Stairs and more stairs

I once considered a series of posts on Oakland’s staircases, but never followed through. You’ll have to settle for a Yosemite staircase instead. The guidebooks say there are seven hundred stairs on the Mist Trail to the top of Vernal Falls in Yosemite National Park. I didn’t count them, but I believe it:

The stairs above are mere preamble. Once you get to the cliff adjacent to the falls, things get more intense, and a railing is deemed necessary:

Finally, here is the payoff (you can see a trace of the rainbow at the bottom of the falls, shown more vividly in an earlier post):

Here’s another shot showing people at the overlook, which gives a better idea of the scale. Vernal Falls is about 300 feet from tumble to jumble — pretty small, by Yosemite standards: