The Mist Trail is so named because of the micro-spray from Nevada Falls along the stone steps cut into the granite wall of the canyon is this section of Yosemite.
Category Archives: Newest Additions
Desert Storm
Captured this from our moving car as we tooled up highway 395 toward a backpacking trip in Yosemite with our friend Bob Miller.
On the Mist Trail
This was taken during our first expedition backpacking in Yosemite in 2003. I was using an early generation digital camera that barely had 1 megapixel, but nonetheless, the stark high-contrast beauty of the monoliths surrounding the trail were perfectly rendered.
On the Climb to Donahue Pass
This is the view we encountered on our first expedition along the John Muir Trail up from Lyell Glacier to Donahue Pass at 11,000 feet. It was all a mystery that first time, and the clouds provided the best accent to the landscape of all our later visits.
Teresa on the John Muir Trail at Lyell Glacier
At the Timber Line
Taken along the John Muir Trail on the climb to Donahue Pass
Lyell Glacier
Kuna Crest
Another angle on Kuna Crest, Yosemite
Kuna Crest, Yosemite
Looking back at Lyell Canyon with Lyell Glacier behind us.
Kris Kringle’s Bones
Wrote this two Christmases ago and it just keeps creeping out again every season:
Kris Kringle’s Bones
by Melanie Anne Phillips
(The night after the day after Christmas)
I was out of my stash,
and beginning to jones,
to the God-awful jangle,
of Kris Kringle’s Bones.
The children were hung,
by their necks until dead,
and the clues in the ooze,
on my suit, were all red.
The fairies were flattened,
the reindeer dismembered:
the piled up heap of,
their corpses was embered.
A great ghastly howl,
then arose from the fire.
I guess I had left some alive
in the pyre.
When what to my two,
bloodshot orbs should appear,
but a discarded joint,
half-submerged in a beer.
I fished out the doobie,
and chugged down the brew,
then danced like a newbie,
with a half-done tattoo.
I dried out the roach,
like a microwave dinner,
lit up, took a toke,
and then wept like a sinner.
“My God!” I implored,
in the true Christmas spirit,
“I am saved!” and I waved,
at the fire just to cheer it.
Then I noticed the children,
were not on the hearth,
and the pyre was a pile of toys,
topped by Darth.
My suit was still stained,
but the blotches of red,
were just jostled Cab Sav,
that had gone to my head.
And all ’round the condo,
there wasn’t a sound,
as I crept down the hall,
with a leap and a bound.
And I smiled as I faded,
‘twixt snorgles and moans,
at the absolute silence,
from Kris Kringle’s bones.
— and the weird part of writing this is that I don’t even smoke!