Trail Segment 6: Vogelsang to Tuolumne Meadows

The chill High Sierra sunrise finds us breaking camp for our last day's trek back to the van

 

Vogelsang to Tuolumne Meadows via Rafferty Creek Trail Description: (from the High Sierra Camp Website)
 

Starting Elevation: 10100 ft. (3078 m)
Ending Elevation:  8775 ft. (2675 m)
230' gain and 1770' loss
Approximate Mileage: 6.8 (11 km)

The shortest trail to Tuolumne Meadows from Vogelsang follows Rafferty Creek.  Leaving Vogelsang High Sierra Camp, the trail descends to Tuolumne Pass through a lodgepole and whitebark pine forest. Then the scenery opens up during a series of long meadows. After a few miles, the trail reenters a lodgepole forest and switchbacks steeply for a mile to Tuolumne Meadows.  The last mile parallels the Tuolumne River and crosses the river at twin bridges to return you to Tuolumne Meadows Lodge.

The Loop Trail in Orange

Vogelsang High Sierra Camp awakens for breakfast

A fine "Breakfast of Champions" put on by the fine Vogelsang cooks

Our breakfast table for nine High Sierra Trail Friends

To top off our 8-day adventure, we experienced as a group a miracle of a sorts. One of our group of nine hiking friends (who we kept meeting on the trail and eating with over this period) suggested we all say something nice about each of us. That makes 81 compliments shared around our breakfast table! We took the challenge and it was both a wonderful way to bless our time together and to say goodbye. The kind words that were shared were easily recognized as true of the person and yet we also learned much about the "complimenter" and their graciousness and observation.

Lauryn (who was the social butterfly bringing us together), David and I talked on the trail down about how it was the combination of nature and culture, made possible by the High Sierra Camps, that facilitated this uncommon sharing. The level of caring and kindness expressed by all nine was completely out of proportion to the length of time we actually spent together. I can't imagine this happening so quickly back in the "real world" we were temporarily isolated from. We decided that this miracle of open compassion and caring was due to a rare and fortuitous combination of influences: our hearts being opened by the grandeur of wilderness, the exercise of our bodies, the stillness of the wild...and the community-building institution of the High Sierra Camps. This is exactly the intent of wilderness advocates and social organizers like John Muir (co-founder of the Sierra Club) and Ernest Thompson Seton (who co-founded the Boy Scouts). This is also my experience as a youth attending and on the staff of a scout summer camp in Mississippi, at a Wilderness Canoe Base in Minnesota and at the Philmont Scout Ranch in New Mexico. The combination of nature, culture and recreation is a powerful healer and antidote to the stress and dissipation of modern life and the 24-hour news and advertising cycle that promotes ignorance, greed and violence.

As John Muir wrote over a century ago: 

Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves.

-- Our National Parks , 1901, page 56.

Our parting Vogelsang shot: Bob, Lauryn & David

Packs picked up we find the trail to Tuolumne Meadows...

...letting a pack train by and wending down through the lodgepole pines

...we find ourselves at the Twin Bridges over the Lyell Fork of the Tuolumne River

Crossing the clear waters of the Dana fork of the Tuolumne River

After I take the shuttle to pick up the van we load it up and head home

Such a mixture of sensations and emotions as we arrive back in the world of pavement, parking lots, internal-combustion and all the necessities, conveniences and inane distractions of the modern world. We are physically exhausted and our hearts are filled with the gifts of wilderness and of our human interactions along the trek. We're both glad and sad to be back. But we know we've banked some precious memories (and photographs) for sharing with others and to reflect on for the rest of our lives. We challenged ourselves and we found ourselves both blessed and humbled by the grandeur and glimpses of wild Beauty. We let our own wildness be stirred and exercised as we challenged our bodies and wills to climb and descend a total of 17,000 feet in elevation over 49 miles.

Our thanks to the National Park Service, Delaware North (the High Sierra Camp concessionaire) and to the welcoming and talented staff at each of the six camps we dined at (the sixth being Tuolumne Meadows Lodge where we began and ended our trek). You added so much to our Big Adventure.

I also thank Lauryn and David for signing on to this adventure and making it so rich and memorable for me. You guys are awesome trekking partners! Lauryn affectionately called David and I her "scouts." We can't help it.

May You Walk in Peace and Beauty on this Trail of Life we all traverse. Bob