
My wife & I will be visiting Yosemite next-week, we'll have 3 full days (4 nights), which we intend to use for day hikes while staying in lodging in Yosemite Valley. It's a brief stop in a short U.S. trip from Australia and while not the best time of year weather wise we're still stoked to get as much out of it as we can.
At the moment we intend to use our 2nd full day to hike the Pohono trail, grabbin' the bus up to Glacier Point as our starting point (I believe first bus arrives there approx. 10:30), our intention is to hike the entire trail to Tunnel view, at which point we need to add on the the return leg from Tunnel view to Yosemite valley lodge.
From reading other sites, I see hike times of 5-10 hours, we are fairly fit and suspect the hike to tunnel view would take us the lower of the average of may be 6-7hours when factoring in stops, seeing us arrive roughly 5:30pm at Tunnel view, then additional 1-2hr to get back to the lodge.
My concerns/queries/feedback:
*Do these estimates sound sane to those that have day hiked the trail? I'm weary temperatures will likely drop quickly in the evening (we'd have appropriate layering with us).
*As this is after 15 Oct (no shuttle bus), is there any suggestions on a trail head/parking overnight spot I could potentially leave our car at the day before to cut-down the additional return leg from Tunnel view?
*I see reference to the Four mile trail as an alternative to Pohono and doing smaller day hikes to the various points of interest, I like the challenge of the length of the Pohono trail, but if the above estimates aren't realistic then I'd be interested in hearing suggested alternatives
