On the first bridge in Yosemite Valley

Slowly gaining elevation over the Valley

It began completely innocently: with my envious sigh over beautiful pictures from Vendula's trip to Evolution Basin. Vendula and Pavel are in great shape and in three days covered forty five miles in an alpine terrain, carrying all their stuff on their backs. I began to feel that there are places which I may never get to see, despite having them "in the neighborhood". Vendula said that there's nothing to it and we could easily do an all-girl outing, no kids and no husbands, and hike over a piece of Sierra before snow falls.

Given the fact that in last six years we have been going on trips with children at their pace from a pebble to the brook, I was worried that I may not be fit for a serious ascent, but some offers can simply not be refused. When Bara enthusiastically joined our planning, it all began to look quite realistic -- meanwhile we settled on a date -- first of October. During a Saturday party at the end of September, when both Kovars and Vanas accidentally met in our place, the plan started taking real shape. Said husbands made faces a bit and my Hippo commented on witches on full moon (as this was to actually coincide with the chosen Sunday) and on the importance of warm underwear for midnight frolicking, but it seemed that cooperation of significant others (e.g. for baby-sitting) was ensured.

View to Yosemite Valley from Glacier Point trail

I'd like to mention that the party was indeed merry, we even sang various Czech songs, from folksy to socialist agitprop (it would seem that our neighbors are very sturdy -- no one complained). Tommy kept driving empty beer bottles away in his toy truck, and urged our guests to drink faster. He also scored a point while conversing with Martin, who wore a T-shirt with a sailboat picture and asked Tom, whether he knew what kind it is and whether he could describe it. Tom answered dryly that he did not know how to scribe yet.

On our way to Glacier Point, beautiful vistas of Yosemite Valley open up.

The kids went to bed early, and were awfully perky on Sunday; we took them biking in the park. Tommy likes to ride now, speeding with Sid ahead or through some detour, and Lisa with me rattle along behind. We've discovered that if I jog behind Lisa, she tends to wait up for me and engage in conversations; if I, too, ride my bike, she pedals. We had Sid's old bike fixed by Martin's son Simon, who works in a bike shop. I must say that after all these years I quite fell out of being used to ride a bike, but it's just another thing we all can do as a family together.

As usually, a situation ensued with the arriving hour of our planned departure: weather forecast got rapidly worse. On Friday morning they foretell night temperatures for Tuolumne at 15°F (-9°C), with strong winds and snowing. Yosemite Valley, which is about a kilometer lower, did not look so bad, and Vendula came up with an alternative plan, which counted on overnighting in one of the many campgrounds in the Valley, and two one-day hikes. Eva joined our group, and thus we were four.

I was a bit worried whether we all fit with our stuff into our Subaru, and I kept harassing the girls ahead of time to limit their packs to minimum. Eva was forbidden to bring a crate of bottled water, for we planned to stay in civilization and water could be refilled from a tap etc. Hippo came home on Friday evening, helped me clean out his car, and off I went for Vendula and Bara. The cargo area has quickly gotten full, but when we added Eva in Fremont, I could still see through the rear window in my mirror. We are simply amazing, aren't we?

On our overnighting meadow (Vendula calls it a meadow, the rest of the expedition has agreed it was actually a CLEARING), the three girls fit in one tent and I crawled into the wagon. Given my bitter experience with my snoring Hippo and my own sleeplessness, it was probably a good solution. Nobody would fuss with a sleeping bag, breathe into my ear or emit any alarming sounds -- and I could also nicely spread across the whole cargo space; I slept royally.

Half Dome from Glacier Point

On the top

In the morning we made a relatively lame attempt to obtain a site in a campground directly in Yosemite Park. When at eight a.m. we encountered some eighty people in a line at Camp 4, all hoping for "somebody leaving today", we gave up the whole affair and resigning ourselves to sleeping again on the same meadow. The girls were feeling deprived of a campfire, but I admit I would rather avoid fire and stay outside an official campground, where you always face revelers hollering till three a.m. and/or early birds getting up at five a.m. (and hollering).

After a generous helping of confused driving in the Valley (one way roads in Yosemite Valley are sure to drive you mad) we parked and packed for the ascent. Besides spare clothes and food, I packed along my sandals; I was wearing my brand new trekking shoes and the question remained, would I last in them the whole day? My quality sandals have been keeping me going for years and I wore them on all those trips with kids.

First we had to cross a bit of Yosemite Valley, which was fun. Then we entered the Four Mile Trail to Glacier Point. It's a lie: it really measures 4.7 miles (7.5 km); but it overcomes altitude difference of three thousand two hundred feet (975 meters). Bára and Vendula set the pace. Eva and I get our steam engines going (I don't know about Eva, but I was huffing and puffing so much, steam had to be coming out of my ears) and tried to keep up. For the first half of our ascent to Glacier I could pretend to be waiting for Eva, while really I was resting, but then Eva gave up and returned down to check on the possibility of some space freeing up in a campground, depriving me of a good excuse and making me jog after the rest of the girls.

Half-empty Nevada Falls

By breakfast it still did not look like Yosemite getting into a snow calamity.

There's obviously the road that goes up to Glacier Point, and an incredible volume of people reach this amazing view point that way. We let the bystanders snap a picture of us, assured each other of not wanting to take the same route back, instead wanting to go "around" on Panorama Trail (8.5 miles = 13.5 km). We made a lunch break on a vista to Nevada and Vernal Falls (which we were to reach later), and then we proceeded at a quick pace down. The time has advanced and we had a good reason to hurry, so that we would not need to use our head lamps, which we had packed along.

