Читать книгу 50 Best Short Hikes: Yosemite National Park and Vicinity онлайн

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Now walk up to the base of El Cap and touch the nearly 3,000-foot wall. Without trees for scale, the wall feels dimensionless to me and I’d be hard pressed to decide if it were 100 or 10,000 feet high. Look up, up, up through binoculars if you have them, maybe glimpsing climbers high above you. You are standing just to the right of the most famous route, the Nose, which approximately follows the corner where the eastern and western halves of the face meet. Notice how few newly fallen rocks are at the base of the wall. Like most of Yosemite Valley, it is composed of very solid rock. The vegetated slope you just walked up is composed of rock from much older falls, so rock is indeed shed here as well, but by chance there has not been recent activity.

When you are finished, retrace your steps to the car (0.8 mile). Before you drive away, walk into El Capitan Meadow, just across the road, to gain a second perspective on the peak and to enjoy some of the other walls and pinnacles gracing the western half of Yosemite Valley, including Cathedral Rocks and Cathedral Spires to the south.