How to scare yourself out of going...watch Youtube videos

The problem with the Web, is that you can find just about anything about anything, and what you find may not be what you were hoping for. For example, I enjoy tormenting (well deserved by the way) a co-worker with links to very graphic videos of the surgeries I have had the past few years. He no longer opens e-mail that have a subject line of “You gotta see this!”.

When I bought my pack the other day, the very nice and knowledgeable person at REI mentioned that the Park Service frowns upon hikers clipping into the cables, so I did a search on that. I found one helpful site which said to definitely clip in, citing all the possible ways you can die if you don’t. Great. Then I found a NPS video clip on hiking Yosemite, which was created I think, to scare the bejeebies out of most people considering the hike.

https://www.nps.gov/media/video/view.htm?id=F891355F-F836-4D0A-7305CFA1E09D497A

It did nothing but reinforce my plan to use a harness and clip my way up and down the cable. It is my life after all. I then found a video from a group that did clip into the cable - much safer, especially going down. Built up my confidence after the first video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFdA58m-AWw

But Youtube has tons of videos taken on the cable route, thanks to GoPro (I plan to use mine, with a new chest harness that I bought). This last video is probably not the one to watch at all for anyone planning the hike since it describes a woman’s miraculous survival of falling out of the cables, and bouncing down until she hit a vertical rock which kept her from falling the rest of the way to the valley. She had to be rescued via helicopter, in really bad weather.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GarBqz_Kfo

I watched one more clip from a guy who did a video of going down (his first audible comment other than sounds of hyperventilation was “Holy Sh*t”) - really, really steep, but survivable if you hold on tight. Incredibly steep - it is definitely 5th class on the rock climbing scale, something like the 3rd Flatiron in Boulder which I’ve done a million times. But always climbing up, not down. The two free hanging rappels from the 3rd look much safer than sliding down the steep stretch.

So the bottom line is - wear very good gripping gloves and the heck with the rangers, I’m clipping to the cable both ways. Better safe than paste.

Gearing up and other things to worry about....

Funny how fast summer goes by. There are only 28 days left until Half Dome Day (HDD? Sounds techie). No hikes this past week, but a lot of long distance walking, and workouts - they have a cruel machine at the gym I belong to, a Jacobs Ladder trainer. Five minutes on that get’s you about 400 feet worth of pain, in all the places you get on steep trails. My goal is to get to 1000 feet without tearing anything (muscles, tendons, not clothing).

With less than a month to go, I have started stressing about gear of course. I always need to stress out about something, and I’m an admitted gear junky. I had to have all the latest, weird chocks when I used to rock climb, some of which did not work too well but looked really cool. I bought every size of Friend when they first came out. I was a living lightning rod when I was on the lead end of the rope.

In this case, I was concerned about the size of my day pack (no Donald Trump jokes here) - really nice for short hikes, and holds a 3 liter water bladder. But with my camera, food, water filter (more on that later), clothing, climbing harness stuff, two bottles of champagne and flutes (just kidding about that), the pack was getting a bit over stuffed. A perfect excuse for heading over to REI to buy a new pack! Which I did. I now have a REI Traverse 48 pack - perfectly fitted, hideous rust/orange color,  with room for all kinds of gear. Lot’s of adjustment straps, which all the latest packs have. It will give me something to waste away time in the cabin tent. Oh boy.

The new pack + odds and ends

Speaking of water, liquid is the heaviest part of the load for hiking - you really do need to drink a lot of fluid, especially at higher elevations. There is a lot of water along the trail in Yosemite, but for the past few decades, we have been warned about the dangers of giardia, a nasty parasite

which wildlife poops into the water (too many things to remember in the wilderness - don’t eat the yellow snow, and don’t drink the water either). I’ve never known anyone who had it, but the description sounds a lot like the stomach flu or the what stuff you drink before a colonoscopy does to you...same effect. Luckily, I found a compact water purifier I bought a few years back when I was still fantasizing about backpacking - never been used, and it will be perfect for the trip. We can refill our bottles and bladders (the plastic ones in our packs, not the other one which I guess will be filled as well - what goes in must go out). Saves a lot of weight in the pack.

Finally, the best news of the week is that we have another adventurer for the hike - another retiree who is an avid hiker and who has done the cable route before. It will be good to have someone who can keep my ex-boss from pushing me over the edge...I still worry about that.

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