Yosemite - Day 1

After returning from the dentist office with the girls, we quickly packed and had dinner, then got a quick shower and a few hours of sleep before rousing everyone to pile into the car to head out to Yosemite. The girls will by ditching school for the next couple of days but they were supposed to have talked to all their teachers to get their assignments done before leaving and making up any additional work as soon as they returned. The service hours will also more than fulfill the service hours that Emily is required to put in for the year in order to graduate.

Christian drove most of the way, as usual. I gave him a small break to catch a nap before the last leg of our journey. We got into the valley early in the morning to check in with our camp host and set up camp. We requested to stay in Yellow Pines this time. We try to request different camp sites every time we come, just to see what it is like at each place. This one is the campground reserved for volunteers.

Once settled, we had a quick breakfast and made the hike into the center of the valley to check in for our Facelift duties. Upon signing up, we received new Yosemite Facelift Kleen Kanteens and free park passes in honor of National Public Lands Day for our service.

For our first day, we were sent towards Mirror Lake and along the trails and creek leading to it.  We put in 7 hours each on our first day and hauled back 30 pounds of trash! That was our record high. We found a lot of shoes people lost in the creek. Of course, there was the usual water bottles and endless micro trash but Christian even hauled in part of a tire. We  ended up catching a shuttle back from near the Ahwahnee Hotel because Caitlyn got blisters from all our walking and the trash was getting unbearably heavy.

Our camp is a ways off, so we had humped our dinner along with our lunch around all day so that we would not have to go back and forth. After weighing in our trash, we decided to get the girls a commemorative Facelift t-shirt as a kind of reward for not having cavities. Unfortunately, the new t-shirts were kind of big with deep v-necks that were totally inappropriate for the kids. Emily decided on last year's t-shirt. Even that did not quite fit Caitlyn, so she was considering some vintage ones. She was considering between 3 of them but was not overly enthusiastic about any one, so the guy sweetened the deal for her by letting her have two for the price of one! She then happily chose two of the three in question and felt much better about not being able to get one of the newer ones she liked better. 

We then finally settled in on some park benches in Yosemite Village to get some much needed rest. While we were resting, there was another big rock fall in the same area as the day before. This time much bigger. The dust from the filled the air above us like a fog rolling in. We did not know what happened exactly until people started talking about it.

Photos by Tom Evans

There were a lot of rumors of what happened, but in the end, there were no fatalities this time. The previous day, a climber and his wife were scouting around the base when the rock broke off from El Capitan. He shielded his wife and died. She was air lifted to a hospital for treatment. There were still a couple of groups on the wall above where the rock fall occurred, but no one below. There was a group of volunteers who had just passed the area moments before.

This time, the rock fall was 3 times bigger but most people were giving the area a wide birth. But because the rock fall was so big, a good sized rock flew out onto the road and fell through a tourists' sunroof as they were driving out of the valley. The driver was hit in the head and taken in for treatment. No one else was seriously hurt that we were aware of.

After all the trash for the day had been weighed and tallied, they cleaned up and brought out all the gear donated by sponsors for the day's raffle. The kids won more t-shirts! Caitlyn got a DMM t-shirt while Emily got a Patagonia one. Neither Christian, nor I, won anything from the raffle this time.

We had some dinner and tried to go to the evening program to hear some of the presentations from climbers whom they had assembled for the day but the line was so long and they place was already filled to the rim. We decided to cut our losses and head back to camp. Christian ended up carrying Caitlyn back on his shoulders because her blisters were causing her a lot of pain.