Our hiking group has long longed for a trip to Yosemite to see the Firefalls. For those of you not familiar with this, the Horsetail falls in Yosemite gets frozen and when the setting sun falls on this ice and mist, for a few minutes, the falls glows like lava and is called the Firefalls. It happens over a 15-20 day window in February when most of the other park trails are closed because of ice. It is also a luck of the draw as it has to have rained the previous day and there should be no clouds in the path of the sun on the actual day.
Many of our friends have made multiple attempts and are yet to see the firefalls.. we took our chances this year and were not disappointed.. we spent a day hiking partly up to Vernal falls till the ice made it too risky for us. Had a nice packed lunch.. then rushed to watch the display that nature put on for us! THis photo is from an iPhone 11 with some editing..
Here are five shots taken with the SLR as the sun went down.. the first one is what the frozen falls looks like before the magic begins..
These pictures don't do justice to what our eyes saw.. every pocket of ice reflects the sun like a diamond and the whole thing shimmers as the sun moves.. something that has to be seen live to experience!
There is also an iPhone photo for comparison that was taking toward the end. The iPhone automatically edits the photo.. for all I know, Apple knowing my location, is running some AI to make the falls look better..
and a selfie of a beaming me capturing this..
We took a lot of "Firefies"...
Will do a separate posts on our hike to Vernal falls with pictures!
This whole event lasts 4 to 12 mintues depending on when you go, if you get lucky! For us it was closer to 12 minutes and we got an amazing light show! The previous day was only 4 minute window, per the ranger we spoke to.
Advice to folks who are not pro photographers trying to get a shot.. go an hour early with some blankets and set up! It is a mile and a half walk on icy slippery roads. So expect that to take some time. By the time we got there 30 mintues before, there was no room to put a tripod. So I went behind the crowds into the bushy area and got cut up by thorns in my legs. Could have avoided that if we had been early.
Also we were lucky that our dinner was in the car. So while a few thousand people all rushed to the parking lots and tried to drive out and gridlocked the whole place, we calmly ate our dinner and then drove out. From 5AM to 11PM, it was a day trip. It was tiring but exhilarating!
We finally made it to Alamere falls. It has been on our wish list for a long time and we were planning to do this with the full group sometime in spring.. A last minute pre birthday request from wife to give this a shot, made me say yes!
This was the longest hike for me in post Covid times. I am told that I have now graduated to try Black mountain and Falls rest. We will see about that.. have managed to pull the muscle on the left leg and have been limping around since yesterday. Hopefully the hot room will heal this quickly!
Started at 6AM sharp from Cupertino and drove almost 2 hours to the Palomarin trailhead which is past the Point Reyes bird observatory. Got to see the sunrise just as we were crossing SFO into Marin on the golden gate bridge!
Drove past a lot of scenery and started hiking exactly at 8AM...
We hiked 12+ miles over 5+ hours with a 20 min eating break at the falls. There is a shortcut where you can climb down and climb back up to the falls, but it is not recommended by the park service. Lots of accidents in that section as the shale rocks break into little pieces on the cliff sides.
We decided to go through the coastal scenic route, bypass only the last 0.1 miles to avoid the Wildcat campground and walk along the beach the last mile to the falls. As fate would have it the tide was closing in on us even as we made it to the falls.
We hike past two lakes, Bass lake and Pelican lake. They were both really beautiful!
We crossed the creek like three times and the rushing water was good to hear.. last few hikes, we didn't see any water in the creeks!
You can see Point Reyes from the high point on the Coastal trail (if you take the shortcut you will miss this!)
The fog, the water spray from the falls, the overlapping cliff faces.. the approach to the falls on the beach side is simply breathtaking..
But, there is a catch.. We had to time it and run through stretches to avoid the waves as they came all the way to the cliff faces!
Have to try long exposure shots when we are a waterfall !!!
Could not get all three upper falls in one shot with long exposure.. too many people. With photoshop averaging, can try it.. but don't have the time. There is a definite chance we will revisit this while we are still able to climb up.. will give it a shot then!
Given we had wet feet and pants, there was no way to walk back along the beach and we decided to climb up to make it back to the trail. This made the 14 mile hike into a 12 mile hike which was also welcome! It was challenging to climb back up but we were glad. Got to see the three upper falls (which you can only if you do this climbing up business). You can see it in the video below..
Some more photos..
this was my attempt at an artistic shillouette..
Once back in the parking lot, we got to eat a packed lunch, have some hot tea and drove back for 2 1/2 hours as we got caught both in local traffic around Stinson beach and San Francisco city.
We expected to see more people given it was a long weekend. There was not much of a crowd. We practially had the beach to ourselves on the way to the falls and were met by 10 people, all of them had taken the shortcut climb down!
