updated – here’s my photos.
I’m back from my amazing trip to Half Dome. I made it to the point where the cables begin and decided that the last 900 foot granite slab at about a 45° angle (400 vertical feet up) was too much for me given my almost-life long fear of heights. The pictures will be up in a couple days – need to get the disposable cameras to 1-hour photo tomorrow.
So, for a 40-year old who has basically been a couch/computer potato for roughly three years up until May of this year, I made about a 4800 ft. ascent in around 7 hours and the return trip down in a little less than 6 hours on a day where the temperature hovered around 95°. A great description of the route I took can be found on this site.
The smartest thing we did (besides bringing lots and lots of water) was leaving at 5:15 am. There were few other hikers until much later in the day and not having a lot of people trying to get past me made me much more comfortable setting my own pace. Since I was slower than my hiking companions they outpaced me in the first 15 minutes – so I spent the first five hours or so hiking alone. This started with the hike to Vernal Falls which is a series of wet granite steps that took me up about a 1000 ft in a little over a mile. Vernal Falls was breathtaking, the trail up to it is called the Mist Trail because of the incredible amount of mist coming off the falls (i know, duh…). Scaling those stairs alone in that mist at around 6 am was like nothing I’ve ever done before. Maybe it was the solitude or just my lack of coffee (breakfast was an energy drink and a Red Bull), but I felt like I was in a dream. A dream with lots of really steep wet granite steps.
It was crazy different on the return trip at 4 pm where there were literally hundreds of people who were doing that as their day hike in Yosemite.
From Vernal I headed up to Nevada falls which was basically a trail of more granite steps, except this time of varying dimensions, widths and heights. I took lots of breaks and established my first trail friendship with two guys who were on a similar break schedule. I continued to see them right up until we got to the base of the rock staircase that leads to the cables – since I was alone it was nice to have these encouraging funny guys to banter with instead of focusing on the crazy way my heart was beating from the hiking. On the way back down while trying to navigate these crazy, precarious steps, AmyS (one of my hiking companions on this trip) and I just kept marvelling that we’d come up them. For me, I think I was so focused on the fact that I was going up, that I didn’t notice how just difficult it was to find a good path.
Around 7 am I had one of those Gu energy gel things. OK. Those things are fucking brilliant. Best energy spurts ever. When I do this hike the next time – yes, there will be a next time and I’ll do the cables next time – I’ll take more of these and less trail mix with chocolate chips. In case you didn’t know, chocolate melts when it’s 95°. Messy.
I was maybe a little less than 2 miles from the summit when I heard someone behind me calling my name. I turned around and there were Julia and AmyS – two of the three women I’d come up with. I hadn’t seen them in around 4.5 hours and had been thinking they’d already gotten to the top. Unfortunately for them, they’d taken a wrong turn and taken an alternate and longer route. It ended up being great for me because it meant I got to do the hike down with someone. I walked with them for a bit, but they rapidly outpaced me again and got to the base of the summit before me – and were waiting to start the granite stairs when I got there.
The granite stairs to the cables were killer tough. I used my hands to grab on a lot and tried not to look down. This was when the height/fear thing was starting to kick in and I just wanted to keep going. There were parts that felt much more like climbing than hiking. But again, I’m not in the best shape, so this bit seemed particularly strenous to me.
I sat down at the base of the cables and stared up at them for quite a while. AmyS and Julia were already on their way up so if I was going to do it, I’d be alone. I looked at the incredible view around me. I thought about what I’d actually been able to accomplish hiking up with less than 3 months of regular exercise (basically seeing a personal trainer twice a week for about 10 weeks, hiking 4-5 weekends leading up to this weekend, and using my new rowing machine 3-4 times a week for the last 3 weeks or so – but before that little more than a walk to the corner store for beer for THREE YEARS) and I felt incredibly satisfied with my day. I decided the cables and the summit could wait until I work a little more on the height fear thing.
So… what’s my plan for working on the fear of heights thing? Wouldn’t you like to know? Who wants to come with me?
