cairns

Year of Yosemite (YOY) – Day 167 (Lembert Dome Trail – 1/8)

Jeff

NOTE – This is the first photograph in a series of eight that will be presented over the following days to give readers a sense of what it was like to hike the Lembert Dome Trail. Previous Year of Yosemite photographs and descriptions were mostly individual presentations without providing a narrative to portray the essence of the hike.

The start of the trail opens after the woods

Exiting the initial wooded area, there is a rock shelf with numerous cairns

Before arriving at this massive rock shelf, we hiked from the parking area and through a grove of trees, i.e. woods. The trees soon gave way to a clearing and we were presented with many cairns. Some were simple while others were more elaborate.

Hikers debate whether cairns are reliable and/or helpful because there are some who might mislead future hikers intentionally or because of ignorance. There were so many cairns in this area and they were all leading in the same direction and therefore hikers could “hedge their bets.”

In any event, the path was rather obvious and we had a trail map that we consulted to make sure. Except for the Valley Loop Trail, I would say that most trails were rather easy to find and follow. When considering the size of Yosemite, I should also add that they were probably marked as well as they could be.

NOTE – Whenever I hike, I take three cameras. One of them is a simple point-and-shoot which only captures JPEG images. If this sounds foreign to you, then you can skip this paragraph. There will be several pictures which were taken with my Canon PowerShot AS590 and are intended to be “pictures of record” and not picturesque portrayals or renderings. This photo is one of them.

 
Do you have a question about our visit to Yosemite? Ask it in the comment section.

 

JBRish.com originally published this post
*All photographs Copyright by Jeffrey B. Ross with all rights reserved.

 
See previous Year of Yosemite (YOY) posts HERE. If you want to read the introduction to the YOY series, CLICK HERE.

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Meta Data – Day 167 YOY – Year of Yosemite

File Name: 3529.NEF
Capture time: 10:55:43 AM
Capture date: June 7, 2016
Exposure: 1/1000 sec @ f/4.5
Focal Length: 5.8mm
ISO 80
Canon PowerShot A590 IS

 

Year of Yosemite (YOY) – Day 65 (Cairns at Lembert Dome)

Jeff

Cairns at Lembert Dome Trail 

A rather usual cairn leading to the Lembert Dome Trail

For those who may not know, cairns are small piles or groupings of rocks intended to lead hikers to the correct trail. There are varying thoughts on their usefulness. The simple cairn above was located at the start of the Lembert Dome Trail. Cairns are often placed in a line showing the direction of the trail.

Pranksters have been known to deliberately place cairns so they lead in an errant direction. Foraging for rocks to add to a pile disrupts the surrounding area and is often frowned upon by those who oversee a park or hiking venue.

There have been a couple of times when I was glad to see a cairn because it verified that I was on the “right track” or prevented me from wandering in the wrong direction.

It is an interesting topic for discussion and I suppose there is fodder for both sides. As I will show in a later post, some cairns are more elaborate than others.

You can read some interesting points about hiking cairns HERE – Cairns 101

 
Do you have a question about our visit to Yosemite? Ask it in the comment section.

 

JBRish.com originally published this post
*All photographs Copyright by Jeffrey B. Ross with all rights reserved.

 
See previous Year of Yosemite (YOY) posts HERE. If you want to read the introduction to the YOY series, CLICK HERE.

***********************************

Meta Data – Day 65 YOY – Year of Yosemite

File Name: 3530.JPG
Capture time: 10:57:03 AM
Capture date: June 7, 2016
Exposure: 1/1000 sec @ f/4.5
Focal Length: 6mm
ISO 80
Canon PowerShot A590 IS