7/21 through 7/23, Tuolumne to Yosemite valley + half dome, about 30 mile side trip
Aaron Doss
I am going to summarize it all. sure, i can not be short in
description, i hear you all think. okay, i am trying.
we were undisturbed last night. no bears or rangers. cool. we started
hiking around 9 or so and the sun was shining. We hiked through a
beautiful valley surrounded by peaks and dome like hills as is so
typical for Yosemite. Cathedral peak was one of the most prominent
peaks. it is very high but very narrow peak, almost as if it will tip
over. from the green and lush valley it was such powerful peak to
look at. Aaron took many photos, of course, and i just tried to absorb
it all. i love Yosemite. instead of the dramatic landscape earlier in
the sierra's (high peaks, lots of snow rushing water, lots of
contrast) this landscape is more calm and steady. it is dominated by
big granite formations, that are mostly round in shape. the valley is
full with scattered boulders and the rivers are mostly calm with
occasionally a waterfall from the granite walls. not to much water on
the trail and actually a bit arid at certain spots. to me this is very
attractive and more comprehensible. i!
t's solid and not overwhelming. Aaron likes the previous sierra
landscape better. i think that we subconsciously prefer the scenery
that fits our personality, or actually, that gives us what we need. i
need more calm and solid ground because i am more energy type, aaron
goes for the more dramatic, because he is already calm.
anyways, the mosquitoes got even worse (how is that possible? but we
dealt with it, mostly by covering ourselves in DEET and head net. we
dried our tents and sleeping bags while eating lunch and hiked on
until we got close to the junction that would lead us up to half dome.
we set up camp, out of sight from the trail, took our bear precautions
(what bears?) and went to sleep.
the next day we got up and made our way to the junction. at the
junction we hid our bear vaults and some extra stuff so we didn't need
to carry it up. we did take all our important gear up though; we
didn't want anyone to steal it. we were definitely in a very high
traffic area. heck, we haven't seen so many hikers for ages!
--
Finished by aaron.
--
It was the weekend and there were hundreds of hikers. We started
counting only to get lost at somewhere around 80, it only took a few
minutes to get to 80 then we gave up. We climbed up to the saddle
below the cables which ascend Half Dome. A ranger was sitting there
counting people as the climbed up the cables. He said that on an
average summer weekend there could be anywhere between 800 and 1200
people climbing Half Dome a day. He said it is the most popular hike
in the United States.
Two parallel steel cables go from the base to the top of Halfdome on a
75 degree slope. At the bottom of the two steel cables there was a
pile of gloves. Just before that was a young woman who had a
terrified look on her face. She had gone up the cables then got
scared and went back down. We convinced her that it would be ok and
that she should try to go up again, you gotta do it if you walked all
the way up here (nearly 3000 ft climb from Yosemite valley). She
reluctantly agreed to try it again. We fitted some gloves and
started up the cables, it wasn't as bad as it looked. The only
problem was that there were a lot of people on the cables, enough to
make it uncomfortable. The cables themselves were just fine, they are
1 inch thick steel cables, strong enough to hold ten trucks. But when
you are climbing a 75 degree granite cliff and you look up and see 50
people climbing above you it's scary to think of what would happen if
one of them, say one near the top, fell. The book "Deep Survival"
talks about how most catastrophes are set up by humans, we set up a
system where a catastrophic chain of events can be touched off by only
one simple error like dominoes. The cables on Half Dome are an
accident, no, a disaster, waiting to happen. Unless things change,
some day in our lifetimes you will be watching the evening news and
there will be a story about a tragic backcountry accident in Yosemite
where about 300 people were climbing the cables on Halfdome, a person
near the top slipped and took about 200 people with him/her down the
granite cliffs. People will be in outrage and the ensuing TV drama
will play out..
The climb itself was easy, we arrived on top and walked up to the
highpoint to eat lunch and dry out our sleeping bags. I carried a
Guinness Stout from Tuolumne with the purpose of opening it on top of
Half Dome. Even though it was warm, it was delicious, and filled with
calories, everything a hiker needs. It accompanied our bagels with
cheese just fine. We took the obligatory photos on top and decided
to go down so we could get to the valley, wash and eat cheeseburgers.
