Scotch mist trail

Today I took the well-travelled (by the at least slightly fit) trail to Vernal Fall and the onwards and upwards to Nevada Fall via a series of seemingly endless stairs. I now have a new mental image of the Stairs of Cirith Ungol. The path is called the Mist Trail, but to be honest a more accurate description would be the extremely heavy drizzle trail. Admittedly the wet bit is only around the base and side of Vernal Fall, but I got completely soaked. Fortunately it was a sunny day, so I quickly dried out at the top.

I think I was there at a particularly good time - the sun was at the right angle to give a double rainbow in the spray from the fall.

But those steps leading to the top of Vernal Fall - were they designed for basketball players or something? Who else would have legs long enough not to struggle? I suppose the exercise will do me some good.

I then made my way on to Nevada Fall, which is well worth the (short but occasionally steep) trek. The final ascent is up a more-recently-maintained path with more human-sized steps. There’s a viewpoint on one side of the fall where you can safely look over the edge, but in other places there’s nothing between you and oblivion - I’m sure if one of our health & safety people visited the park, they’d have a fit and want to close it down.

One thing I managed to do for the first time (though I still found it hard) was looking over the edge straight down. I know that from now on when I fall in dreams it will be at Yosemite. There are worse places to be in dreams.

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