Yosemite and Hiking Cloud’s Rest

Now that we have a car, it’s much less hassle to do road trips within Northern California. We decided to visit Mammoth (our first time there in the Summer!) and break up the drive with some cycling/One Wheeling in Yosemite National Park.

Because of Covid they were only allowing limited people inside the park so we had to get a permit (which was good for four days). I’d heard it was quite difficult to get reservations, but we went mid-week so didn’t have any problems. Though maybe there were some last minute cancellations because the air quality that week was quite bad – though we got lucky with the smoke clearing the day we arrived.

They had closed some of the roads to car traffic so it was really, really nice!

We had originally planned to just spend one day at Yosemite, but checked the air forecast and impulsively decided to come back the next day for a hike. An outdoorsy friend and his equally outdoorsy girlfriend recommended Cloud’s Rest, which they described as “easier than Half Dome – doable without training if you’re reasonably fit”.

Having now done the hike, I feel like they undersold its difficulty! It was very, very hard. I guess it was “doable” in that we did it – but we were absolutely wrecked afterwards. It’s a 14.5 mile (23.3km) round trip with about 2000 feet of elevation gain that people online said took them 6-8 hours but took us (well, me – with James walking at my pace) 9.5 hours.

Our friends didn’t undersell how beautiful the hike was though. Part of my slowness (maybe 30 minutes’ worth?) was stopping to take photos the entire way up. We started in a forest near Tenaya Lake, and continued to a super steep series of switchbacks. The switchbacks were maybe a mile and a half long and something like 50% of the hike’s elevation gain.

The camera flattens the steepness of the mountain, but you can get an idea of just how much slope we had to climb.

Up, up, up!

Going up wasn’t too bad, but I had a hard time going down. I have really short legs, so the shallow steps were fine, but the majority of it was big, bouldery steps that took forever to walk down, even with hiking poles for support. 

While we were walking up I remember thinking “this is going to be a pain in the arse on the way back”. But that was a problem for Future Kaye. 

In-the-Moment Kaye had beautiful granite views all the way up.

We reached the end of the switchbacks then headed through a largely flat forest area, with a couple of slight downhill portions that we knew we’d be making up for later.

Also we met a woman who was very excited to show us something she called a “sooty grouse” which, as far as we could tell, was some kind of forest chicken. 

Cloud’s Rest was in sight!

Obviously we still had awhile to go, but it was a morale boost to finally see our destination.

From this point onward it was a constant steep uphill climb. I was pretty knackered by then, and must have looked really pathetic because several people on their way back were like “keep going, you’re almost there!” FYI we were not almost there, and I was filled with false hope while we were still over an hour away!

Luckily the scramble up Cloud’s Rest was quite fun, and knowing it was the final push gave me my second wind. And the incredible views definitely helped.  

The final part of the hike was a rocky ridge with scary drops on both sides. At 9,926 feet (3,025 meters) we were higher than Half Dome (which you can see in the background).  

I chatted with a woman who said she wasn’t normally scared of heights but couldn’t bring herself to do the ridge, so I was very proud of James for doing it. He’s afraid of heights and was quite nervous (especially when the wind blew!) but made it across with no problems.

And this was the view in the other direction.

You can see a bit of haze in the distance, but a day earlier or later and the air would have been too unhealthy for us to do the hike (and also the visibility would have been crap).

We were very fortunate with the air quality and had clear views across the whole valley. 

In hindsight, we should have brought a lunch and eaten it there. I’m never hungry during exercise, so I need to be more mindful about eating when I hike. We just had some fruit and Clif Bars, but it was such a long and strenuous hike that we really should have fuelled ourselves better – we only drank half the water we had brought. =(

It definitely contributed to the second half of the hike being way more gruelling than the first half, even though it was downhill. It turns out I’m way worse at descending steep climbs than I am ascending. I spent forever on those goddamn rocks, slowly hobbling my way down. There was another couple that I thought was having a similarly hard time until the guy said to us “I don’t know which is worse, going up or going down” and then I knew they were frauds.

It took us 4 hours to get up to the summit of Cloud’s Rest and 5.5 hours to get down, which makes it the longest hike we’ve ever done by a fair margin. Really, I don’t know what we were thinking! Everyone else who was on that hike looked awesomely fit, and it was definitely a case of biting off more than we could chew. Or biting off exactly the amount we could chew – eventually – with a great deal of discomfort.

My knees, hip joints and feet were aching for the last few hours of the hike and I was so, so glad to finally reach the car. When I sat down I actually moaned in pleasure because it felt incredible being off my feet. 

Having said that, the views were awe-inspiring and totally made it worth it … but oh my God, the pain.

But also, oh my God, it was so pretty.