Eastern Yosemite

My family and I went to the eastern part of Yosemite last weekend. I had never been there, but had only been to the more popular and crowded Yosemite Valley. The eastern portion of the park stays in the 8,000-10,000' range, and the only road to speak of in that part of the park is the east-west Tioga Road, open from May or June until November or so, depending on snow. It's a beautiful, no, it's an achingly beautiful place. You can pretty much point your camera in any direction and shoot; anything beyond that is icing on the cake. This turns out to be a good thing, since I broke my main lens (more on that later) and was left shooting with a 50mm prime. On a 1.6x crop body like I have, that means I had an effective 80mm focal length, which isn't ideal for Yosemite, where you find yourself wanting the widest lens possible. I tried telling myself this would force me to become a better photographer, but that was just self-pep happy talk. I missed a lot of shots that were screaming for an 18mm focal length. Oh well, you do what you can. Here are a few pictures:


This is about a mile into the hike from the trailhead on Tioga Road to Cathedral Lakes. I wish I knew the name of this particular dome, but I don't. It made for a nice area to sit and enjoy some water and fruit before heading on.


This was taken in the same spot as the picture shown above. The view is so scenic, and a very cold spring comes up from the ground at this point, that I'm sure this is a stop for many hikers. So I'm guessing the squirrel is accustomed to getting food here. It was a giveaway shot, so I had to take it.


A tree like this begs to be climbed. Kids have no concept of deductibles or distance to emergency rooms, as it should be.


My sons, who seem to be incapable of not scrambling up any large rock they can find.


This is Cathedral Peak, at the base of which sit Upper and Lower Cathedral Lakes, our final destination on this hike. This was one of the last shots I took before the Apocalyptic Lens Breaking Event.

When we neared our destination, Lower Cathedral Lake, I became excited, giddy, stupid. Yosemite is full of granite domes. In addition to the famous Half Dome and other granite domes that jut thousands of feet into the air, there are also lots of granite domes that stay much closer to the ground. On the final approach to Lower Cathedral Lake was one such dome, only a few feet higher than the surrounding meadow, i.e., this wasn't a climbing dome, just one to walk across on the way to the lake. On this dome were lots of BB-sized (ball bearing sized?) pebbles. It's anticlimactic in the retelling, but I slipped and fell hard on some of these rocks. I had my camera on the strap around my neck when I fell, and I hit both my hand that was holding the lens, and the lens itself, on a sharp rock (not to be confused with the giant granite dome I was standing on, or the small pebbles, this was a loose, large-ish rock with a sharp edge). I sat there bleeding for awhile and staring at my camera. There was no visible damage to the camera or lens, but the 18-200 zoom would no longer go below 24mm and would catch, or get stuck, at around 70mm and 150mm. I was able to take a few pictures, but honestly I had kind of lost the will to shoot and I was in some sort of low-level shock (not meant to be a clinical term, it's just how I felt at the time). The focus ring got worse and the autofocus became very slow and did a lot of "hunting" to lock focus, sometimes not locking focus at all on what should have been easy focus points. I tried shooting some more with it, and I got a few pictures I'll be keeping. The next day I removed the lens from the camera for good; it was no longer working at all. Here are a few shots of Lower Cathedral Lake and surrounding area, the last from that particular lens:


Cathedral Peak with a small stream in the foreground. Lower Cathedral Lake is just behind me in this shot. I should have hiked to the other side of the lake to get the lake + mountain picture, but again, I didn't feel very motivated at that point.


This is my daughter. Cathedral Peak off to the left out of frame, the lake to the right out of frame. The lake is ringed with mountains, utterly quiet except for the wind, and one of the prettiest place I've seen.


I don't know what this is called. I'd say malformed rainbow, but I'm sure that's not right. Anyway, it looked cool, and it kept moving, shifting, changing, disappearing, then reappearing in a different spot.

Here's one of the lake, just to prove there really was a lake at this location:



This is the following day, Pothole Dome near Tuolumne Meadows. Our 3 kids climbed it while my wife and I stayed below and took pictures.


This is Olmstead Point, overlooking Half Dome and Yosemite Valley, taken with the 50mm lens.


My wife, at Olmstead Point


And finally, here's a shot looking east from Olmstead Point. Tenaya Lake can be seen in the background.

I had hoped to take lots more pictures, but Yosemite isn't far, and I'll go back before long, with good hiking boots. Happily, Canon is repairing the lens under warranty. This is a gift, since the lens break was nobody's fault but mine. The guy on the phone told me they sometimes do warranty work for customer retention purposes. It worked--I plan to stay with Canon and I appreciate their gesture.

If you've never been to Yosemite and you get the opportunity, take it. It's a wonderful place to be.

Yosemite is one of those places that all should make a point of seeing.

I can certainly imagine being just sick about damage to an expensive lens and then the joy/relief of finding out that the nice people at Canon would make it right for you.

Just wow.

I did that hike a long time ago. Thanks for stirring up those memories. We did a 5 day hike down the Sunrise Trail and that lake was our first stop. Lots of bears that night.

Your pics greatly encourage a return trip. :-)

Something about lemonade from lemons comes to mind...

I think you did splendidly, esp. considering your state of mind.

I'm really glad your lens got fixed, too.

Thank you so much for telling us your story and sharing these pics...

Beautifully done. Thanks for the "ride along".

Yosemite is definitely on our to-do-when-we-get-the-money list. We're trying to save for next year.

:hi: