Highlights

The Planning

This was a completely impromptu trip that came out of a single message from the whimsical Manoj to me asking if I’d be down to do a 6-hour drive down to Sequoia National Park and hike there for a day. Most of my friends would say that I’m not generally down for such whimsical ideas, but this sounded like a really appealing idea for whatever reason. I was instantly down to go especially since the pictures from the trails that we were considering looked incredible. To be fair, I also just wanted to do something that weekend and this was a great way for me to step outside the house and do more hiking. Initially, it was just going to be the two of us, but I managed to persuade Brahma to join along. Keep in mind, this all happened with less than a week left before the trip itself, which is miraculous given prior planning atrocities.

Our planning was such that we only booked the Airbnb a day before our trip. We were staying a night in the town of Visalia, which put our commute on Friday at roughly 3 hours. We still hadn’t narrowed down on a trail, but in Manoj’s words “let’s make a game-time decision.”

Friday Night

On Friday, we each departed work and met up at Castro Street in Mountain View. I made the bad decision of advocating for food when Manoj wanted to be out of the Bay Area, so we ended up trying to grab something quick at Paris Baguette. I got a 9 dollar sand-which that wasn’t even that big with a salad with what appeared to be balsamic vinaigrette. Manoj got the same dish, but as we see later that was a huge error. Brahma was trying to bail on us since he’d done leg day on Wednesday and was getting cold feet since Manoj was driving. I managed to get him to stay luckily, and I don’t think he regrets it haha. I was also informed that the temperatures could be in the 30’s and 50’s which scared the hell out of me as I was expecting the temperature to be a lot hotter as we were heading south.

The Decrepit Jeep

Whimsical Manoj is in a phase of exploring stick shift cars thoroughly. He desperately wanted a manual car and without realizing that Brahma can drive, he decided to solo drive the whole trip and got us one of the most decrepit Jeep's I've seen. The Jeep's stick shift appeared as if rat's had eaten it, the AC vents were all broken up, there was only an aux cable for a sound system, and that was just the start of our concerns. The trunk was connected to the seating area and was open, which was a concern for us as break-ins are fairly common in California. At some point during the trip, we realized that the aux port was completely wonky that caused only the left side speakers to work. We thought that this was just the bad sound system rather than the aux port, but then we realized that the port was literally dangling along.

However, the worst part by far was the AC situation. The Bay Area is generally phenomenal in terms of temperature since the bay and the ocean acts as a moderator for temperature throughout the year. Who knew that this would give us such a big problem when coming back? Basically, the AC didn’t work and was just acting like a fan for the outside air, and since we were close to the bay and it was night outside we didn’t think twice about that AC working as the inside of the car was so pleasant. This killed us on the way back where we’re trying to drive back in 90 F weather in a hot box of a black car without AC with every pore of mine sweating. Who needs a hike when I can burn calories in that hotbox!

Anyway, we started driving but very soon Manoj started complaining about some stomach pains. It got so bad, that he eventually pulled off the road and we had to get some medicines. Keep in mind that Manoj is known to be a, ahem, questionable driver, and Brahma was already considering bailing earlier due to how long of a drive it was. We managed to get some drugs into him after stopping at a Walmart and waiting until he felt better. The Quora micro-kitchens came in clutch since Naren brought coconut water with him, which is known to be a great help for stomach issues.

The drive went without event and eventually, we stopped near I5 near Fresno for Manoj to just recover a bit. I5 was shockingly empty and Manoj’s “ten under double” mentality was beginning to show, so I had to reign him in at times. We ended up overshooting one of the exits and paid with a 40-mile detour for that, before reaching our Airbnb.

The Airbnb was very nice, though we struggled to find the key and how to open the door for a bit. We also spent some time finding trails without snow and which weren’t just absurd. Marble Falls was the one that we ended up choosing due to the scenic route that we’d take and the fact that there was no snow near it.

The Hike

We woke up the next day around 6:30-7:00 am and got ready to leave the Airbnb by 8:00. I was still fairly sleepy and managed some shut-eye during the drive to the hike, which was a really scenic route. The route into the national park had many lakes and in the distance were the scary snow mountains. Luckily, we had checked the temperature of the route and it was a very reasonable 70 F instead of the 30’s that they’d told me before. We parked the car opposite the Potwisha Campground, which just ignited my desire to go camping (hmu if anyone wants to go).

