Hola, Señor el Capitan ...

Here then may be lived a life of the senses so pure, so untouched by any mode of apprehension but their own, that the body may be said to think. Each sense heightened to its most exquisite awareness is in itself total experience (Nan Shepherd, The Living Mountain)

There are those places, probably seen in an old copy of National Geographic in a doctor’s surgery when you’re a kid, that just stay with you in your imagination until finally percolating into reality at the time of adulthood when you have an income, annual leave and a desire to track it down. Such for me is El Capitan, the world’s largest granite monolith in California's Yosemite National Park.

Admittedly, it was only when a couple of lads finally free-climbed it in 2015 that I remembered that this was a place that I wanted to see. It is also perhaps a testament to Yosemite’s abundance of remarkable landscapes that it took three days before we made the effort to stand at El Capitan's substantial base in awe and wonder.

The first attempt was stymied by mist and rain after a long driving day, arriving into the Park in the evening by which time the Navigator and I just wanted to find our ready pitched tent and go to sleep. Our campsite was near to the western trail-heads so it seemed easier the next day to grab an early morning hike after the birds helpfully provided an alarm clock at the crack of dawn. It is a brisk 8.7 km up to Nevada Falls, including 600 granite steps through red wood conifers, talus, mist and river thunder. The falls were raging spectacularly and to stand above them as they shot over the cliff generated wobbly legs and a precarious sense of fragility in contemplating how many seconds it would take to become part of the current and then the eco-system after a drop of hundreds of metres.

By the time I was coming down the crowds were assembling and the paths, especially at the lower levels and in the valley, were overflowing. The Navigator was by now also stirring from the tent and requiring an afternoon walk around Mirror Lake. Given the numbers of people that visit the Park there is a question of how to manage its cliffs, forests and rivers. Information boards suggest that the National Park Service now practices 'natural' land management; letting the wilderness manage itself as much as possible. This is in contrast to a past that saw private interests dam rivers, making Mirror Lake larger to attract more people to the 'saloon' and various other entertainments that used to run there.

But the only way ‘natural’ land management works is if the thousands of tourists staying and visiting every day are managed, and that is what Yosemite does on an impressive scale: sheltering, feeding, bathing, supplying, transporting, backpackers to high-end luxury visitors from a babel of destinations. The mess hall in our camp area alone (Half Dome Village) could seat almost 500 people. There is a small village for the workers and village supermarkets at either end of the valley stocked everything you would need, from firewood to souvenirs.

For the most part, we follow the rules. After 10pm the camp site quiets down with just the occasional banging of bear bins opening and closing. We stick to the paths. We queue for the shuttle buses. We don’t light fires. I did regrettably break my own rule of never using the end stall in a communal shower if it contains the only drain, with my feet in contact with hundreds of other people's soap scum, band aids and hair balls. But the one area of open rebellion seemed to be the desire to feed the wildlife. Not the bears of course. It seemed to me a redundant instruction to ask visitors not to feed or try to take food away from a bear. We religiously locked away anything that could even remotely attract a bear, although I was disappointed not to see one and had to be satisfied with a coyote appearing for a bit of scavenging. And the deers weren't an issue; they just meandered around the camps grazing, not giving a toss who was taking their photograph and how close they were. 

The real culprits were the ground squirrels. Despite the signed pleas, people could not seem to stop feeding them in return for the ‘too cute’ digital reproduction (they seemed to have learnt how to strike a pose). 

I avoided the squirrels as we have enough in London, but there is a larger question of how to photograph a place already so mediated, not least by Ansel Adams. Today a landscape is not complete without a selfie in the foreground, and I was asked half a dozen times each day to take portraits on smart phones and iPads with waterfall, forest, mountain, lake in the background, a modern day etching of ‘X was here’. My own images are mostly bleached out by the wrong-time-of-day light. Without the patience of Ansel Adams the reproduction of Yosemite can only ever be faded, but at least we had the joy of not having internet in the campsite so the images are stored until home.

By the end of Day Two we still hadn’t seen El Capitan as a full day was needed to get to Yosemite Point, a three hour hike up innumerous switchbacks to the top of Yosemite Falls and beyond. Given the statistics for obesity in the USA, it was fantastic to see so many families with young children on these more difficult trails. We ran into Beckley and his mum on their way to a lookout:

Me: 'He's come a long way on his own'

Mum: 'Yes, last year I carried him half way but this year I decided he could do it himself'.

This is a three year old walking up 60 rock strewn switchbacks. Admittedly he was having a strop when we ran into them, having thrown his hat on the ground signaling his refusal to go any further, but his mum was having none of it, telling him to pick it up and get on with it. 

At the top of Yosemite Point we came across a Japanese family, two adults, two children, already there and picnicking. This means they left VERY early. The two kids were older than Beckley but less than ten. They had climbed the first set of 60 switchbacks, then the even longer set of switchbacks to the top of the falls, then the short but snowy section to the Point. And they looked like they were lunching in Victoria Park.

As it was still spring break, the Park was also shared by an older cohort of young people; college students who seem to have taken dressing for hiking to new levels. In the morning, a young woman spent quite a bit of time in the bathroom adjusting her beanie (which it's too hot for) and spraying stray hair to make sure there was just the right amount spilling out from under the beanie's ribbing. Feeling slightly frumpy I managed to wash my face and smear on sunblock, running fingers through my hair knowing that I’ll be keeping my hat on all day. I also managed, by sheer accident, to coordinate the colour of my T-shirt with the contrast stripe of my hiking shoes and was very pleased with myself as a result.

And so finally, Day 3, it was time for El Capitan, although it wasn’t much more than a moment. It felt slightly disrespectful to just pull over in the car by the side of the road to stare for a few minutes and take a few pictures, but the sheer size of El Capitan precludes any foreplay. Our ten minute presence is a blip in the rock’s 100 million year time line. Like all mountains, to walk to its summit, to feel the rock with each step, is the only way to really pay one’s respects. So we piled back into the car, talking of return one day, and headed out of the Park on Route 120, catching a final majestic vision of the valley in the rear view mirror.