Day 43, Thursday, July 28

Today I decided to take an easy hiking day. I went for a hike up the Tenaya canyon past Mirror Lake. I rode my mountain bike over to Mirror Lake and then hiked upriver from there. It was a splendid rock hopping river and the water was possibly the clearest water I’ve ever seen. At one point, the river flowed through a gravel field (see my pictures) and I figured I’d stop there for lunch around 2pm. As I was sitting out on a rock out in the river, kind of lost in the movement of the water, and happily munching on a couple of sandwiches I’d packed, a movement caught my attention out of the corner of my eye. A deer apparently had missed the fact that I was sitting there and was wading across the river no more than 10 feet from me. I was stuck with a dilemma. I wanted my camera to snap some pictures, but the camera was on the river bank and getting it would have required standing up and jumping across to the bank which would have scared the deer. So I sat there and just watched. …and about mid stream, the deer froze, looked over at me, then took a squat and pissed in the river. I almost laughed out loud! I saw a bear taking a poop in a field in Yellowstone and here I was watching a deer taking relief in a river in Yosemite! What’s next? Anyway, the deer went on its merry way and I also continued to head up river.
About an hour later, as I was heading back down the river on the opposite bank, I passed the same area of the river where I’d been sitting before and heard a rustling in the brush beside the trail. It was that same deer. What I didn’t know is that apparently ALL of the deer in Yosemite are completely indifferent to the presence of people. Check out my pictures. I was so close to the little deer that I could have just about reached out and touched it. I guess that violates the Yosemite rules of “don’t approach wild life at the risk of a $5000 maximum fine.” But what if the wildlife approaches you (as this deer did) on the path you that have to walk down to get back to your trail head?
Didn’t do much else today, just relaxed and talked in the late afternoon with a guy, Peter, who’s moved into the campsite next to mine and the French family who has just pitched their tent next to Peter’s. Peter is from San Jose and I found him to be exceptionally interesting to talk with because of his background, working with schizophrenic patients as a physician’s assistant, and his viewpoints. He told me that he was planning on hiking up Half Dome tomorrow and wanted to know if I was interested in joining him. Not knowing anything about the hike other than the length (17 miles total out and back) I quickly agreed that it sounded like fun and of course I’d give it a go. Later, another guy set up camp in Peter’s campsite (every camp site has 4 or 5 tents sharing two common picnic tables, a fire pit, and a row of bear boxes) and started boasting about how he was going to CONQUER Half Dome tomorrow morning. He was a big muscle bound guy with clichéd tribal tattoos around one of his calves. He looked like a fitness guru / health club body builder and the way he talked made Half Dome sound like more of a challenge than I’d wanted to get myself into. The only things he didn’t do were pound his chest and make Tarzan noises. He talked big on how you had to prepare for a challenging trek like this, how tough the trail was because it was 4800 vertical feet of altitude gain, how you had to pack appropriately, how you had to be in top condition, and how he was going to hit the trailhead by 5:30am in the morning to beat the crowds as he conquered the mountain. His talk was enough to give me second thoughts on my commitment but not enough to make me back out without giving it a try. Peter and I later agreed that we’d shoot for getting to the trail head by 6:00am and that we’d combine efforts in the morning to crank out a good breakfast before taking to the trail.