The State Bar of California Environmental Law Section has its annual conference right outside Yosemite National Park. For three days, hundreds of environmental attorneys meet for panel discussions in the morning, and then the whole conference lets out so everyone can hike and enjoy the park in the afternoon. This must be about as good as it gets as far as legal conferences go.
Law students are encouraged to attend with scholarships and discounts, so I made the trek. After the second day’s lectures, my lawschool classmate Lara and I got a somewhat late start to the trailhead for Chilnualna Falls (which was silly on our part, because we could walk to this trail from our cabin). We appeared to be the last 2 people to hit this trail that day, and we passed a lot of people coming down from the falls in the other direction. We assumed this trail wasn’t too serious since it left from right by our cabin, but as it turns out, the trail is 8.4 miles long with 2,300 feet of elevation gain. Whoops.
After we’d been hiking for a good two hours, and the afternoon was getting late, we considered turning back without seeing the falls. Yet everyone we passed assured us “you’re almost there.” …But we were told that for more than an hour. By the time we got to the top, the sun was nearly setting. This was both good and bad. First, the good: the views were excellent and the light was perfect. Having come all that way, we had to enjoy it for a bit (and take some pictures, of course).
Now, the bad: again, Lara and I dramatically underestimated this hike. We had brought water bottles, but — aside from my camera — little else. After I snapped these shots, the sun went down in Yosemite. This conference is always held in late October, so while it was a pleasantly cool temperature for our hike up, it began dropping pretty fast. More problematic, neither of us anticipated being out past sunset, so we had neglected to bring flashlights. Nor did we really know where we were going.
Fortunately, the trail down was fairly clearly marked. We did have some moments of uncertainty, and our pace for the hike down was limited by the darkness of the moonless evening. We also heard what sounded like some sizable movement through the bushes not far away at one point. But after our otherwise uneventful hike down, we managed to find our way back to the cabin with a story to tell and some photos to share. The rest of my Yosemite shots (now from all three years I attended this conference), as well as my other photo-worthy moments during my time on the West Coast, are in the California gallery.