Day two started bright and early with no bears in my room or backseat of the sled. The goals for the day were to hike to Half Dome and back, drive home, and not die, not necessarily in that order. From the valley, the summit of Half Dome is 8.2 mi. Here’s what that looks like. I figured it would take about 3.5 days to reach it.

The first landmark on this hike is Vernal Falls via the Mist Trail. By my calculations, that’s about 35 mi, but soon enough we’d be about as close as possible.

The Mist Trail follows the Merced River up to the falls. In the midst of the spring thaw, the river was really moving, even as we were just starting our ascent out of the valley.

It wasn’t long before the river was raging.

As the river became more intense, so did the trail, now consisting of a steep, wet, stone staircase. Odie is making the turn at the top of the first set of stairs. I’d say there are about three ascents like the one shown here.

“Mist Trail” is no misnomer.

At the top of Vernal Falls, we were greeted by a rainbow. Here’s a look at the wettest part of the Mist Trail from above.

A kindly European visitor was courteous enough to take a picture of our sweat and mist soaked persons at the Vernal Falls waypoint.

Reaching the top of Vernal Falls was satisfying, but by my calculations, we are still more than 60 mi from our destination.