Just hiked up with my 10 year old son. Hiking down will be fine. Bring water, the right clothing, shoes and snacks and they will be just fine.

Hi, you might get different answers but I will tell you that for my husband and I, it was strenuous to get to the top (Glacier Point). We are in our late 50s, husband cycles and plays a lot of tennis. I cycle (lots of hills) about 20 miles a trip a couple times a week, go to the gym 3x a week, and we both found it very hard. We had walking poles- they came in handy. We didn’t rest for long enough periods of time to get used to the elevation. Our fault. Husband started cramping really bad about 2/3 up so we had to stop a lot more. What we should have done is brought Gatorade and perhaps mustard packs, and rested for longer periods of time. Lesson learned. If we hadn’t started chatting with a nice couple at the top, who were kind enough to drive us back down, we would have taken forever to hike back down (plus at that time (late May) the snack shop was closed and the drinking fountains were shut off - no water refills! But we’d do it again! Hope that helps.

My wife and I did this in early June, our only issue was slipping down the gravelly trail. Make sure your treads are good on your sneakers, but normal summer attire would be fine. The panorama trail is considered a more scenic hike down, but its about 9 miles long. If you take the shuttle bus to the top, make sure you take an early one. We took the 10am shuttle, and got dropped off around 11:45. There is a nice snack stand at the top of glacier point you can have lunch at before you hike down.

Probably. Contact the official vendor for tours and ask. Most folks ride up to Glacier Point and hike down, usually on the Panorama Trail. But that must mean that there are empty seats on that bus going back down to the Valley. Timing may be the challenge. The earliest bus going up to Glacier Point arrives around 9:45 or 10:00 am. I think it heads back down around 11:30, getting to the Valley at 12:30 pm. Then you'd probably want lunch, would have to get across the Valley (about a mile) and hike up 4.8 mile Four Mile Trail. The Yosemite NP forum page is a good place to ask about options for your hiking plans.

PacificNWFamily, Thanks for your response. With further reading we have decided that two days are really necessary to accomplish what we want. We are now planning to take the hikers bus and do the Panorama Trail one day, then drive up another day and do Taft Point, Sentinel Dome, Washburn and just walk down the Four Mile Trail to the start of the switchbacks to get the views then return to Glacier Point. Cheers from, JOHN & Ann

There is only one bus from Yosemite Lodge at the Falls to Glacier Point. You can get information from the National Park Service website. (I know that this question is old. In the future, I hope that erica h posts her questions on the destination forums where questions are usually answered that day.)