The hike started off next to a river filled with white water rapids moving at an incredible pace. We knew that this would be the river that we’d track to get to the falls. Quite soon into the hike, we deviated from the river and started climbing. This climb was fairly unique to most of the hiking trails that I’ve done before since it was a single person passage basically the whole way and was shaded a good portion of the time. Since we’d gone fairly in the morning and we were on the west face of the mountain, we were in shade most of the way getting to the falls. There were a few places with sunlight where we’d find lizards sun-bathing. Other than lizards and a lot of bugs, I think we saw only 2 groups the whole way to the falls, something which gave Brahma a lot of tension. For most of the hike, we couldn’t actually see the river, but the sound of the white water rapids was ever present in the valley.

There were some amazing vista points along the way and we intersected some streams along the mountain that we were on, but I think Brahma and I had the expectation that we'd constantly be intersecting with the river or following it closely. That expectation wasn't true, but it turned out the far away view of the falls more than made up for it. As we got closer to the falls, we started seeing many unique rock faces of marble, granite, and one part that I thought would've made an amazing staircase in a house.

The Marble Falls

It wasn’t the biggest, the tallest nor the most powerful, but the waterfalls had an immense speed to them that I’d not seen especially with the marble rocks that they were near. Maybe it was my tired mind and body, but I found the rainbow formed by the falls an awesome sight. When I think of the sound of water, I think of waves that definitely can put me to sleep. The sheer sound that the falls made was a sound that got my energy up and pumped rather than lulling me to sleep. The water had that same glacial coldness that I associate with the Indus River in Ladakh. That ice cold water from the snow melting has an amazingly refreshing effect that gave me so much energy.

The water was just pure white the whole area that we were sat in and with the white marble, it blurred the line between what was rock and water. The water had a chilling effect on the marble such that even in the sunlight the rocks were extremely cool to touch and sit on.

After a quick snack break sitting on the marble and just breathing in the magnificence and power of the falls, we started our way back. We saw many more groups hiking the trail now what was close to the afternoon. Shockingly, a few groups had fishing rods, which really made me question whether we just ignored any fish near the falls. I certainly didn’t think any fish was near or could swim in such fast-paced current, but I’ve certainly heard of salmon doing upriver swimming.

The way back for me was a lot easier even though I felt like we didn’t really have that much of a height gain since on the way to the falls we kept transitioning between hiking up and down the side of the mountain. On the way back we dealt with more sunlight and the thorny plants started to take its toll on Manoj. There were these plants along the side of the trail that stuck to our track-pants and we were forced to pluck out the seeds that were stuck to the fabric when we took breaks.

It took us 2 hours to climb up the 3.7 miles, and roughly an hour and a half to come down which allowed us to come back to the car at 1 pm. We wanted to initially try to go to Morro Rock, but it was 45 minutes from where we’d parked which didn’t seem worth it as the others were pretty hungry at that point.

Back to the Bay in a Hotbox

We started driving back to Visalia and to Fresno, but saw a shocking number of cars trying to enter the park as we were leaving. I think there was roughly a queue of 100 cars trying to get in when we were trying to leave, which meant that our decisions to come early and leave early were bang on.

Since all of us were so hungry, we just wanted some dope Indian food along the way back. I managed to find a Punjabi Dhaba which seemed exactly like something we wanted. Around this time we really started having AC issues. The temperature outside was 90F and we had no AC, and couldn't keep the windows down to at least get free flowing air. I was sweating profusely, Manoj couldn't hold the top part of the steering wheel due to how hot it was, and Brahma somehow managed to sleep in the heat with a tortured expression on his face, that I regret that I didn't capture.

We managed to reach the restaurant that was run by a pakka Sardarji family and it looked like we were going to get amazing authentic Punjabi food. I got a Mutter Paneer, garlic naan, and a sweet lassi for one of the best deals I’ve seen having Indian food. 5 bucks for an entree dish is an incredible deal.

After stuffing ourselves completely, we started the ride back in the hotbox and intermittently tried to keep the windows open to allow some breathing and life to come into us in between sweating everywhere. Traffic didn’t seem to be a problem for most of the way back luckily, and thus we were able to make good time and eventually reach the Bay Area by 6:10 so that Brahma could catch the Caltrain home.

Overall, a solid hike with solid folks. 10/10 would do again with a better car