TL;DR
Enjoy the Yosemite high country in this 23mi loop hike out to Vogelsang Lake. If you're feeling up for some off-trail scrambling, take a 3mi side trip to bag Vogelsang Peak. From the top you can see Half Dome, Clouds Rest, and the surrounding Tuolumne Meadows area. This can be done as an out-and-back or a loop. We did this hike in the counter clockwise direction in 2 days in the late summer.
Thoughts
I've come to really enjoy these short weekend trips. I can take them more often and get my little dose of wilderness whenever I feel like I'm being run ragged at work. Yosemite offers a large variety of possible trips with many popular or not so popular destinations. Its been a fun hobby to keep track of the trails I've done in Yosemite in a google map. You start to notice little pockets that could be interesting or areas where the terrain looks worth checking out.
A spot in Yosemite I've always wanted to visit was Vogelsang. I think I first heard about it because one of the High Sierra Camps is located there but being in the high country, I wanted to check it out. Did the usual, entered the permit lottery and lucked out with permits for Labor Day weekend. All we had to do was cross our fingers that things wouldn't be on fire. Things were a bit dicey leading up to the weekend with the Caldor Fire raging by South Lake Tahoe. We were really worried we were going to get smoked out. However, things mellowed out, the winds cooperated, and we were set for a smoke free, cloudless, late summer weekend in the mountains.
With Vogelsang being at the 10,000ft mark, I made a point of driving up the night before we were slated to hike in. The altitude headache from Young Lakes was too fresh in my mind and didn't want to suffer through the night like that again. We scored a campsite at Tuolumne Meadows using Campflare, one of my new favorite things this year. Campflare is an awesome website where you can set notifications for campgrounds where all the sites are booked for the dates you want to go. If someone cancels, you'll get an email that there's an availability. You'll need to go on recreation.gov to snag it but at least you get a head start. I've had great luck with it so far, getting a night at Tuolumne Meadows campground, and recently got 2 nights at Watchman campground in Zion. Check it out, if you love it, consider supporting the website.
Sleeping over the night before a backpacking trip is wonderful. Whether that be in a campground or in the backpackers camp, its nice not having to frontload a day of backpacking with a 4 hour drive. We woke up with the sun, took our time packing up and then moved the cars down to the Dog Lake trailhead lot. We headed due south, a with a quick cross over Tuolumne River, we picked up the Rafferty Creek trailhead and were on our way.
Rafferty Creek wasn't terribly exciting nor was it much of a creek anymore. With the low snow year, all the creeks and ponds were long dry and what was probably a beautiful mountain meadow in June was now just dry brown grass. 7 or so miles later, we found ourselves at the Vogelsang High Sierra camp. 2021 being another COVID year, the High Sierra camps were closed for the season. We shouldered on toward Vogelsang lake in search of a nice camping spot but also some well deserved water.
The fun part about short hike ins is how much daylight you end up with once you reach camp. We arrived just past lunch time and after a quick break, were ready to figure out how to get up the peak. We had some vague beta from mountain project that lead up the trail that wraps around the west side of the lake but were unsure where to fork off and attempt the scramble. We found a line that looked promising and turned out being correct as we ran into a family headed down from the peak. From far away the shoot looked loose and a little hairy but once we were on it, it proved to be pretty solid and could follow a foot path up the scree. Once at the top of the shoot, we turned right and proceeded to play a game of choose-your-own-adventure through some thick bushes in order to reach the actual peak.
The view was actually incredibly surprising. I hadn't thought about what we'd be able to see from the top but it turned out to have a great 360 view that included Half Dome, Cloud's Rest, Tuolumne Meadows, and the edge of the Eastern Sierra.
We soon made our way back down to camp. Some swam in the lake, the biting edge of snow melt long gone and replaced by a satisfying cool. We were treated to a vibrant sunset as we ate dinner overlooking the valley we had hiked up and then soon the rising of the milky way as the last remnants of the day receded behind the horizon. I had forgotten just how pleasant September in the Sierra is since our trips for the past few years had to be cancelled. The days are pleasant, no mosquitos, the nights are relatively warm surprisingly. It was still in the high 40s or low 50s but with no wind, it made for a great night for star gazing.
The next day we said good-bye to our home by the lake and made our way out along the trail towards Evelyn Lake. This would normally be an out-and-back trip but since I was out there, I was curious what this part of the park was like. It turned out to be very long, but also very cool. Big open meadows full of that long wavy grass. Contrails crisscrossed the sky making for a ephemeral landscape in the early morning sun.
Past the junction for Ireland Lake, the trail turned downhill into Lyell Canyon and quickly became a slog. It didn't abate until we reached the bottom. I had fond memories of Lyell Canyon from when we did the JMT. There's just something about a meandering creek surrounded by granite rocks that just makes you want to kick back and relax next to it. We did stop at one watering hole (because we couldn't resists) but I would plan a whole weekend just to go back to this one spot.
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