Here’s a really nice article from the Travel section of the New York Daily News on the authors trip to the Yosemite back-country and Ansel Adams Wilderness.
NY Daily News: “In honor of Muir, I’m also looking for the universe in a forest wilderness. The centerpiece of my visit to Yosemite this year is a three-day backpacking trip in the southeastern section of the park and the adjacent Ansel Adams Wilderness Area.
I’ve got an ambitious plan: A 35-mile loop starting on the John Muir Trail, which runs for more than 200 miles through the mountains of the Sierra Nevada range.
Two days before my backpacking begins, I stay at Evergreen Lodge, a vibrant cabin complex in the forest near Hetch Hetchy Reservoir that’s a great base camp for families and couples alike.
The next day, I take off into the park, spending much of the afternoon in splendid (albeit bustling) Yosemite Valley. Later in the day, I check into my canvas tent cabin at the Tuolumne Meadows Lodge.
By 8:30 a.m. the next morning, I am hiking up Lyell Canyon, a long, green finger cut by the Lyell Fork of the Tuolumne River that leads the way to the 11,056-foot Donohue Pass.
It gets cooler as the trail starts to climb Donohue Pass, and on the final steps up and over the pass, the views crystallize into an ornate fantasy of granite, snow, meadow and water.
Leaving Yosemite for the Ansel Adams Wilderness Area, I descend into the valley below, stopping at a campsite near a babbling brook and under a spectacular collection of peaks. The sky is perfectly blue, the sunlight perfectly golden.
Tucked in my sleeping bag later that night, I read myself to sleep. But the night is cold and windy, and my rest fitful.
As I eat breakfast the next morning, a steady stream of hikers heads in the opposite direction on the trail. It’s time to get going. Soon I’m on the shores of Waugh Lake, a mirror of water reflecting the snow-crowned peaks above, a picture that is perfect in every way.”