Vernal Fall

This is Yosemite in motion – water, granite, and light doing what they’ve done since the Merced first started carving the canyon. The Mist Trail is the park’s most theatrical footpath, and in peak flow it’s part hike, part baptism: the kind of climb where you grin through a glittering spray while rainbows hover in the mist and the stone steps rise, rise, rise beside Vernal Fall.

It’s also a study in perspective. From the valley floor, Vernal and Nevada can be maddeningly hard to see together; up here, they reveal themselves in sequence like acts in a well-paced play. Vernal is compact, polished, and thunderous – the Merced tightening into a bright ribbon just before it leaps into vapor. Nevada is all broad-shouldered power, fanning white water down a glacier-polished apron while Liberty Cap glowers above it like a granite sentinel.

Spring makes the most noise, but late summer has its pleasures: fewer crowds, soft air, and a deeper sense of the rock forms that shape the river’s path. In shoulder seasons you can hear the canyon breathe – dipper birds piping from the boulders, wind in the firs, the steady pulse of the river below the falls. On bluebird mornings the stairway glints; on cool afternoons the trail glows green with moss.

The terrain between the start of the John Muir Trail in Yosemite Valley and the summit of Half Dome is by far most popular hiking in the park. I’m happy to report that Mist Trail, one of the most spectacular and heavily used trails in the National Park System, got a major overhaul in 2025: Much improved signage; erasure of the “social trails” created by scores of hikers who stray off the established route; rebuilding the Happy Isles footbridge and much more.

Long before the CCC chiseled these steps, Miwok and Paiute people traveled the river corridor; later, early tourists in wool suits and stout boots came to test their nerve beside the spray. Today it remains a rite of passage: families making their first Sierra climb, trail runners cruising the stone, wide-eyed first-timers learning why Yosemite turns hikers into lifers.

The guardrails are there for a reason. One summer day in 2011, I hiked to the falls with my family and noted to my dismay, visitors climbing over them for a better look at the falls. As luck would have it, misfortune really, the day after our hike, three visitors stepped over the guardrails and were swept away to their deaths by the fast-moving river. The media got hold of me and before I knew it I was on the evening ABC World News, expressing how my heart goes out to the families of the victims, while grappling with the poor decision-making that led to the three hikers to step over the guardrail and into the raging waters.

Hikers, please be careful and note: the river that looks silky from afar is all muscle up close. Respect the signs, take your time on slick stone, and let the falls do what they do best: put on a show you’ll remember for a very long time.