Last weekend, Bruce Larson and I took a shotgun, 36-hour trip to Yosemite National Park and climbed Half Dome. The trip had been planned for several months, but had to be altered a little due to work constraints. Sucks to have to work and be responsible. Even with the tight work schedules, we were able to pull off a super successful trip, and summited one of the more known and traveled peaks in the nation.
The trip started off with Bruce picking me up around 8am last Sunday morning. We made some choice pit-stops along the way, and I even re-started my old travel mug tradition. We reached the park entrance around 3-4pm and made our way through the park. Exploration was the name of the game....chilled exploration. Once oriented, we strolled up to Lower Yosemite Falls, posed for some pics, and then headed to get settled in to our camp location.
Our camp was pretty cool. We may have gotten ripped off for an expensive campsite, but the Housekeeping Camp kept us cozy. It's really just a community of half-tent/half-rooms that are exposed to the outdoors, complete with fire pits, picnic tables, and bear bins. After our quick Yosemite Falls hike, we checked in, headed off to get some good grub (where I found some very addicting Boysenberry pie), and then headed back to camp to retire. You see, we had to get up around 4:45am to make sure we gave ourselves enough time to summit Monday.
So Monday, we woke up early and headed off to the trail head to meet up with Don and Matthew Larson, Bruce's uncle. We got hiking just after 6am with our headlamps beaming bright. I don't have much to say about the trail that the pics can't show better. But it suffices to say that we made it to the bottom of Sub Dome around 11am. We had to sit around for a while because there was a ranger sitting there taking coffin measurements for all willing climbers (serious) and wanted to see permits. We had some trouble getting ours to display on the phones we had, and finally the ranger let us start the last ascent to the summit.
At this point, Bruce and I ditched Don and Matt, as we were determined we were going to make it to the top. The weather was looking a tad shady, and we had to get going. We made it to the top of Sub Dome around 12pm, took a couple pics, and then grabbed our leather gloves and started the ascent up the famous Half Dome cable section. The cables run for about 400 ft or so, and gives a straight shot to the summit at about 50 degrees. Crazy steep, and gave a good preview for what we'd be feeling on the way back down the cables.
Long story short, we finished the cable section easily in about 30 minutes, played around on top, posed for some pics, and just enjoyed the sheer beauty all around us. As we were sitting at the top, the weather gradually shifted towards the negative spectrum, and the skies began to cry on us. The rocks became very slick, at which point we made a quick run for the cables to get down off the Half Dome face. The descent was interesting on the cables with the rain coming down. A traffic jam formed, with terrified people inching their way down the cable section. Good footing was critical, and took some courage to make it down. But we made it.
The rest was just a blur. We practically ran down the trail to get home, took some scenic routes around Nevada and Vernal Falls, and bailed for the car. We made it home to bed around midnight Monday, just in time for bed and sleepy time. It was a very fun trip, and the perfect remedy for weekend warriors.
3 comments:
sounds fun! nice pics bro.
Looks like a great time, can you imagine slipping rolling down that mountainside? That's one thing I liked about the via ferrata in Riva del Garde - we were clipped in
hey Mike, we didn't have do the trip permits when we went did we?
You know, coming down the cables it started getting real slick. I would've loved to have a "via ferrata" set up coming down. The rain made it very slick. Someone's water bottle fell and slid the whole way down to it's sickening death, and everyone just kind of watched. Then they grabbed on to the cables tighter.
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