Thanks Mark for this group picture!

You might notice that a number of us look very 'serious' (myself especially). I'm sure this was because that day was going to involve a couple thousand feet of hard vertical switchbacks with the 'big packs on'. So I'm sure I was envisioning the pain already! Thank goodness we got an early start (up at 5am) because it was HOT that day, but we did almost all the vertical while the sun was still low.

Here are the boys on the last day...looking a bit weary wouldn't you say? Almost 9 miles and a couple thousand vertical feet will do that to you I guess? ;-)

And yep, we had one blister hiker this year. Can you guess from the pic which one?

No hiking blog of mine would be complete without a pic of my feet hanging over a ledge looking down at least a thousand feet. This ledge was a bit difficult to get to and sit down, since I neglected to take off the 45 lb pack on my back...thankfully no balance problems, although I got the normal "hey, stop that" comments from my friends. They are so protective! ;-)

Nothing like breathing smoke while hiking. Imagine smoking a cigar while hiking with 45 lbs on your back up a mountain for a couple thousand vertical feet...fun stuff!

Most of the trip looked like this...beautiful cloud-less sky, sun, Fir, Cedar, and Sequoia trees along the Tuolumne river.

However, anyone notice the smoke in the distance from a currently burning forrest fire? That made for some nice smoky breathing while hiking later that day.

Now here's a game you don't see played too often in the back country! We found an old spike at a camp site, and then we made our own horse shoes out of wood we found around the site. After the 6 person competition, we had one Champion...and surprise, it was me! I left my trophy (a large rock handed out by another player) at the camp site. We also left the spike and horse shoes with an arrow pointing to them in hopes that the next campers would recognize what they were for and enjoy another horse shoe game.

There were even some relatively deep parts to the river that allowed us to float with current without fear of being completely swept away...although you did have to swim hard to get out of the current!

As usual, the end of day swim in the Tuolumne river became a requirement due to the hot days and dust kicked up by our hiking. Needless to say it was damn cold...but not as cold as last years hike in the Tetons, thank goodness!

A number of areas had seen fire in the past year and were just starting to show signs of green re-growth...this could be good for growth of more Sequoia trees since fire promotes reproduction of these giant trees.

There were even some hidden small waterfalls that you could find if you looked closely.

Often some of the best views came late in the day while looking up-river.

My favorite surprise of the trip was the size of the Sugar Cone pine cones. That's a size 12 men's hiking boot by the way...

I mistakenly thought these were Sequoia pine cones but it turns out Sequoia pine cones are actually really small...ironic isn't it?

The Tuolumne river has created quite a canyon and afforded us some nice scenic overlook views of the rushing water...

How's this for a vanishing pool, complete with mountain reflection! In reality this led to yet another waterfall just past the vanishing point.

Spring of 2010 was very wet, so we had incredible waterfalls throughout the hike, like this one, and the one posted at the top right of this blog.

The Yosemite trails are maintained at very high quality, as can be seen here with this bridge...

The start of the hike involved quite a bit of hiking over rock as you can see ...