Looking down on the lower meadow below Lyell Glacier from the upper meadow.

This is the wilderness experience – alone in the majestic, reliant on one’s self and one’s companions.

The view from the meadow just below Lyell Glacier (behind us) looking down Lyell Canyon from whence we had come.

On our first backpacking trip into Yosemite, we came across this natural line of demarcation – more of a spiritual boundary, probably born of a simultaneous shift in both geography and botany. No matter the cause, as we approached this gentle barrier we felt as if we were crossing over into a new realm – an untamed land more apart from civilization than simply distant from it. I paused to take this photograph in a meager attempt to capture the mood.

Having reached the higher of the two alpine meadows below Lyell Canyon, we looked back toward the way we had come up through Lyell Canyon out of Tuolumne Meadows.

Sometimes, on the trail, one’s attention is drawn from the majestic vistas and craggy peaks to the smallest of things right in front of you. In this case, I noticed a single tiny flower blooming for all it was worth in the midst of a boulder field. I guess I found inspiration as an artist in a kindred soul struggling against immense obstacles in anonymity. So I took its picture and posted it here, and it and I shall bloom because it is what we know and it is who we are.

I have no idea who Vogelsang was, but he had a nice peak. You can see it for quite a distance on a side trail that winds from Nevada Falls down past Cathedral Peak, ending at Tuolumne Meadows.

The Lyell Fork of the Merced River flows down the center of most of Lyell Canyon. At times, the canyon is wide enough that ponds and pools appear in small meadows within the forest on either side.

Looking like the antlers of a fallen beast, the branches of a long-dead tree fill the foreground of this view of the end of Lyell Canyon where a small stand of trees has long ago gone extinct, leaving only the husk of a once-vibrant forest.

Again, about halfway down Lyell Canyon, the woods give way to an dry open meadow as we approach Kuna Crest and begin our climb toward Lyell Glacier.