Miles: 13 JMT

Total Trail Miles: 943.7

Ascent/Descent: 686/5935 ft 

Start Time: 4:00

End Time: 11:18

Temperature: 12°C (54°F)

We started hiking at 4 so we could arrive into Yosemite Valley a bit earlier. The first 3 miles were snow, lots of icy sun cups and then a fairly steep descent, but then we hit dry trail and it felt good! Within minutes we spotted a bear, it watched us for a few minutes so we got some photos before it scarpered off. The boys went off ahead as it was dry trail so me and shortcut hiked down together. It was long and a lot of downs but Yosemite was beautiful. We hiked passed Half Dome and Liberty Cap. And went over Nevada Falls where we saw a double rainbow. The JMT passed here was closed so we took the Misty Trail down to the valley when takes you right past Vernal Falls and you get pretty wet from all the spray. We enjoyed the views and tried to take it all in but also were mindful of the time as we didn't want to keep the guys waiting. The number of people was pretty overwhelming, after seeing only one other person in the last stretch to be surrounded by so many tourists was mad and a bit stressful. The guys has made their way to 'curry village' and are of the valley with pizza and beer so we meet them there and got pizza and a coffee right away, it was super expensive but we knew the valley would be. We then headed to the post office to pick up our resupply box and the Ranger Station to sort out our permit, Annie the ranger was really lovely and gave us a permit to hike back up the JMT even though there was no permits left technically, but she understood that we needed to resupply here and there wasn't another option with the Tioga road being closed. We sorted out our food and charged our powerbanks before getting a burger for dinner (actually not a bad price) and then walking to the backpacker's campground to camp. It was late (6 I sh) by this point and everyone was a bit tired and grumpy, we decided we would hike solo tomorrow up until where the snow started and arranged to meet there by 1.