Going down was a nightmare, we thought it was busy going up, but going
down was twice as bad. There were literally two hundred people on the
cables.. There were two rows of people going down in the middle of the
cables and two rows of people going down on the OUTSIDE of the cables!
Four lines of traffic. We started down only to be held up after
about 40 feet, there was traffic jam at 75 degrees on the granite.
People were passing by on the outside of the cables and we reluctantly
made the decision to go on the outside of the cables and make some
progress. I figured that the main risk was spending too much time on
the cables, it's better to take slightly more risk and get down
quicker than be exposed to less risk longer. It was difficult getting
around people and going to the outside of the cables with a full
backpack on, of course we were the only ones with packs so we drew
glances of annoyance. After getting used to being on the outside of
the cable and actually making progress it wasn't that bad. Fifty feet
from the bottom a person climbing up called up to me, "Hey Chicos
man!!" (obviously referring to the Chicos tacos insignia on my
sunhat). Thinking I was an owner, he wanted to talk to me right there
about setting up a franchise of his own. He was the first person on
the trail to know what Chico's tacos is, I was amused, but I didn't
feel like talking about Chicos too long, my hands were starting to
ache. We had been on the cables for nearly an hour.
At the bottom we discarded our gloves back into the pile and started
back down to get our bearcanisters. On the way we saw a couple
hundred more people coming up, ridiculous. We have seem more people
today than we have seen the whole trail with possibly the exception of
the kick off party.
It was hot, hellishy hot, in fact it was hotter than any day in the
desert in Southern California. 104-106 degrees in Yosemite Valley.
We were sweating so hard that our backpacks were starting to get
soaked. We passed by about three thousand day hikers on the way down
from Nevada falls and arrived in the valley looking for a shower and
food. We ended up walking to Curry village, finding the wait for a
shower unsatisfactory we walked on to the Housekeeping camp where
there was a Laundromat and no wait shower, awesome. As we were
washing a huge thunderstorm moved in and drenched the valley, we still
had no place to stay and were getting concerned that the storm
wouldn't stop, but after a hour it was over and a warm dank humidity
came in. The girl working the towel and soap counter gave us some
advice about where to stay for free, our options where 1) some place
called "Party rock" near the tent city where the park employees lived
2) the backpackers camp located about 20 minutes away somewhere in the
valley.. We will decide later, first we need food..
We took the free bus back to Curry Village where we got pizza at the
Disneyland like food court. A national park experience should not be
like this, of course we are hypocrites because we were enjoying it
like any other town stop. But that's the problem, in general I think
that national parks should not have all the stripmalls, restaurants,
hotels and amusement rides (Yosemite valley tour bus), it kind of goes
against the whole concept of a wilderness.
We ordered a large pizza (Hawaiian) and Zack ordered a large pizza.
We were just able to finish our pizza and Zack was looking defeated by
his, there was still over half left. I got a box for him and we boxed
it up, it wouldn't go to waste.
It was near 11pm .. "Party rock" did not sound like a good sleeping
option, since we actually were tired and wanted to get some sleep. We
inquired around on how to get to the backpackers camp, and took off
into the night. It was warm and foggy, our headlamps barely
penetrated ahead, we followed the winding bicycle paths and obscure
signs into the forest. What should have taken 20 minutes took closer
to an hour. The camp was nice, flush toilets, and bearboxes. It was
so warm that I actually slept without my sleeping bag, just layed out
on my pad and fell asleep, Nathalie did the same at first but ended up
taking her bag out later in the night.
The next morning Zack ate the rest of his pizza for breakfast and we
walked down to the nearest bus stop to catch a ride to Yosemite
village. After eating food and doing the Yosemite tourist thing for
the afternoon we were ready to go, we wanted to get back to Tuolumne
this afternoon so we could pick up our food boxes and continue on
tomorrow morning.
We hitched from the mail valley exit road to highway 140 and then got
another ride from there to Tuolomne. We camped in the backpackers
camp again and prepared our food for the trip to Tahoe.
Aaron