June | 2015 | Death Valley Adventures

Our final new Death Valley hiking report for the Spring 2015 season has now been finished up and released. This new report documents a summit hike to the top of Tucki Mountain. The Tucki Mountain Summit report can be viewed by clicking here or by visiting report #7 on the Main Page. With all of the Death Valley new reports written and released, we are now looking forward to November where our new major hikes are already mostly planned out. These new hikes will include currently undocumented canyons. Over the summer, I will continue to work on updating previously published reports and converting them to the newer format. I will also be writing up reports for Yosemite’s Diving Board hike and one other hike I did on the Big Island this past February.

This past weekend I was joined by my brother Jim and friend Charlie from Death Valley to undertake a brand new Yosemite Valley exclusive hike. My previous Yosemite Valley exclusive hikes were done in 2008 and 2012, so it was definitely time to head back. After a couple of years of planning and research, a destination was ready. For this hike, we went to a hard-to-reach and seldom-visited location known as the Diving Board. It was an incredible hike and experience and I will be writing up a brand new trip report on it soon. The Diving Board contains perhaps the best views which can be found in the entire park, with the highlight being that you are standing directly in front of the face of Half Dome. This proved to be my lifetime best hike in Yosemite (out of some 50 trips I have taken there) and 1 of my 10 lifetime best overall hikes. We truly enjoyed it. Here are a few teaser images in advance of the upcoming report. The hike was 12 miles RT with 3,600 feet of cumulative elevation gain. I took 334 photographs along the way including some of a bear playing in a meadow near Lost Lake and also of the moon behind some climbers on Half Dome.