| Summary | |
| Owner | MITOC Gallery Administrator |
| Creation Date | 2007-06-29 00:22:28 UTC-0400 |
| Description | June 23
Eric Gilbertson Total distance: 25 miles Woody and Perry wanted to climb some hard stuff saturday, so I decided to hike half dome, and if there was time maybe something else. The catch was that we all had to be done with our trips by 3pm so we could make it back to Pasadena before midnight. If you don't know about the trail up half dome, it's 8 or 9 miles to get there depending on the trail you take, and the last section is actually 5th class rock with cables hanging down to help you climb. On a weekend in the summer there can be literally hundreds of people hiking half dome, and the wait to get up the cables can be several hours. I had no intention of waiting around that long, but I didn't want to lose sleep by getting an alpine start, so I ended up starting around 6:30am. By then there were probably close to 100 people already on the trail. I decided to take the longer John Muir trail in hopes of avoiding some people, but I still passed groups every few minutes. It was actually kind of gratifying to hear people s comments of amazement after I passed and they thought I was out of earshot. I was going about 4 miles an hour, so not quite running but still about twice as fast as them. By about 8:45 I made it to the cables and was amazed to find no people at all! It turns out I was the first one to make it there that day. There was actually more reward to this than a fast trip up the cables: I scored a nalgene and a hat that someone must have left at the base the previous night. I pulled myself up the cables and was greeted with a spectacular 5,000ft vertical overlook into the valley. There were actually 3 or 4 people up there also, but it turned out they had spent the night there to see sunrise, so can still say I was the first up there. I hung out admiring the view for about an hour until a few other people started trickling up the cables. That was my cue to head back down. Instead of trying to pass by everyone coming up I decided to descend on the outside of the cables and not worry about them. Many of the people looked petrified climbing up that slope: they were basically hugging the rock face and not daring to look down. When I got to the flatter section I felt like I had a lot of energy so I decided to run back. Of course I slowed down when passing people so as not to make them feel too bad, but I overall kept a decent pace. By noon I was back at the trailhead, which was probably about the time most people were making it to the summit. I couldn't just quit then and hang around doing nothing til 3 o'clock, so I decided to take the free bus to the yosemite falls trailhead and hike that. It was 3.5 miles up ( and 2500ft) so if I got started by 1pm I should be able to do it in time. That's just about how it worked out. As before I passed a bunch of people, because I was still hiking at close to 4mph. I admired the super-exposed view from the top of the falls for a few minutes and then hiked/jogged back down. I was actually 10 minutes late to the rendez-vous, but still was there slightly before woody and perry. They had gotten back from climbing something called "manure pile", which woody will have to say more about if he posts his pictures. Perry returned to San Francisco and woody and I successfully got back to pasadena before midnight. |