Yosemite Trip

This weekend (i.e. August 8th to August 10th, 2025), I went to Yosemite with my Boy Scout troop. And, well, that was something!

Day 1

On the first day, we took a stroll to Yosemite Falls. When I went in 2023, there was a crazy amount of water. Like, to an unholy extent. However, this time, it pains me to say that it was pretty much dry.

This is what the falls looked like in 2023.

And this is what it looked like this year.

It's safe to say, reality will always disappoint you. At least, sometimes. I guess 2023 was a luckier year for me!

After that, we started cooking an ungodly amount of pasta to share. Yes, my bowels did not thank me for that. No, I don't regret devouring half of the pot in the slightest.

Day 2

I woke up at 5 AM to clean up my tent and make coffee. Funnily enough, one of my friends had the exact same idea, because he ended up standing right in front of my tent until I got out of it.

Anyways, after that I started making some bougie Vietnamese coffee... with my stove and a packet of instant coffee. Still tasted great.

After that, we drove up to Glacier Point to start backpacking. Well, we were supposed to get started immediately, but I decided that snapping photos was a better use of time.

Thankfully, I brought a DSLR camera this time. No more poorly taken phone pictures!

I would say this picture was my favorite by far. The raw photo isn't as striking, but still has that nice 'soft' feeling of the sunlight striking the rocks and lighting up the valley below.

Looking to the left, I noticed a mountain that I never noticed before. Dunno how I never spotted it, but I thought it looked pretty cool. I mean, a granite dome balder than my former band teacher, with an ominous looking mountain ridge in the far off distance? Sign me up!

I did a bit of research, and it turns out that this is called Mount Starr King. The mountains behind are a collection of inaccessible mountains that are all above 10k feet in their highest elevation. If curious, they're all near Mount Clark, which is the tallest mountain in the range at 11.5k feet in elevation.

Anyways, after snapping photos, we hiked up to Sentinel Dome. Admittedly, I did an oopsie by forgetting the fact that we could have just left all the backpacks in the cars at Glacier Point, which made everyone have to carry their heavy packs up.

Regardless of how heavy the packs were, we made it up to Sentinel Dome. This was honestly the GOAT in terms of the views: you're above Glacier Point, and have a truly panoramic view of the valley. Also, you get to see the eastern side of the park. In fact, the previous picture of Mount Starr King was actually taken here because it had a better view of it.

After that, we hiked down back to the Glacier Point parking lot, and took a break. Continuing forward, we hiked to our next destinations: Illilouette Falls and Panorama Point.

Illilouette Falls is a waterfall that runs all year long. It's supplied by the Illilouette basin, which is where we ended up camping at. Although it isn't as large as its neighbors to the west (those being Vernal and Nevada Falls), it remains striking and makes for a pretty good photo.

After that, we walked over to Panorama Point. Well, we missed the little fork in the road to Panorama Point. Shucks! There was a nearby vista point though, which provided views that were similar enough.

Eventually, after a lot more hiking, we arrived at our campsite. There were a lot of issues that I didn't mention during this day, so we were all quite tired. Thus, arriving at the campsite made us (or at least me) feel like we were in our own little pocket of Heaven.

Here, we were able to wash ourselves, filter water, and mess around. After cooking my instant noodles, I was snapped out of my temporary state of euphoria to a lot of yelling. It turns out a black bear had wandered into our campsite! Those darn bears. Well, and those darn irresponsible humans. I guess both sides of the coin are to blame here.

The resolution is pretty bad because... well, you shouldn't get close to the bear. Also, I didn't have my DSLR in hand because I was savoring my noodles.

After that, the sun began setting, so we crossed the creek to try to get some sunset photos. Much to our chagrin, the view wasn't too great. We still took a bunch of photos for fun though.

When coming back, one of my friends was joking that every silhouette looked like a bear. Soon after, the other friend looked up the hill and started yelling that there was a bear. I thought they were messing with me, until we just saw the bear staring at us from 20 feet away. Needless to say, we ran into the creek and crossed instead of dealing with that can of worms, which had the unfortunate side effect of denying us the opportunity to aura-farm with the bear.

After that, we tried stargazing, but the visibility was too bad. The woods looked quite pretty though.

Day 3

We woke up early to hike back to Glacier Point, which was a relatively uneventful hike. It was pretty scenic though, and the bliss of eating ice cream after that entire ordeal was truly sublime. Being that we were there on a Sunday morning, there thankfully weren't too many people there, allowing us to take pictures at Glacier Point.

Yes, this is a bit cringe. No, I don't regret it.

After that, we drove around Yosemite for a while, and ended up visiting the famed Tunnel View. In Chinese, this would be considered a prime 打卡 place, given how many tourists were there. Unfortunately, visibility was pretty bad, but that was something that was easy enough to handle with post-effects.

With that, we promptly drove out of the valley. On the way back, we got lunch at In-N-Out, and drove home after.