Via Happy Isles in Yosemite Valley (4,105 ft): 20+ miles roundtrip 6,000+ ft elevation gain.Via the Sunrise Lakes Trailhead (~8,160 ft) along Tioga Road: A 12+ mile roundtrip hike with ~2,500 ft of elevation gain.One can gain the summit of Clouds Rest by two trail routes: The most impressive feature of Clouds Rest is its northwest face, an immense granite slab polished by glaciers and descending 5,000 ft below to the base of Tenaya Canyon. In a 360 degree panorama, one can gaze over to Half Dome, the Clark Range, Tenaya Lake, and the Cathedral Range (including Mount Lyell, the highest point in Yosemite National Park). The mountain is a colossal granite formation with striking prominence and a unique vantage of both the high country around Tuolumne Meadows and Yosemite Valley. At 9,926 ft, Clouds Rest is not nearly the tallest mountain in Yosemite, but its close proximity and unobstructed perch above Yosemite Valley and Tenaya Canyon provides a spectacular viewpoint. At first I thought nothing else but black & white would work for the photos, but after working with them I think the color rendition that I found works quite well.The second of three posts in a series of outings in Yosemite Valley is a trip to a favorite viewpoint, Clouds Rest. The photos below are all processed quite heavily to get some detail and contrast out of the extremely hazy, low-contrast material that the camera captured. The views from Clouds Rest are pretty awesome… if it isn’t smoky. Impressive! Iconic Half Dome lies far below from Clouds Rest, its elevation is about 1500 feet less than Clouds Rest’s. It is a narrow and airy granite ridge, to the north/west it falls down in a vertigo-inducing drop to Tenaya Canyon, with nothing but bare granite cliffs for what looked like at least a thousand feet. And Clouds Rest’s peak is really special. We took another break before the final ascend to the peak. Hiking with company was great and made the miles pass much faster. It turned out that they were also from San Diego! We continued the hike together, chatting about hiking, San Diego’s craft beer scene, food, and whatnot. A group of other hikers had also stopped there for a pause and a snack and we chatted a little bit. The little nameless lake was really pretty and I stopped to make a photo. Unfortunately, the trail loses some elevation again as it goes down to a little meadow with a nameless lake, but it’s not much elevation that you lose there. I felt good when I reached that saddle (much better than on the first day) so I continued on the Clouds Rest Trail. It’s nice that the steepest part of the hike is within the first 2.5 miles – once you’ve made it up to the saddle where the trail to Sunrise Lakes branches off, the worst is already behind you. Luckily, as I got higher, the air quality improved, the smell of smoke disappeared, and the hike was more enjoyable. In the lower section of the hike the smoke was so dense, it was almost like fog that had accumulated in the valleys and canyons over night. This time, a fire also limited the hike somewhat – it was extremely smoky in Yosemite that day. It had been long on my list and on our previous Sierra visit in October 2014, I couldn’t hike it because of a fire. For my second hike in Yosemite, I had picked Clouds Rest.
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