10th April: San Francisco to Yosemite
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Gavin's diary—7.00pm 10th April 2007, El Portal campsite, near Yosemite NP
James and I arrived in the hotel reception only a little late. (We had believed that 7.30am was an aspiration rather than a firm deadline.) We were immediately confronted by more paperwork. Two embarrassing ferrets through my highly compressed suitcase later—to retrieve a copy of our insurance contract—the trek eventually headed off to the Golden Gate Bridge, upon request.
Golden Gate, SF
In Transit
We then returned to San Francisco and over—or rather, under—the Oakland Bay Bridge. From there we drove to Oakdale, which had a ridiculously pristine and quiet Stepford Wives-style supermarket.
From Oakdale we drove on to Knights Ferry, for our first picnic lunch as a group.
Hetch Hetchy
After Knights Ferry, we commenced our climb to Yosemite, where snow prevented us from ascending to Glacier Point or the Tioga Pass.
Despite the absence of crash barriers on the sheer drop side of the winding mountain road, our guide, Ron, is adept at steering with one hand while using the other hand to operate the van's Tannoy system. We journeyed on to Hetch Hetchy, a lake and dam slightly off the beaten track, but still part of Yosemite NP.
Yosemite Valley
Our campsite is definitely not part of Yosemite. It's a private, not very adequate patch of hillside next to a river just outside the park. The ground is very hard, and the sleeping mats very thin.
Jinny's Blog
I have taken two weeks off from work that I want do something fun and active with. I was planning a trip to Italy which didn’t work out, so I need to find something new and quickly. After taking advice from several friends, I decide to go on a trekking trip with an organized tour group, thereby rejecting all other suggestions my friends gave me. But that’s what friends are for—for you to not listen to. I have never traveled with a group of total strangers before. This should be interesting.
I sign up for a TrekAmerica tour that starts at Yosemite, goes onto Zion, Bryce, Lake Powell, Monument Valley, Great Basin Desert, Grand Canyon and then finally ends at Las Vegas. I like it because it covers several national parks and more so because of Grand Canyon and Las Vegas, two places I have wanted to visit for years and haven’t had a chance to. I visited Yosemite years ago, but it was a couple of days with hotel stays and I don’t even have the pictures to prove that I went!
TrekAmerica provides the transportation, a tour guide and the camping equipment. You have to bring sleeping bag and other personal things. I am told most of the people in the trip tend to be English and Australian, I am quite excited with the thought of traveling with 'foreigners' with lovely accents. Oh, the other good thing is there is no single supplement for TrekAmerica. I refuse to pay a penalty for being single. They should pay me for all the interesting possibilities I bring with me! (They should definitely introduce a single supplement. There were no interesting possibilities—Ed.)
The trip begins at San Francisco. Ah! the city from not so long ago. I was so nostalgic getting back there after nearly a year. I stayed at the St. Francis Drake this time and though I got in late, I visited the Starlight Ballroom on the 21st floor. Lovely view of Union Square and the city beyond. I was amazed at the large colourful Indian mural on the Macy's store façade and even more surprised at a statue of Ganesha on the store front. What is an American corporation doing with a Hindu religious figure on the store front? Not that I mind. The host in Starlight Ballroom told me it was their annual flower show. I still don’t get the Ganesha connection. Had a glass of Graham’s 10-year tawny port and was ready for bed and to meet my group at 7:30 the next morning. (Jinny was not the only problem drinker on the trip—Ed.)
In the first 30 minutes of meeting my group and the tour leader, I noticed a couple of things:
- You know how Americans are considered loud and obnoxious and animated, well the English were the exact opposite. There was an Aussie couple as well, same thing though. Hardly a few words were exchanged and I missed the immediate rapport that Americans (and I) like to establish when faced with strangers. That and the fact that the accent was harder than I thought it would be for me to understand. Good thing I brought a book! (It is heartening to relate that Jinny never finished that book, despite the uncommunicative English and Aussies—Ed.)
- The other was that my tour leader appeared far too overweight to be a serious hiker, and when I saw him light up as soon as we stepped out, I was convinced that he wasn’t a hiker. (This comment about personal physical shortcomings will strike fear in most of the other members of the tour. Fortunately Jinny holds her tongue on this topic for the remainder of the blog—Ed. Well, most of it.) After having hiked with Sierra club leaders, I guess I expected something similar, but Ron turned out to be more of a commercial/touristy guide than a hiking guide. Which is fine in retrospect, but that day was a little disappointing.
Anyway as we were loading our luggage into the trailer, I noticed a suitcase amongst the luggage with a band that said IBM AS/400. I had found a fellow IBMer from the UK! There, that should give us plenty to talk about. (It didn't—Ed.)
We piled into the van with a trailer in the back and drove to Yosemite. Everybody was polite and quiet. Very quiet. I asked a few questions of the Aussie couple, learnt that they were traveling the world and working where they could find a job (currently living in London) and then ran out of questions and became quiet myself.
At Yosemite, we stopped at O’Shaughnessy Dam in the Hetch Hetchy reservoir and went for a short walk to the lower waterfall. We camped just outside the national park at Indian Flats campground in El Portal. Ron divided the group into teams which would take turns cooking, doing dishes and cleaning the van. He wisely put a woman at the head of each team. (Not actually so. Ron allocated a woman to each team, but he did not install her as leader. Or at least he didn't tell the men that he had done so—Ed.) I was in Team C with James (son of Gavin, the IBMer), and Chuck (the only American other than Ron). Right away Chuck suggested hot dogs and baked beans for our team. "Keep it simple," he said. A phrase I was to hear from him several times during the trip.
A young Oxford graduate, Dan, was to be in charge of the trailer, loading and unloading. Jennifer (who had been travelling the world for the past three months with boyfriend Gary) was to be in charge of organizing food, making sure we didn't run out of important things we needed to survive, like coffee. Ron cooked fajitas that night and we all helped with everything, since the team structure would kick in, the night after. He also gave us our itinerary for the entire trip: instead of Great Basin Desert, we were to go to Barstow, another desert town (some useless excuse about traffic/route that I don’t remember). Too early to be litigious, I decided.
Dodgy Video Footage
- Day One of the Trek (Duration 2:01)
