Alpenglow in Yosemite National Park

This is the campsite - and I really mean THE campsite - that got me into backpacking.

Back in 2017 or 2018, I lived in Berkeley, California, while doing an internship at Berkeley National Lab. At the time, I drove a Toyota 4Runner in which I had removed all the seats except the driver’s seat and built a simple plywood bed in the back. I used it for long four-week road trips across western America and Canada, but I didn’t do any backpacking yet.

During my fourth visit to Yosemite National Park, I stayed at Camp 4 in Yosemite Valley. There, I met a guy named John who had just come back from the backcountry - a term he first had to explain to me because I had absolutely no idea what it meant.

He showed me a photo on his phone of this exact campsite high above the valley.

In a way, it was life-changing.

I was blown away that places like this even existed, and that you could actually camp there. So the next year, I came back, went to REI, bought a full backpacking setup, and set out on my very first backpacking trip in Yosemite National Park.

On the final night of that seven-day trip, I found the exact same campsite John had shown me years earlier. I pitched my tent in the exact same spot and took this photo shortly after sunset, as the alpenglow illuminated the entire valley and the high Sierra backcountry in a purple glow.

At the time, I didn’t even own a proper tripod, so I hung my camera upside down from a small GorillaPod attached to a branch above the campsite to take the photo.

To this day, this image perfectly represents what backpacking is all about to me - the solitude, silence, and surreal campsites that are only accessible through sweat and a little bit of suffering.