Beginning with Nevada Falls, the crowd thickened dramatically -- suddenly we had to wade through aetherical (and less so) nymphs, who were stumbling on this rocky path so that they were indeed evoking the thought that there never before lived outside the high gloss floors of shopping malls. Their usual consorts made a typical manly appearance, yet stumbled with approximately same insecurity. Vendula thus rejected the thought of Misty Trail and we switched away to Vernal Falls. It saved us from much of the crowd, but the thicker was their concentration on the stairs downstream of Vernal. I could not wait for the irregular large rock steps to end, but you must be careful what you wish for. I would really like to know which MORON had the idea to pave the rest of the trail with asphalt. You can always find some foothold on a dirt road or among rocks, but a steeply tilted pavement lets you either run (in my case unrealistic due to fatigue) or shuffle downwards like with full diapers. I suspect this very stretch for being responsible for giant blisters on both of my little toes, as I kept hitting the edge of each shoe.

I should not just whine -- this hike is really worth it, the views are awesome, and you can see the greatest hits of the whole Yosemite Valley. I would go it again, at least for the waterfalls -- now at the end of dry season the were almost empty; it must be something to see them at full force.

Snow was already falling on the road to Yosemite...

...and it kept falling in the sequoias.

Our advance scout - Eva - has not obtained us a spot in a campground, and we voted to compromise for sausage boiled in a pot and for sitting around our stove on our clearing. I would like to use this opportunity to thank Vendula who cooked tirelessly -- first pasta with tuna, then sausages, teas, coffee and eventually mulled wine. She only made a mistake to mention that it could be a good idea to keep all the food locked in the car in case a bear would visit, and this put Eva on needles. The stove rumbled in a deep voice and Eva banged on the pot and later on empty wine bottle to scare off the bears. I frightened her probably the most -- while peeing in the bushes, I put out my head lamp, as I don't need to illuminate my own behind in the midst of the wilderness -- and Eva took me for one particularly large bear and horribly screamed.

We arranged our sleeping system in the same fashion like the previous night. I woke up at sunrise (years of Lisa's training), but since all was quiet, I fell asleep again. I was startled sometime later when spotting, while still in my sleeping bag, the girls quietly tip-toeing a little away -- they did not want to wake me -- was it not nice of them?

We break our fast thoroughly and planned our hike up North Dome. I was a bit skeptical whether I would make eight miles -- blisters in daylight looked larger than the night before. I mentally prepared for a march in my sandals, packed my sack, and we headed to Yosemite. It drizzled, but only for a while. Then the rain changed into snow and a large line of cars blocked the entrance to the park -- for the exit. A ranger told us right away that Tioga Road which goes through the pass of the same name, across the Sierra to Mono Lake, was closed. It was clear we would not go to North Dome - it snowed down here; it had to be real fun at two and half thousand feet higher Tioga. Eva wanted to see sequoias, and our plans shrunk to a two mile walk in Tuolomne Grove. We completely blocked the whole establishment of ladies' bathrooms there for a few minutes, putting on layers of underwear, and strolling out into the blizzard.

Hippo and granny took care of our kids during my outing.

Girls built snowmen and threw snowballs for fun -- I had a feeling my legs would fall off; fatigue from previous day moved in. I was especially challenged by any downhill walk, not mentioning the blisters. I was rather glad in the end that we were prevented from going on a serious hike. Early afternoon we headed back home; before dropping off Eva, we had a closing dinner in a Chinese restaurant. Four smelly, stumbling women in the midst of Sunday-clad families must have been a sight to see; we even got one extra free meal from the staff. Most likely a pittance.
All we had to do was drop every person and gear at their respective destinations; I got back home to kiss my kids good night.

Perhaps the last picture of great-grandmother I have.

I would like to thank the girls for a wonderful trip, it's great to have such friends. And a husband, who makes fun of a ladies' full moon trip, but will take care of the children.

Alas, on the same night I learned from an e-mail by my aunt Majka that my grandmother died that morning. She was eighty seven years old and in a very poor health for the last few week, and thus it was no real surprise. Still I doubt that one can even get truly ready for the departure of people who are close, or to forget them. And so I recall my oldest memories -- how my grandma picked me up from pre-school on Tuesdays, and my early leaving of this hated institution was extra sweetened by a tube of condensed chocolate milk. A vacation on Lipno Lake, and countless weekends, when we rummaged with my cousin though old cabinets, picking up clothes and granny's make-up, changing into princesses, sliding on our bottoms down the old wooden staircase in her hall, and were permitted to watch late night TV, and eat crumbly crackers in bed...

In the first hours and days, there was not much time for remembering. We had to rearrange a great deal of things; change flight ticket for our granny, enabling her early return to Prague. Tom cried over this change, saying he would miss her a lot. Lisa most likely still misses most of time relevance, as she asked me just the other day on our way from school, whether granny is going to wait for us at home again. Our kids have been studying the matters of family ties and how it can be that someone's (their granny's) mom dies. Lisa asked if granny Páralová died, so I told her no, since daddy talked to her on the phone the same morning. Lisa thus concluded that the dead cannot talk, and granny Páralová has not died, for she speaks. At least my kids cheered me up in this sad moment through their wondering.