8-Sep: F’ your permit, Cathedral to Cloud’s Rest

Yosemite is overcrowded. This probably isn’t news to you, but when I first moved to California I kept trying to reserve permits for “The Best 21 Miles in the Park” (according to Backpacker magazine).  In my experienced opinion, don’t bother. Skip the red tape, the faxing of forms, skip trying to find solitude on the crowded “John Manure Trench” and day hike that shizzle. With either an early start, or some trail running, it’s quite doable in a day if you have a moderate level of fitness.

Upper Cathedral Lake is surrounded by fragile meadows, and the meadows are surrounded by signs telling you they’re fragile.

There’s many ways you can turn this trip into a dayhike. You could take the YARTS bus instead of a car shuttle. But I had already seen the Mist trail on a previous visit, so I decided to use the unofficial, but well maintained Medlicott Dome climber’s trail to make a nifty loop. Thus, we were able to link together Cathedral Lakes, Sunrise Lakes, Cloud’s Rest, and Tenaya Lake into a 23 mile, +4600 ft round trip. The JMT (like most pack trails) is very runnable, and it’d be good for a solo trip because you’re never alone. You can find a pdf of the route here.

The summit view from Clouds Rest exceeds the hype.

The loop is probably best counter-clockwise, since the climb up from Tenaya Lake is very rugged, and the views from Cloud’s Rest look best in the morning light. The whole thing took us about 10 hours (picnics included), and if you got an earlier start than our luxurious 9 AM you could probably skip the running.