As we made breakfast in a Curry Village parking lot, Alex walked to the front of the car to find there was a female mule deer happily enjoying her breakfast on the other side the roped off area. The deer was very content and cared little that Alex was moving around a few feet away from her. Soon, a male with a velvety rack wandered up the road and joined the female in the grassy area. His breakfast choice was leaves from a nearby tree.
After
Annette and Mark arrived, we grabbed coffees before heading over to the Swan
Slab area where Gretchen and Jax were planning to meet up with us.
We were very
excited that Mark wanted to try out rock climbing, and Annette took us by
surprise by trying it out as well, especially after she had previously said she
did not want to climb. It is exciting and fun to share climbing with people for the first time! Alex even
put on her “big girl panties” and lead her first two (short) climbs in The
Valley (Oak Tree Flake – 5.6 and Unnamed Crack – 5.7).
After wrapping up the morning of climbing, the six of us met at Manure Pile’s picnic area to eat lunch while watching climber’s on the rock face we had climbed the previous day. We enjoyed using Mark’s binoculars to get a closer look.
Annette suggested we head to a waterfall near the Wawona entrance that is supposed to be small, rarely visited, but very nice. Our car train made its way along the windy roads until we were at our parking area. We made the very short walk to the falls, finding an upper and lower pool area. We decided the lower pool looked nicer, so lost some layers of clothes and went for a dip in the refreshing water.
After returning to the cars, we all headed off to Annette and Mark’s hotel to enjoy the evening in the hot tub with cold drinks and massive amounts of Chinese food. Annette and Mark were nice enough to let all four of us dirty climbers shower before we headed to our camping area for the evening. Gretchen and Jax camped with us since there seven-day limit in Camp 4 had now expired.
