[K_Dub]

Originally Posted by icingdeath88

Wow. That is beautiful. I forgot what mountains look like.

I make sure that I go remind myself from time to time.

I thought I'd seen mountains before. I'd seen big trees, granite domes, grassy meadows, etc. Nothing I'd ever seen was anything like Yosemite. I was planning to do a three day solo back-pack up to the same lake I'd visited last year, but on my first night out my stove broke and decompressed all of my Butane out in about 15 seconds. Without that, and no guarantee that I'd have enough dry wood for a cooking fire every night, I tucked tail and headed to Yosemite where I was sure to find the amenities that I now required. I got up there late on Sunday, and every site in the park was booked months ago. So I had to drive back to town and stay in a motel for the night. The next day I attacked the valley floor (and it's crowds) with my camera and then got up to Tioga pass by about 2pm. Slapped on my snowshoes and hit up Cathedral Peak about 3.5 miles from the road. Got back to my car 'round 7:30 and still had another hour of amazing light to photograph from the car (it being solstice) before finding a developed campground above Mono Lake on the desert side of the pass.

Now I'm back, my car is filthy, and I'm flying to Houston for a wedding tomorrow. Talk about hitting all the extremes in a week.

Here's another car pic for reading my little story. Royal Arches and North Dome .