High Country Hike

Thanks to our last evening's waiter, Thomas, we have our hike planned for today.  We wanted to explore a bit of the high country and knew time was limited since this is the first road to close following any snow accumulation and weather forecasts were predicting up to a foot within the next day. So to the high country we drove, destination Cathedral Lakes, stopping briefly at Olmstead Overlook and Tenya Lake for a few photo opportunities.   

Tenya Lake

Our instructions were to bypass the crowded trail head of Cathedral Lakes and find the Climber's trail.  We were to look for a small pull off shaped like a boot before the trail head.  If you have reached the Tuolumne meadows you have gone too far.  Well we of course drove past the meadows, the Tuolumne lodge and then Lembert Dome, and yes we had not found the boot shaped pull off at this point.  Steve was of course not deterred and determined to find this secret trail and turned the car around and continued the hunt.  I on the other hand was ready to hike the well-marked, people inhabited, Cathedral Lakes trail.  But alas, Steve pulled into this small pull off, I think to turn around but he will claim he knew exactly where he was going.   Our hike begins....
(Note: To be more specific if you are looking for this trail head it's on the south side of the road. 3.4 miles west of the Tuolumne Store and 4.2 miles east of Tenya Lake.)

 In front of us about 10 ft. into the woods was a small wood pole with a climbing carabineer symbol on it and the start of the climbers trail. We started uphill on a single track trail to the base and wall of the Fairview Dome.  A Granite peak that is over approximately 10,000 ft... .  Once reaching the wall we took the path to the right , the Lucky Streak Trail, hiked along the edge until we came out of the woods and into a clearing that had the most spectacular views, we figured at this point we were probably about 9,000 ft.. We continued hiking around the granite dome gaining elevation, marking our trail just in case we needed to find our way back, and taking in the breathtaking views. 

The dome was so steep and we were hiking at an angle the entire time.  We were glad we had our hiking poles and good boots and thankful that it was a dry sunny 55 degree day. We reached the summit in about 2 hours which included a lunch break along the way and stopping time to observe a forest fire in the distance.  We needed to check out wind conditions and how close the fire was before we continued on.  We were pretty far away and so high up we decided that continuing on would not be a problem.  We were so glad we did, the views from the summit were amazing!  We could see the entire valley, the Toulumne meadow, Lembert dome,

 
Cathedral Range, and so many mountain ranges from where we were.  We never did cross paths with the Cathedral Lakes trail or even another hiker the entire day.  We were on top of the world, thankful for the suggestion, and even more thankful that our bodies cooperated and allowed us to experience such wonders.

We drove back to our lodge via a stop back through the Valley.We still hadn't checked out the historic
 
Ahwahnee hotel and it was on my must see list while we were in the park. So glad we did, a little out of the Samet budget for overnight accomodations, standard room will run you around $400.00 a night.  However, we found a nice table at the bar on the hotel terrace with a spectacular views and  ice cold beer.  We sat there and talked about our experiences over the last four days, how lucky we were to still be able to explore the way we do, and lastly how nice it is to share it with your special someone.

Until next time!