Strongly recommend this place! However, try to read tide timings and go along the beach to the falls and climb up to see the upper falls. It is worth it. That said, wear the right shoes and gloves if possible so you don't cut your hands while climbing up. Also it would be a good idea to switch to sandals for the walk along the beach!
Strongly recommend this for a day trip, on the right day with the right tide!
Jr. came back from college but was mostly confined to her room, with her summer coursework. She also switched to a Noon to 3AM schedule, why I don't know. which meant I did not get to spend much time with her.
The only good thing was that I decided to work with her on one of her courses and that gave us a chance to talk more. The little one has been having stomach issues for a month now and we are asked to wait for few more weeks before we get to see a specialist. There is ONE pediatric GI specialist in Kaiser Santa Clara and one in Oakland, if you believe the nurse and appointment center! There seem to be more oncologists than GI specialists which I find interesting! We did spend time together watching Loki. We are both Marvel fans and that helps!
San has just started walking again and that is something. So what I am trying to say in an elaborate way is that this summer was a wash! We wanted to have one day, ONE freaking day where the four of us could go to see some nature, have a good meal outside and just have fun like old times (but with masks on, which I call fun with a mask discount).
We got our chance last evening. The summer courses are over as of last week. There was a good weeks rest. Now there were less excuses. So the kids agreed to sit in the car and drive an hour to SFO for the evening. They got to pick the eating. We got to pick the nature place. Given San has been to lands end many times and I have never seen it, we decided to go and walk down to the ocean.
The hole in the rock out in the ocean does look like a heart from this angle!
It was cold and windy and the place smelled like a sewer and dead fish. God works in mysterious ways. He really does. San swears that in her previous visits, she only smelled the ocean breeze! What we smelled was something to forget but hard to. Every now and then the breeze would come in and cleanse your nose.
The kids kept rolling their eyes going "this is why we don't come out!". We did manage to get a few pictures given this was our one day out. It was beautiful to look at and thankfully photographs don't come with associated smells!
There is also a tunnel you can walk through. However, we took three steps into this thing and realized that it was a smell concentrator. Masks are not enough to walk through this thing. You need a respirator. So we took a selfie and kept moving. This blog is doing a public service. If you just look at the pictures and decide to walk into the tunnel, not good. Read the sentences between the pictures and you can thank me later.
Watching the kids sit there and talk made me think of my brother. We used to be thick as thieves but we rarely speak now. Hope they do better than us when they get to this age!
After spending an hour here, we decided to go to our dinner at Gracias Madre. It is my fourth or fifth time visiting this place and we were in and out in 40 minutes. We came, we ate, we left.
Ghirardelli's is only 15 minutes away and we wrapped up dinner with some dessert.
On the way the kids who usually don't ask for anything asked me to drive there through crooked street, for old times sake and I obliged..they know I don't like to drive there!
I always look forward to that big glass for the hot fudge Sundae and was disappointed to see it served in a plastic cup. The feel of the warm glass and the cold ice cream was lost with the plastic. It is also not easy to scrape off the hot fudge with a plastic spoon from a plastic cup. It is like serving perumal kovil sarkarai pongal in a Crème brûlée ramekin!
The ice cream did taste as good as it always does.The two different textures on my forehead was the subject of an interesting discussion...the shiny part defines the boundary of where hair "used to be" is a theory!
we walked around a bit and drove back!
A video clip..
It was the happiest we have been in a few months! We have to wait till the years end to do the next "family" outing and all plans are already being rejected by the kids.
Sometimes I think all this school and college stuff is taking out the fun for these kids! My sincere hope is that after finishing all this, they get to be more "outdoorsy" and the "travel bug" bites them hard!
I for one will remember this as the one bright evening for the last few months!
We visited "The Mystery Spot" in Santa Cruz for the 20+ th time with the BIL family on the way to Monterey beach.
Think I toppped the number of visits list on this group by a wide margin. I was not alone in visiting this place multiple times. There were other folks who were bringing family and friends for the 10th or 14th time.
Still this place never loses the wonder it brings.. you get to experience something different and weird for that 30 minutes. The high school and college kids who act as guides for this 30 minute tour try to one up their jokes and now they have a cafeteria outside as well! So the place is doing well.
we checked the level.. it is still almost the same after 20 years.. not much earth movement!
Here is BIL doing the MJ thing..
and if you are wondering what happens at the mystery spot... we start walking with a lean without realizing it. the video below says it all..
The outside has some decor added with a couple of cars completely covered in mystery spot stickers and bunch of US flags now and that adds a little color to the entry!
Something tells me we will be visiting this place again in a few years when more guests show up!
Wednesday, February 23, 2022 at 7:51PM ;)
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