Best Yosemite Valley Hiking Trails For First Timers

Above, Bridalveil Fall last year. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

Many of us in California have been to Yosemite National Park many times and have taken walks and hikes to some of the park's natural attractions such as Bridalveil Fall, Yosemite Falls, Vernal Falls and other places. I took the one-mile loop trail to the bottom of Lower Yosemite Falls last year.

But some people who have never been to Yosemite before may want to try out a hike but have no idea which would be the best for a first time visitor.

The Island Now has an article with such "newbies" in mind.

They start the article with:

Yosemite National Park has been on my bucket list for years, so I am beyond excited when we arrive at the Tenaya Lodge, in Fish Camp, just two miles from the South Gate, and immediately start planning for how we will tackle the park the next day (see 5/26). I am intimidated at first by how vast Yosemite is – the size of Rhode Island, I am told – and how to organize the logistics if I am going to see for myself the places that are etched in the images in my mind in only two days. 

We spend a lot of time with the Tenaya Lodge concierge to get suggestions of where to go, which trails to hike, where to park (there is a bus shuttle system but during our visit, at the very beginning of spring, it wasn’t operating very well). 

Because it is so early in the season, some of the areas (like Glacier Point) aren’t even open yet. But it also means that the waterfalls are at near maximum of their cascading flow: all the sound and the fury, the feel of the cool spray, the moist smell. On the other hand, as it happens, we are here on the weekend of National Parks Week, when admission is free, coinciding with Easter, so the park is likely to be especially crowded.

To read more, go here.