Day 6, we were down along the Merced River and bumping into ever more people, quickly coming to places that were downright crowded, but the beautiful landscape does give a reason. (Details in the blog post: https://valhikes.blogspot.com/2025/08/buena-yosemite-merced-lake-and-little.html)
#California #YosemiteNationalPark #YosemiteWilderness #MariposaCounty
#backpacking #hiking #nature #landscape #travel #hike #outside #granite
Little Yosemite Valley.
An even wider flat bottomed valley than the last. This is also full of yellow-green short growth along the bottom with a few burned tree trunks and a few trees with green on the upper half near one edge. The edge is marked by the rise of fairly bare granite slopes, often steeply, to a series of rounded tops.
Cascade Fall, or just some "fall" that is actually a cascade on the way to Lost Valley just above Little Yosemite Valley.
The Merced River, not in very high flow, sheets down a slab of granite before making a sharp left turn into a wide valley. The bottom of the valley is green with undergrowth, but also full of the standing burned trunks of former pine trees. The sides slope upward quickly in generally bare granite with stripes of green.
Tall photo of a granite glacial valley further carved down by the Merced River. Granite makes long slopes to the water below, on to the distance where some pointed mountains rise up.
Merced Lake in the morning light.
Lots of water with quiet air so quite reflective. Some shrubby brush on the shore and a limb above frame the bottom and top. Shrubby trees frame the left and a dome of granite with an intruding pine branch frame the right. Green pines stand thick on the far side of the water with more mountains behind them looking slightly smoky. The reflection is of the granite dome and trees.