Last week, we took a road trip to Yosemite National Park. The highlight (and lowlight) was our day 1 adventure: Yosemite Falls.

Hiking to the top of Yosemite Falls is amazing, beautiful, painful, exhausting, and absolutely worth it. With a 2,425 foot drop, it’s the highest waterfall in North America. At the beginning of the hike, we looked at the info sign. It read, “3.6 miles.” We thought, “Okay, this one is a perfect afternoon hike. 7 miles... that’s nothing since we’ll be walking downhill half of the time.”

Boy, were we wrong.

Midway through the hike we were loving life. Standing at the midpoint of a waterfall filled with rainbows and cool mist, we thought, “what the hell, let’s keep going. In fact, we should start jogging up the trail. Look at the top, we’re almost there.”

We weren’t almost there. Plus, the jogging made us forget to ration our water. We ran out about three fourths of the way up. When we got to the top, our legs hurt and our thirst was so real. But the view makes you forget everything. Yosemite Valley is a national treasure and observing it from the upper falls is unforgettable. But Yosemite Valley can only help you forget your problems for so long.

Getting down was horrible: no water, no energy, no fun. Don’t be foolish like us. Bring too much water and actually read about the hike in advance. We later found it was a 6 to 10 hour hike. We were planning on 3 hours... but at least our thirst motivation got us back in 4 hours roundtrip. The DUCKCHAR carne asada marinating in our cooler helped, too :)
 

-Team DUCKCHAR