Jun 25, 2025
This was mid summer, 2025. My younger daughter, Pahi, was staying with me for most of the month of June. She could not join her Mom and sister during early summer, who were spending their break in Seattle, due to her Lacrosse schedule. Summer Lacrosse is busy time for Pahi as she travels few times during the months of Jun and July to play tournaments all across West Coast.
I travel with her to all these tournaments, which typically are played during the weekend days. So, it works out for me. However, it also means a lot of driving. I love driving and so that never is an issue. Both of my kids were used to long distance driving from a very early age as we used to take multiple road trips every year. We’d be logging thousands of miles during each such trip. We’d be visiting National Parks, camping and hiking. Our vacations were mostly outdoors, spending time in woods, mountains and by the ocean.
During the third week of June, she had a break for one weekend when there were no games scheduled. So, we thought we would go for a outdoor activity. Of late, I had been doing a great deal of backpacking all over the world. With Kids and the family, I only did one backpacking way back in the past, in Channel Islands, CA when the kids were in their elementary schools. So, I thought a backpacking in Yosemite National Park would be great. Yosemite is approx. 3 hours of driving away from where we live. So, that was convenient. However, the problem was that backpacking in Yosemite gets booked months in advance. Only a small percentage of entries are kept for a 7-day advance online booking. And to get one such reservation is pure luck. For the last couple of weeks, I was trying and to my good luck, I could reserve a backpacking trip in Yosemite for the Cathedral Lake route. This is one of the most sought after short backpacking route in the park, because of relatively convenient access and the out-of-the-world scenic beauty of Cathedral Peaks and Lakes. So, we were all set for 2 nights and 3 days backpacking trip to Yosemite between Jun 22 and Jun 25.
Hiking the Mist Trail:
On Jun 22, we left home very early in the morning and reached Yosemite Valley at around 9AM. We planned to spend our time in the valley till noon before heading to Tuolumne Meadows where the backpacking trail head is located. Yosemite Valley was crowded and it took us almost 45 minutes to find a parking near Curry Village. After parking, we decided to hike the Mist Trail to top of Vernal Fall. We left everything in the car, carried one water bottle each and started hiking the Mist Trail. The trail was crowded but the sight of 370′ tall Vernal fall, with intense and roaring water volume was beautiful. We got soaked by the spray from the fall while hiking alongside. We spend few minutes, enjoying the fall and taking pictures before returning back. After we got back to our car, we quickly picked a sandwich and some fries from the visitor center restaurant and headed towards our final destination for the day at around 1pm.
Upper Cathedral Lake Campground:
From the Yosemite Valley to Cathedral Lake trailhead parking lot, it took us about hour and half of driving. Since days were longer, we were not that worried about getting late to the campground. From the trail head parking lot to Upper Cathedral Lake campground, it is 4.5 miles with an elevation gain of approx. 1600′. Our estimate was about 2 and 1/2 hours of hiking. Pahi’s back pack weighed ~18lbs and mine ~25lbs. We locked our car and started hiking at around 3pm.
After hiking 3.5 miles we reached Lower Cathedral lake. The Lower Lake itself is slightly off the trail. We took that detour and went to the lower lake. Lower Cathedral Lake is one of the gems of the park, the views of the surrounding peaks are second to none. We still had 1 more mile to go for the Upper lake. We spent few minutes by the Lower Lake. At around 5:30pm we reached the Upper Cathedral lake. To our surprise there was only another camper. Perhaps, it was because of Friday.
We set up our camp, and laid down our mattress pads and sleeping bags. It was almost sun set. We spent few minutes sitting by the lake and enjoyed the beautiful view. The lake is at 9600′ elevation and so, it was getting cold. We came back, prepared and ate our backpacking food and were ready to sleep. We both were tired after a long day and quickly fell a sleep.
High Sierra Camp and Sunrise Lakes:
Pahi is a dare devil type and she always wants challenges when it comes to exploring. Climbing Half Dome would have been ideal but we were one night short for that. So, we decided to hike Cloud Rest instead which is equally tough hike. Woke up early at around 7am. Both of us slept well. Pahi prepared the breakfast. I quickly packed the tent. After breakfast we were ready to start our second day adventure at around 9am.
We decided to hike 5 miles first to High Sierra Campground and pitch our tent there for the second night. We reached HSC at around midday, we set up the tent, refilled our water bottle from near by stream, ate some snacks and then started our hiking for Cloud Rest. It is 15 miles round trip to Cloud Rest from HSC via Sunrise Lakes. We had about 7 hours of sunlight to cover the distance. We were confident.
After hiking about mile and a half, we came across first of the three Sunrise Lakes. These are spectacular high alpine lakes. After Crossing these lakes we came across the junction where the trail from Tenaya Lake comes. We met few day hikers coming from that side.
Cloud Rest:
Tenaya Lake to Cloud Rest is a very popular day hike. After that junction the trail dropped suddenly where we’d find lush, wet, flower-filled meadows, then climb back up to drier, more barren aspects of the ridge with some cool looks at Sunrise Mountain. We did this a couple of times including passing a few small ponds, before the trail meandered through a parked out forest which was almost all trees with no shrubbery, and sandy soil. It then took a hard right and we started climbing in earnest again as we gained the ridge and were officially on Clouds Rest.
A sneak peak off trail revealed a preview of the epic views to come. Staying on the trail and a short climb later busted us out onto the naked ridge. The ridge is layered in these smooth-edged, pancake-like layers and we used these sweet steps to work our way up to the summit! You can walk a bit of trail to the east side, but the straight up way is the way to go, giving you sprawling views on both sides. Of course, it all comes together at the top with a 360 degree panorama with Half Dome immediately to the south, Tenaya Creek far below to the west and the Merced River drainage to the southeast. All around is a sea of granite, forested ridges and the jagged distant summits of the Tuolumne area to the north/northeast. A beautiful sight and worth every step of the 15miles hike. There were only a handful of people at the summit.
Back to HSC:
After a bite to eat, we headed back down the ridge. Now our focus was to reach the HSC as soon as possible. It was all downhill and we reached our camp ground well before sunset. Today was again a very long day. We hiked for about 20 miles. Pahi did great. It was colder than yesterday, we felt. We ate and quickly fell a sleep, just like last night. However, in the middle of the night Pahi started having a bad headache. Just like me, she also has migraine, although not as severe as me. Unfortunately, we did not carry any medicine. She toughed it out. It was hard; she cried as it was unbearable. I felt so bad. But then she fell a sleep soon and rest of the night was peaceful.
Back home:
We woke up at around 7am. It was pretty cold night. We saw frost on top of our tent. Pahi was feeling much better and she had no head ache. I was relieved. Today we were going to take it easy. Ate breakfast, packed everything and started slowly hiking back to parking lot. We were about 10 miles away. We reached our car at around 3pm. Before heading home, we went to the nearby store on HWY 120. I ate a sandwich, Pahi had some snacks and a Ice cream.
Then we left for home and reached at around 8pm. It was a nice break for both of us and we enjoyed it a lot.
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