA vacation part 2: Hiking Bridal Falls

Abram, Isaac, Tobin and I hiked up Bridal Veil Falls on Friday.

Isaac and Jenna were going to travel back to San Francisco Friday afternoon.  Isaac wanted to hike one more time, so we had planned to hike early in the the morning. We had to get into the Valley before 9am, hike the trail and be back to the cabin before 1pm.  We were close. 

Here is the buck we saw in the parking lot at the visitor center in the valley!

Waterfalls are powerful.  They are beautiful and enticing, but need to be respected for their strength.  As we began out hike, we learned that three hikers had been swept away over the falls earlier that week.  One woman had tried to walk across the pool at the top to get a better photo opportunity.  The story is that she slipped, two men tried to help her and they all were swept away.  We began our hike learning of this story and seeing their photos along the trail.  It was a scary reminder of how powerful nature is and our need to respect it..

This is a panoramic photo I put together of the falls.

The sound of the falls was so loud.  It is amazing how much water was still flowing in August.

We asked another hiker to take out photo.  We were getting wet from the spray of the falls.

The spray enabled me to take great photos of the rainbows.

The stairs we climbed to go up to the top of the falls.  There were few people coming down when we were going up. On our way down the volume of hikers had quadrupled.  The staircase is narrow, just wide enough for two people, but the railing was a bit wobbly. 

View of the falls from the top.

Here is Vernal pool. A beautiful view.

Tobin and Abram

Isaac

A gorgeous blue bird.  There were several flying around us. I was lucky to capture this one.

The whole time we were traveling in and out of the valley we would see these signs: 

Tobin thought it was great.  After our vacation, Jenna had a shirt made for him with this sign on it. 

It is difficult to put into words how beautiful Yosemite was.  We saw and did so much I am trying to capture each part in different sections.  As I have said before, there is much more to come!