u/Automatic-Pin-7939

First time visiting Yosemite this week and wow - absolutely breathtaking. This page had been helpful for me while planning a trip for my family - myself and husband and 2 daughters aged 6 and 10. We are an avid camping family and live at 6k feet and hike relatively regularly. I was always in search of how far I could push in Yosemite and wanted more info from families w kids doing mostly hikes and so I figured I’d contribute our experience:

We only were able to book 2 nights in North Pines Tues-Thur June 9-11. We flew to San Francisco to visit family and drove to Yosemite for our camping trip.

Day 0: Camping Near Park Entrance

June 8: Drove to Mariposa, CA and stopped for groceries at Pioneer Market and loaded our cooler for camp. Ate early dinner at Pizza Factory (decent!) and drove to our campsite at Merced recreation area (about 45 mins outside Yosemite entrance) so we could make an early entrance on Tuesday morning.

Day 1: Illhouette Falls from Glacier Point / Visitor’s Center / Dinner Picnic at El Cap Meadow

Got up at 5am, packed up camp and arrived to Yosemite entrance by 6:30 ish. No line. Drove to Glacier Point and arrived about 7:15. Got situated and got on the trail by 7:45ish. Hiked from Glacier Point to Illhouette Falls - amazing. This hike has some significant elevation gain on the back end which is tough as it heats up, but both kids did fine! It took us about 2.5 hours to go down, have a snack at Illhouette falls and then come back up.
We drove to North Pines and set up camp, then walked to the Visitor Center (1.5 miles, flat) and took a shuttle to El Cap meadow where we ate a picnic dinner and watched the climbers (incredible!). Back to camp for s’mores and bedtime.

Day 2: Mist Trail and Floating the Merced, DIY style!

We woke at 6, hit the trail by 6:15. We walked to the Mist Trailhead from North Pines (0.9 mi) and made it to the trailhead by 6:35 ish? There were people around us but not a ton. We did the Mist Trail/Clark’s Point/JMT lollipop loop and it was amazing. My girls handled all of it just fine and I’m not sure it warrants the “hard” rating on All Trails, honestly. It was amazing and beautiful, and definitely got very busy by the time we were on our way down. Even though it was a weekday and early, it was still busier than I expected, though it wasn’t wall to wall people like I’ve seen on posts before.

We timed our hike well and walked to Curry Village Pizza Deck (another mile from the trailhead) and arrived at 10:55. Got pizza quickly, no line (they open at 11) and had a delightful IPA and pizza outside. Beware the brazen squirrels who will absolutely hop onto your table despite your physical presence 🤣

We walked back to camp (another .7 miles!) and blew up our tubes. We had purchased River tubes from Dicks sporting goods and delivered them to our family’s home in San Francisco so we could bring them with us. We put our tubes in at North Pines near the junction of Merced and Tenaya Creek. I will say, most of the forums I read said this was a good plan and I still agree, but the water was moving a smidge faster than we anticipated. My husband ended up flipping his tube when we got pushed into a bridge pillar and it briefly traumatized my kids. The river was quick but not terribly deep. We all had life jackets (kids must wear them under 13 years, we had ours attached to our tubes).

Once we got beyond where the rental rafts put in, the water was super calm. I highly recommend a paddle - we did not bring one since we were flying in and the idea of cramming one more thing in our rental car was insane, but it would’ve been super helpful. The float was gorgeous and hands down the best way to see the sights in the Valley without wasting tons of time on shuttles or waiting to rent bikes or waiting to get rafting reservations. We only had 48 hours in the park and I wanted to maximize every minute so this was important to us.

Day 3 (ish) we got up, packed up camp and drove to the visitor center so my girls could turn in their Junior Ranger packets and get their badges - this is so fun for them and we do it at every NP we go to. Highly recommend!

We had an amazing trip. I wanted to share this so that other families can plan accordingly. I consider myself to be fairly risk averse and more of a Type A Parent and I can say with certainty that both of these hikes were well within our wheelhouse as a family (we do camp a lot but this was the longest/hardest effort either of my kids has done). 5-6miles and about 500ft gain per mile (both were up and down or down and then up, so the elevation gain was consolidated to half the distance in each one) seemed to be the sweet spot.

Ultimately - it’s totally possible to visit Yosemite with young kids and not have to stick to 1 mile loops and busy lookouts. I didn’t want to be herded around like cattle and felt like going UP was the key. It paid off. Thank you to everyone whose posts informed our trip planning! 🥰